Architects criticize Navy-Broadway plan

Why is the design for San Diego’s downtown Navy-Broadway complex at the waterfront generating so much heat and Attention? After all, it’s just 15 acres in a downtown already defined by office buildings, condos, shops and other amenities common to flourishing urban centers. 

The design is pretty well set by now by developer Doug Manchester and it does include 2.9 million square feet of office, hotel and retail space, including four high-rise towers, a 13-story mixed-use structure, a 60-foot-wide promenade and four acres of open space. The development agreement requires that the project include a top-quality office building for the navy’s regional headquarters. A Navy spokesman says they want to activate the waterfront with world-class hotels and retail, tear down the walled-off waterfront and open the front porch to the public. Is that what this design would do? Host Gloria Penner talks to two critics of the Manchester plan. 

Guests

• Mike Stepner, consultant, former City of San Diego architect and former dean of the New School of Architecture
• Mark Steel, architect on a panel of design experts that reviewed the Manchester plan last week.