Promenade Open Houses Draw Broad Public Input
But Some Choices Remain Diffused
By Paul Rosenberg, Seior Editor

     There was a line at the Marina Motel at 10 o’clock on Saturday morning of July 10, as if it were opening day for “Fahrenheit 9/11.” By the end of the day, over 275 people had filed through the open house displays inside, showing the latest developments in the planning process for San Pedro’s Waterfront Promenade Phase II development.
     Most importantly, noted Vaughan Davies, Project Manager for Ehrenkrantz, Ekstut & Kuhn (EEK), “We’ve added about 22 acres of open space” since the last public presentation in March, and “all will be flat areas.” Most of the gain was categorized under “landscaped areas,” with 5.4 acres added to “parks, meadows and beaches.”
     “I like it,” said Doug Epperhart, past president of the Coastal San Pedro Neighborhood Council, whose residents predominated at the workshop held in their territory. “Pretty much every time I see it, I like it better. They are starting to get a lot of response.”
     However, with one notable exception—the 22-acre 22nd Street Park—the presentation did not clearly articulate different, coherent options for people to chose between, as this stage of planning was originally envisioned to entail. There were three park designs for people to choose from.
     There were 11 separate stations where project staff explained, conversed, and listened to all comers—some involved in the process for years, others getting their first exposure. Choices were abundant, though not organized into distinct options for public feedback.
     “I found it to be really interesting, the way they set it up and people go board by board, image by image, to see what we’ve been talking about,” said Councilwoman Janice Hahn, who attended the workshop session the following Thursday.
     What’s more, Davies noted, at least two thirds of those attending took the time to fill out a 13-page feedback questionnaire. Project staff will be poring over questionnaire results in the weeks ahead, on the way to developing their final proposal, which will be presented sometime in September. However, Yehudi Gaff, President of Gafcon Construction, stressed that five or more years from now a major redesign would be fairly normal for such a large-scale, long-term project, as the community reflects on the changes it has initiated.
     Hahn called the questionnaire response “one of the most important things. Because apparently people feel like they’re being listened to. No one would fill out a survey for thirty minutes if they didn’t feel that someone was going to listen to them.”
     One display, toward the very beginning, detailed the major changes since the last public presentation in March. Included were a Ports O’ Call Neighborhood Park, 13th Street Pocket Park and Harbor, an enlarged Pointe Park on the North mouth of the SP Slip, a new Promenade Park at the current location of Westways facing the Main Channel, and a new Kaiser Pier Park.
     One possible weakness of the questionnaire was the potential for some questions to produce vague or ambiguous responses, such as asking “What would you like to see on the Downtown Waterfront?” followed by a list of options to check, but not prioritize. Other questions were quite specific, such as three options for building heights (two-three stories, four-five stories and six stories maximum), asked for three different districts.
     The last workshop takes place in Peck Park, 12-4 p.m. on Sunday, July 25.