San Diego, CA
La Jolla Shores board questions benefits of proposed UCSD banner district
A proposal to establish a UC San Diego banner district, though pitched as a mutually beneficial project, was viewed by some La Jolla Shores Association board members last week as a one-sided and not-so-collaborative deal.
Erin Shepler, UCSD’s executive director of marketing, and Anu Delouri, senior director of local government and community relations, presented the proposal to the Shores Association on April 16.
Under the proposal, UCSD banners would be hung on light poles on streets near the university, including Genesee Avenue, Regents Road, La Jolla Village Drive, North Torrey Pines Road, La Jolla Shores Drive and Torrey Pines Scenic Drive.
The plan first went before the La Jolla Traffic & Transportation Board last month before it was redirected to the Shores Association.
Former LJSA president Janie Emerson said at the T&T meeting that the proposal would more appropriately fall under LJSA’s jurisdiction because “that’s the community it’s going to impact most.”
T&T Chairman Erik Gantzel agreed, saying “It doesn’t, in my mind, impact what we are here to do,” since it doesn’t involve road or parking changes.
The project, though developed “in close partnership with the city” of San Diego, would be paid for and maintained by the university, Shepler told LJSA, and the banners would be installed at “low-impact times” to avoid disrupting traffic.
There are a total of 175 poles within the loop, but Shepler said that doesn’t mean each one will be used. Several factors would be considered, she said, including what the budget allows and which poles are obstructed or contain safety signs.
Shepler said the project is not promotional, political or for profit but instead is about “showing value to the community,” boosting local pride, creating a more welcoming environment, “establishing a sense of place” for where the UCSD campus starts and ends and showcasing the school to people just outside of it.
Emerson disputed a claim by the presenters that the banner district would not overlap with La Jolla Shores’ banner district. The area in question is on La Jolla Shores Drive adjacent to UCSD’s Scripps Institution of Oceanography.
Delouri said the university does not believe there is overlap but that it would remove any parts of its banner district that indeed cross over.
Shepler agreed that “it’s not a problem at all. Based on our conversations with the city, we were told that this is not a conflict, but we are happy to resolve that” if there is one.
Delouri said that because the banner district is proposed on city streets, it will require City Council action but not local action.
But, she said, council President Joe LaCava, whose District 1 includes La Jolla, “was very particular that we do bring it to the community and share with you.”
That caused some board members and others attending the meeting to question the collaborative aspect of the proposal.
“That’s not community partnership,” board member Mike McCormack said. “It’s not that I don’t support banners on La Jolla Shores Drive and their use. I support us having control over it so the university comes to us and asks us to make use of our banners.”
Others characterized the proposal as one-sided.
Emerson called the project “counterproductive” and added that “it takes people from our community and onto the campus and not into our community and our businesses.”
Board member Kathleen Neil inquired about UCSD’s maintenance of nearby trees and the poles’ light bulbs.
“Anything you can offer back in return to us becomes an incentive for us to support your request,” Neil said. “Otherwise, it feels more like taking.”
Delouri said the university will do its best but cannot take maintenance into its own hands.
Board member Ross Rudolph requested a corrected map before the board votes on the project.
“We’re not trying to be obstructive,” Emerson said. “We’re just trying to keep our community the way it needs to be, and I know you all are trying to enhance your community. So we can work together.”
Delouri and Shepler said the next step for UCSD is reconnecting with the city and confirming that there is no district overlap before the project moves forward. They said they “are happy to come back” to the Shores Association to share any adjustments and additional details.
After the meeting, Delouri told the La Jolla Light that portions of the proposed district, specifically light poles along the west side of North Torrey Pines Road and the south side of La Jolla Village Drive between Torrey Pines Road and Gilman Drive, are being reassessed to determine whether any adjustments are needed.
Other LJSA news
Swearing-in: LaCava swore in five newly elected board members during the April 16 meeting — three of them in person and two attending online.
They are Alina Mullen, Tracey Andreae, Dede Donovan, Angie Preisendorfer and Sharon Luscomb. Members Rudolph and Andi Andreae were termed out and Cindy Goodman, Brian Earley and Claudia Baranowski did not seek reelection.
John Pierce will remain president, with Mary Coakley Munk as first vice president, Karen Marshall as second vice president, Preisendorfer as secretary and Terry Kraszewski as treasurer.
Event planning: The Shores Association plans an event titled “Tides of Creativity,” highlighting local artists and authors, from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday, May 17.
LJSA received a $7,500 grant initiated by state Sen. Toni Atkins before she left office last fall and administered by the city of San Diego in partnership with the area Business Improvement District Alliance.
Pierce said LJSA is working on permits with the city and that additional information will be available soon.
Next meeting: The La Jolla Shores Association next meets at 6 p.m. Wednesday, May 21, at the Martin Johnson House on the campus of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, 8840 Biological Grade. Learn more at lajollashoresassociation.org. ♦
Originally Published:
San Diego — Before we see elephants at Elephant Valley in the San Diego Zoo Safari Park, we come face to face with destruction, only the wreckage is beautiful. A long, winding path takes guests around and under felled trees. Aged gray tree hunks form arches, for instance, over bridges that tower over clay-colored paths with hoof prints.
The design is meant to reorient us, to take us on a trail walked not by humans but traversed and carved by elephants, a creature still misunderstood, vilified and hunted for its cataclysmic-like ability to reshape land, and sometimes communities.
“It starts,” says Kristi Burtis, vice president of wildlife care for the Safari Park, “by telling the story that elephants are ecosystem engineers.”
Elephant Valley will open March 5 as the newest experience at the Escondido park, its aim to bring guests closer than ever to the zoo’s eight elephants, which range in age from 7 to 36, while more heavily focusing on conservation. The centerpiece of the 13-acre-plus parkland is a curved bridge overlooking a savanna, allowing elephants to walk under guests. But there are also nooks such as a cave that, while not previewed at a recent media event, will allow visitors to view elephants on their level.
In a shift from, say, the Safari Park’s popular tram tour, there are no fences and visible enclosures. Captive elephants remain a sometimes controversial topic, and the zoo’s herd is a mix of rescues and births, but the goal was to create a space where humans are at once removed and don’t impede on the relative free-roaming ability of the animals by keeping guests largely elevated. As an example of just how close people can get to the herd, there was a moment of levity at the event when one of the elephants began flinging what was believed to be a mixture of dirt and feces up onto the bridge.
“Our guests are going to be able to see the hairs on an elephant,” Burtis says. “They can see their eyes. They can see the eyelashes. They can see how muscular their trunks are. It’s really going to be a different experience.”
Elephant Valley, complete with a multistory lodge with open-air restaurants and bars, boasts a natural design that isn’t influenced by the elephant’s African home so much as it is in conversation with it. The goal isn’t to displace us, but to import communal artistry — Kenyan wood and beadwork can be found in the pathways, resting spaces and more — as a show of admiration rather than imitation.
“We’re not going to pretend that we’re taking people to Africa,” says Fri Forjindam, now a creative executive with Universal’s theme parks but previously a lead designer on Elephant Valley via her role as a chief development officer at Mycotoo, a Pasadena-based experiential design firm.
“That is a slippery slope of theming that can go wrong really fast,” she adds. “How do we recognize where we are right now, which is near San Diego? How do we populate this plane with plants that are indigenous to the region? The story of coexistence is important. We’re not extracting from Africa, we’re learning. We’re not extracting from elephants, we’re sharing information.”
But designing a space that is elephant-first yet also built for humans presented multiple challenges, especially when the collaborating teams were aiming to construct multiple narratives around the animals. Since meetings about Elephant Valley began around 2019, the staff worked to touch on themes related to migration and conservation. And there was also a desire to personalize the elephants.
“Where can we also highlight each of the elephants by name, so they aren’t just this huge herd of random gray creatures?” Forjindam says. “You see that in the lodge.”
That lodge, the Mkutano House — a phrase that means “gathering” in Swahili — should provide opportunities for guests to linger, although zoo representatives say reservations are recommended for those who wish to dine in the space (there will also be a walk-up, to-go window). Menus have yet to be released, but the ground floor of the structure, boasting hut-like roofing designed to blend into the environment, features close views of the elephant grazing pool as well as an indoor space with a centerpiece tree beneath constellation-like lighting to mimic sunrises and sunsets.
Throughout there are animal wood carvings and beadwork, the latter often hung from sculptures made of tree branches. The ceiling, outfitted with colorful, cloth tapestries designed to move with the wind, aims to create less friction between indoor and outdoor environments.
There are, of course, research and educational goals of the space as well. The Safari Park works, for instance, with the Northern Rangelands Trust and Loisaba Conservancy in Kenya, with an emphasis on studying human-elephant conflict and finding no-kill resolutions. Nonprofits and conservation groups estimate that there are today around 415,000 elephants in Africa, and the African savanna elephant is listed as endangered by the International Union for Conservation of Nature.
Studies of the zoo’s young elephants is shared with the Reteti Elephant Sanctuary in the hopes of delivering care to elephant youth to prevent orphanage. Additionally, the Safari Park has done extensive examination into the endotheliotropic herpes virus. “The data that we collect from elephants here, you can’t simply get from elephants in the wild,” Burtis says.
One of the two entrances to Elephant Valley is outfitted with bee boxes; bees are known to be a natural elephant deterrent and can help in preventing the animals from disrupting crops or communities. To encourage more natural behavior, the plane is outfitted with timed feeders in an attempt to encourage movement throughout the acreage and establish a level of real-life unpredictability in hunting for resources. Water areas have been redesigned with ramps and steps to make it easier for the elephants to navigate.
With Elephant Valley, Forjindam says the goal was to allow visitors to “observe safely in luxury — whatever that is — but not from a position of power, more as a cohabitor of the Earth, with as much natural elements as possible. It’s not to impose dominance. Ultimately, it needed to feel natural. It couldn’t feel like a man-made structure, which is an antiquated approach to any sort of safari experience where animals are the product, a prize. In this experience, this is the elephant’s home.”
And the resulting feel of Elephant Valley is that we, the paying customers, are simply their house guests.
A man in the Mission Bay Park community of San Diego was fatally struck Sunday morning by a hit-and run vehicle, authorities said.
The victim was also struck by a second vehicle and that motorist stayed at the scene to cooperate with officers, the San Diego Police Department reported.
The initial crash occurred at about 2:20 a.m. Sunday in the area of West Mission Bay and Sea World drives.
The pedestrian was in the southbound lanes of the 2000 block of West Mission Bay Drive when he was struck by a silver vehicle also in the southbound lanes. That vehicle fled the scene, continuing southbound, police said.
A 28-year-old man driving his vehicle southbound ran over the downed pedestrian.
“That driver remained at the scene and is not DUI,” according to a police statement. “The pedestrian was pronounced deceased at the scene.”
Anyone with information regarding the initial crash was urged to call Crime Stoppers at 888-580-8477.
San Diego County is known for having wet, cold weather in February. But it had numerous hot spells this year. And when the month ended on Saturday a high pressure system produced heat that broke or tied temperature records in nine communities from the desert to the sea, the National Weather Service said.
The most notable temperature occurred in Borrego Springs, which reached 99, five degrees higher than the previous record for Feb. 28, set in 1986. The 99 reading is also the highest temperature ever recorded in Borrego in February.
Escondido reached 95, tying a record set in 1901.
El Cajon reached 92, three degrees higher than the record set in 2009.
Ramona topped out at 88, five degrees higher than the record set in 2009.
Alpine hit 88, four degrees higher the record set in 1986.
Campo reached 87, four degrees higher than the record set in 1999.
Vista hit 86, four degrees higher than the record set in 2020.
Chula Vista reached 84, one degree higher than the record set in 2020.
Lake Cuyamaca rose to 76, four degrees higher than the record set in 1986.
Forecasters say the weather is not likely to broadly produce new highs on Sunday. Cooler air is moving to the coast, and on Monday, San Diego’s high will only reach 67, a degree above normal.
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