Orchids, Onions Back to Spicy Format

SAN DIEGO —  Before this year’s Orchids and Onions, the “People’s Choice” of San Diego design awards programs, the big question was not which projects would be honored, but whether the event would even survive in worthwhile form.

Started in 1974 by the San Diego chapter of the American Planning Assn., which was subsequently joined by assorted professional design organizations, the program had lost its identity in recent years.

Originally, it was intended as a light-hearted design-awareness stunt that would use humor to get the public interested in design.

By last year, though, nothing seemed right. The venue (Copley Symphony Hall) was too stuffy and half empty, the host (political cartoonist and stand-up comic Steve Kelley) hogged the spotlight, and the winners of Onions spewed venom at the organizers, instead of hurling back handfuls of humor.

What a difference a year makes.

Friday night, a crowd of 750 inside the Nautilus Pavilion at Sea World experienced the event’s dramatic comeback. This year’s edition combined meaningful winners, insightful jury comments, a genuinely funny host (San Diego Union columnist Michael Grant), a dramatic venue (one of the few fabric-roofed structures on the West Coast) and award recipients who arrived armed with the proper tongue-in-cheek attitude.

This year’s Orchids and Onions borrowed its theme, “There’s No Place Like Home,” from “The Wizard of Oz.”

Grant loosened up the crowd with a tall tale about a San Diego banker changed into a talking frog. Offered a chance to change him back with a kiss, a beautiful princess declined.

In these times of failed banks, she reasoned, “A talking frog’s worth more than a San Diego banker.”

Before the event, its organizers phoned several winners to suggest that they join in this slapstick spirit by donning costumes or writing humorous acceptance poems.

Although some winners didn’t even bother to show up--their awards were accepted by the Cowardly Lion--many heeded this advice.

Developer Sandy Shapery turned up as the Wizard of Oz, with a cast of costumed Oz characters in tow, to accept an Onion for the interior of the Emerald Shapery Center, his downtown mixed-use high-rise.

In addition to renewed spirit, this year’s event provided a bumper crop of Orchids and Onions.

Among the Onions were:

* La Mancha Commercial Center on Voltaire Street in Point Loma, which served as a scapegoat for dozens of similar commercial strips in San Diego County, characterized by clashing forms, colors and materials--in this case a blue-trimmed mansard roof hanging like architectural doom over stucco walls.

* Miramar College’s new Instructional Building, a heartless pile of blue glass, Gargantuan concrete fins and giant steel tubes.

* La Mesa Village Plaza, the mixed-use anchor of La Mesa’s downtown redevelopment effort. With edges consisting of parking lots instead of busy retail frontage, the project fails to knit with the neighboring commercial center of the village.

* The Metropolitan Transit Development Board’s proposal to elevate the San Diego Trolley above the Harborview district north of downtown, which includes Little Italy. This would be a real detriment to this future mixed residential-commercial zone, obstructing bay views and cluttering these potentially attractive urban neighborhoods.

* The Jackson Drive extension through Mission Trails Regional Park in East County, which will be an unquestionable blight on the natural landscape.

* Sunbow, another symbolic scapegoat, a tract-housing development in Chula Vista that took the heat for many others like it in San Diego County, sprawling mercilessly along the tops of once-pristine rolling foothills.

* Developer Tom Hom’s gaudy pink Peachtree Inn downtown, designed by architect Gil Ontai.

Gracefully accepting his Onion, Hom reminisced about a boyhood spent on the family onion farm in Mission Valley, where the stadium now stands.

“Regardless of how you slice an onion, it still brings tears to your eyes,” he joked.

In a year when the economy has slowed the production of new projects, the jury seemed harder pressed than usual to come up with breathtaking Orchid winners, but this year’s bunch was fairly fragrant nonetheless:

* Developers Chris Mortenson, Bud Fischer and Shawn Schraeger, and architect Rob Quigley plucked an Orchid for the J Street Inn, the second of their downtown single-room-occupancy hotels.

Despite a modest budget, this 221-room residence hotel includes interior courtyards that hold inventive public art--a giant trough of trickling water provides soothing sounds and a mysterious concrete beam protrudes from underground, tethered to the building by steel cables.

* Pump Station No. 2 on Harbor Drive, designed by Keniston & Mosher Architects, is an extremely inviting public-utility building. The jury even noted the building’s many energy-saving features, which were not mentioned when the project picked up a Citation of Recognition from the San Diego chapter of the American Institute of Architects last June.

* New access steps for the beach known as Swami’s in Encinitas, next to the Self Realization Fellowship grounds. Designed by landscape architect Glen Schmidt and his associates at Schmidt Design Group, these solid but graceful steps of wood, concrete and steel make a dramatic descent to this popular surfing beach.

* The Escondido Transit Center, designed by engineers from Pountney & Associates and Quigley, a series of outdoor “rooms,” defined by open tilt-up concrete pavilions, wooden trellises and a variety of shading devices--the perfect solution for Escondido’s scorching climate.

* The Escondido “Community” sculpture by Escondido artist Jeff Lindeneau. Crafted of cast bronze, laminated copper tiles and slabs of black granite, this homage to community spirit depicts several individuals laboring together. The overall impression of the cutout shapes is literal enough to satisfy conservatives but loose and abstract enough to entice more adventurous art lovers.

* The Egyptian Court Apartments on Park Boulevard, whose owner has restored the decorative, Deco-era detail that was jackhammered away two years ago.

* The restored Giant Dipper roller coaster at Belmont Park in Mission Beach, the culmination of years of preservation wars spearheaded by the Save the Coaster Committee. During its first year, the coaster, which reopened in August of 1990, served more than 1 million visitors.

* Gorilla Tropics donor plaques, San Diego Zoo, which prove that well-designed signs can make a big difference.

* Poway’s broad “biological assessment,” which ascertained which of the city’s natural assets are worth protecting--before a developer could even lobby the city to build over them.

Other less dramatic Orchid winners included the Wave condominiums in Del Mar, distinguished by wave-like roof forms and compact, inviting balconies, and Offisys Executive Suites, for office interiors distinguished by excellent lighting and sleek, no-frills design.

Four projects that could serve as “seeds” for sound future design were singled out: San Diego’s Public Art Master Plan; the Genesis Square Shopping Center in Chula Vista, with its progressive but tasteful design; architect Ted Smith’s new residential building at 1515 9th Ave. on Cortez Hill downtown, a fresh example of affordable housing; and some funny cherub-like sculptures on Point Loma that the Port of San Diego is tolerating, despite its stodgy reputation when it comes to public art.

Finally, the jury acknowledged its mixed emotions about the Emerald Shapery Center, which cuts a striking profile on the downtown skyline but has a gaudy, glitzy interior straight out of Las Vegas.

The project received both an Onion for its interior and a special “Wizard of Odds” award for “charisma and audacity.”

Once all the Orchids and Onions had been planted with their rightful owners, the program and local design both appeared headed in a good direction.

The selections were made by prominent design professionals who chose from among 400 nominees submitted by the general public. By accepting the criticism of their Onions with a sense of humor, Shapery and others transformed them into sharp seasonings for change instead of bitter roots to choke on.