By Delle Willett
After years of planning, the City of San Diego is doing a $6.05 million overhaul of the Children’s Park, giving residents and nearby workers an invitation to come out and play.
Children’s Park was originally designed by internationally renowned landscape architect Peter Walker. Completed in August 1996 in time for the Republican National Convention at a cost of $2.8 million, the park was originally called “Civic Pond,” and was later changed to “Children’s Park.”
Covering two acres in San Diego’s urban fabric, this “passive” park is located between Front and First Streets on the south side of Island Avenue, with little to offer and little to do, and mostly frequented by downtown’s transient population.
In 2016, the city’s then-Downtown development agency, Civic San Diego, selected landscape architects Schmidt Design Group (SDG) to craft a new Master Plan for the park to remedy its perceived flaws. The plan was unanimously approved by the city’s Parks and Recreation Board in 2017.
The scope of the effort included robust community engagement with several public workshops where residents had the opportunity to express their ideas and desires for the park renovation. Much of the feedback received directly informed the final composition of the new reimagined master plan for the site.
According to SDG landscape architect and principal, JT Barr, “The design team was committed to activating the park, increasing usability and safety while honoring its iconic attributes — the urban forest and Civic Pond — which remain significant features in the new open-space vision.”
In 2018, Spurlock Landscape Architects was selected to prepare construction documents, permitting, and to perform construction observation of the park.
