Balboa Park may be getting its own fundraising team. The creation of a non-profit organization to help manage the park is one step closer to reality.
The non-profit group would be tasked with raising money for the deteriorating park. For the past seven months, a task force has been studying how the non-profit should be run. Task force chair Vicki Granowitz told the San Diego City Council that the park has $250 million in deferred maintenance and the city doesn’t have the capacity to take care of the backlog.
“The park needs an entity with the depth and clear leadership to raise larger sums than are currently being raised, and that brings the public and park stakeholders into meaningful collaborations,” she said.
The task force and the city will now create a memorandum of understanding that will lay out how the non-profit would operate. The City Council will then vote on the issue.
St. Louis, Denver and San Francisco are among the cities that use similar non-profits to manage their large urban parks.
