Nancy Graham expects Balboa Theatre visitors to be wowed by the venues details, including recreations of the original light fixtures. (photo/alandeckerphoto.com)

Gesturing toward an intricately painted lobby wall, Nancy Graham recounts the architectural investigation that went into its creation. Pointing up to an ornate blue light fixture, she explains how a single intact original was used to replicate an entire ceiling’s worth. Graham is clearly excited. It is not every day a public agency executive whose primary mission is community infrastructure gets to oversee the creation of a $26.5 million work of art. But such was Graham’s lot when she walked in the door 2 1/2 years ago as president of the Centre City Development Corp., just as the redevelopment agency was resolving a decades-long quest — restoration of the 83-year-old Balboa Theatre.

“It takes you back in time to another era,” Graham says of the building. “To be sitting there thinking about the life and experiences of people who have passed through that theater is really neat. When you look at the depth of the textures and the colors used, these are things we just don’t do anymore.”

After a political preview with Mayor Sander’s State of the City speech on Jan. 10, the public gets its first chance to sample the Balboa during a weekend of activities starting Jan. 11. After that comes a gala and a stream of performances, a sampling of which includes the New Shanghai Circus on Feb. 17, Vienna Boys Choir March 16, Mariachi Los Camperos de Nati Cano May 3 and Mainly Mozart’s 20th anniversary summer festival June 10-21. (Details are at sdbalboa.org.) Supervisor Greg Cox presents his State of the County speech Feb. 13.

An Evolving Mission

Workers hoist the new marquee for the Balboa Theatre, weeks before the theater’s scheduled public debut. (photo/alandeckerphoto.com)

The theater’s January opening also is symbolic of how CCDC’s role Downtown has evolved, from an agency specializing in helping developers assemble property for office, retail and housing projects, to one now focusing more on the lifestyle elements, such as parks, open space and education.

Getting to this point was challenging, something the story of the Balboa clearly shows.

Former CCDC Chairman Peter Q. Davis, who served two stints and 16 years on the board, recalls a tortured history of trying to save the Balboa.

“The dilemma was there was no economic use for the Balboa that would come close to paying the costs of restoring the building and retrofitting it for earthquake standards,” says Davis. “We constantly tried. We normally worked with those who had the more creative and imaginative ideas, rather than the most rational ideas. We gave them exclusive negotiating rights, and they came back with creative ideas and creative uses but no money.”

CCDC used eminent domain in 1985 to acquire the property, which lies within the Horton Plaza Redevelopment Area. When the agency decided in 1992 to consolidate all 92101 redevelopment districts into an expanded one that included the east side of Downtown, the state would not allow inclusion of Horton Plaza. By then it failed to meet a definition of blight. That meant Horton Plaza’s redevelopment life would end, as scheduled, in 2013. In the meantime, the district’s generation of redevelopment taxes accelerated greatly, exceeding projections.

“We had two choices with the money,” says Davis, who was CCDC chair when the Horton windfall became an issue, “give it back to the state or find a use. My motto was, ‘make the Balboa a present to ourselves.’ We now could stick an obscene amount of money into that building and retain it for its original use. We could return the theater to the citizens of San Diego.”

Graham expects the finished project to appeal to businesses and locals alike.

“This is an incredibly wonderful new venue to do some new things and to bring some new people to the area, which is what we are interested in.” Graham says. “We really are everyone’s Downtown, for all of San Diego. I don’t know sports analogies, but I look at Downtown like it is the living room of your house. People judge you a lot by your living room. Your bedrooms may be a mess, but the door is closed and they don’t know that. All they see is your living room.”

Graham says the 1,339 seat theater (smaller than the 1,513 seat original to meet modern access requirements) will be a nice fit between the smaller Lyceum (its largest of two seats 500) and larger Civic Theater (2,967 seats). “It is an opportunity to provide a whole different type of theater to San Diego.”

The publicly owned theater, which is being managed by the nonprofit San Diego Theatres, also is an oversized representation of the neighborhood projects Graham’s agency will deliver or make significant progress on this year.

Parks, Fire Stations & Schools

In 1924, its first year of existence, the Balboa Theatre was trumpeting its showing of screen goddess Gloria Swanson in ‘A Society Scandal.’

About the same time the theater’s gala is taking place, the agency will open Tweet Street park on Cortez Hill as well as a redesigned Children’s Park in Marina, where grassy mounds are being leveled and trees removed for better safety. Shortly after, work will start on Plaza Two, a large public space in the Columbia neighborhood across the street from the Santa Fe depot. In April, Children’s Museum Park in Marina opens. By year’s end, construction documents will be finished for the North Embarcadero Visionary Plan, setting the stage to expand waterfront public space from nine acres to 35 acres.

To help Downtown’s eight neighborhoods develop distinct personalities, the agency kicks off this year a series of design guideline meetings. “The goal is to make sure each of those neighborhoods retains its own identity,” says Graham.

The agency also will stay true to its infrastructure roots, working to build two fire stations, one on Broadway in the east part of Downtown and the other on the water side of the railroad tracks. “We build the building, equip it with trucks and furniture and give the keys to the city,” Graham says. Affordable housing will be the focus of $100 million of agency dollars. While the housing slowdown has boosted the supply of property available for such work, Graham says prices have not fallen much. “We thought we would see more,” she says.

A major design issue shortly will face CCDC when bids come back for the artfully designed, long-awaited pedestrian bridge across Harbor Drive, connecting the San Diego Port District’s parking garage and new Hilton Hotel with Petco Park. If costs approach $24 million, as expected, it may be back to the drawing board. For sleep-deprived Downtown residents tired of long and loud train warning whistles, plans will be finalized in spring for a Quiet Zone program. It will take another 18 months to build.

Graham also moves her office in April as the agency relocates from the NBC Building out front of Horton Plaza to the Wells Fargo Building on B Street. “Our lease was up,” Graham says. “Frankly, my sense is we are a public agency, we don’t need to be in a prime location. We also are moving into the old San Diego Pension Board Space. It already has certain things we need like a large board room. It saved us money by being able to reuse that space.” CCDC’s information center will move to Horton Plaza’s second level, right above a Starbucks and the center’s ceremonial entrance off Broadway Circle.

As she starts her third year, the former strong mayor of West Palm Beach turned redevelopment consultant has no major concerns aside from limited funds. “Long term there is lots of stuff out there people want and they see CCDC as an open checkbook,” she says. “But we go out of business one day and we need to keep getting people to understand we can’t do and pay for everything. Limitations at the state level have become stricter in what we can pay for.”

Two of CCDC’s higher-profile initiatives will be finding a permanent site for what now is a winter homeless shelter — “We are trying to come up with a solution that takes folks off the street” — and advising the City Council on whether to proceed with proposals being crafted by two competing developers for a privately funded overhaul of the City Hall complex.

Even Downtown redevelopment’s original trophy project is on Graham’s plate this year.

“Horton Plaza which in many respects kicked off Downtown redevelopment, is (aging),” Graham says. “We are in the early stages of working with (the developers). The thing about redevelopment is you are never done. Even when you do certain things well, you don’t dust off your hands and walk away. You have to keep looking at them, tweaking them, paying attention to what is going on around them. They have cycles, like everything.” Even theaters that opened in 1924.