Final Thoughts from San Diego County

Two months ago, I traveled to San Diego County with a companion.  Our only goal was tourism.  But there’s no off-switch for the urbanism chip in my brain, so I collected and have already shared thoughts about a shipping container waffle shop in Carlsbad that might have application to Petaluma, the seaside district of San Clemente, and the wide residential streets of San Diego.  Today, I’ll empty my mental notebook with final thoughts about Carlsbad.

We visited Carlsbad because it’s where my parents were living when I was born.  Their home was on Elm Street, only a few short blocks from the downtown shopping district.  It makes me happy to think that I was brought first brought home to a house on the comfortably-named Elm Street, within a short walk of retail.  It’s a “Leave It to Beaver” moment for me.

As we learned during our trip, the home is long gone.  As my mother remembers its structural condition, the home was ready for demolition in 1953.  So I can’t mourn its loss.  However, I can bemoan what happened to its setting.   Much of the lot was claimed for the widening of Elm Street from two lanes to four lanes plus median.  The remainder is now covered by a gas station. 

There is something symbolically disturbing about having one’s first home converted to an extra-wide street and a gas station.  That history adds more meaning to my writing on urbanism.

Even worse, Elm Street has been renamed to Carlsbad Village Drive.  Note to City Councils everywhere: If you include “Village” in the name of a newly-widened four-lane street in the hope that your residents will still think of their community as a village, it’s too late.  The battle has already been lost.  And the street name looks silly.

The downtown district shopping remains active and prosperous, which was fine to see.  And having a working commuter rail station in the downtown area was also good.

But it’s ominous that downtown has expanded only slightly since 1953, when it served perhaps 3,000 people.  With Carlsbad now nearing 110,000 people, it’s obvious that most folks are shopping elsewhere, likely in drivable suburban retail stores.

But the real insight about San Diego County came one afternoon.  We took a detour to a historic park named after a Southern California singing star of the 1950s.  The drive took nearly twenty minutes, all of it on four-lane divided arterials.  Other than a woman walking to her car, I don’t think we saw a single pedestrian.

Instead, we saw street after street of recently-built single-family homes on large lots.  The only relief was a couple of golf courses, the loading docks of two pedestrian-unfriendly shopping centers, and a few barrancas that were too steep to be developed.

When I’m out and about in the North Bay, I often ponder how communities would respond if gas prices were to skyrocket to $10 per gallon or more.  There are neighborhoods for which adjustments would be difficult.  But in many places, people have possible walks to transit stops or retail opportunities.  Perhaps not walks which they currently make, but walks to which they could adjust.

When I ask the same question about the suburban sprawl of southern Carlsbad, I don’t have an answer.  I assume that bus routes could be added, but there is little infrastructure in place to support transit and the routes would be long, winding, and time-consuming, with many folks needing to take multiple buses.

I’m convinced that people find a way to believe what they need to believe.  Sometimes because it is convenient or saves the effort of looking for alternatives.  It’s not necessarily a bad thing.  Many people retain the religion in which they were raised or drink the brand of beer that their peer group drinks.  If they’re comfortable in those continuations, good for them.

But sometimes folks hold their beliefs because the alternative is unacceptable.  Northern San Diego County is known as a center of climate change denial.  When I look at the Carlsbad sprawl, the reason seems obvious.  If climate change is happening and lifestyle changes must be made, then living in Carlsbad will become far less comfortable.  And property values will fall because buyers wouldn’t want the new lifetstyle either.

We’ve built a world in which people must deny an overwhelming scientific consensus to protect their investments and to justify their lifestyle choices.  That’s both unfortunate and scary.

San Diego County is a lovely place, but it’s underlain with troubling realities.  I doubt I’ll soon visit again.

As always, your questions or comments will be appreciated.  Please comment below or email me.  And thanks for reading. - Dave Alden (davealden53@comcast.net)

A Shipping Container Pop-Up in Petaluma?

Pop-up retail businesses in urban settings and shipping containers for urban space are two growing trends.  Both, especially in combination, offer interesting possibilities for the North Bay.

Shipping containers are being increasingly used for retail and residential space.  Atlantic Cities writes about some of the applications.  In appropriate sites and with good site engineering, they can provide a quick and effective response to changing urban conditions.

Pop-up retail spaces, quickly installed stores often with a limited intended life, are frequently used to bridge the gap between e-commerce and brick-and-mortar stores.  Knowledge@Wharton offers a perspective on the philosophy behind pop-ups.  Atlantic Cities offers thoughts on the related concept of temporary cities.

Pop-ups can also be used to meet short-term social or neighborhood revitalization needs.  Several restaurateurs in Oklahoma City are setting up pop-up restaurants to feed the victims of the recent tornadoes and to raise relief funds.   And a string of pop-ups was recently used to kick-start a moribund commercial district in Oakland. 

The container and pop-up trends are separate and distinct.  But they can overlap in marvelous ways.  After devastating earthquakes struck Christchurch, New Zealand, Re:Start, a pop-up retail mall that made extensive use of containers was among the first businesses to begin serving the stricken town, restoring a sense of normalcy.  After a year, Re-Start remains in operation.

I found all of this interesting, but it didn’t seem pertinent to the North Bay.  Until I chanced upon a pop-up business in a shipping container and had my eyes opened.

It was in Carlsbad, a coastal community in northern San Diego County.  Carlsbad is largely comprised of vast ridgelines of stucco palaces, about which I’ll write another time.  But in the center of the car-centric sprawl is a downtown shopping district that somehow survives from another age.  And on a key downtown intersection is a pop-up waffle shop, Boxd, in a shipping container.

I stumbled across Boxd during recent travels.   My interest piqued, my traveling companion and I stopped for a mid-afternoon snack, a fresh waffle laden with peanut butter and strawberry preserves.  In exchange for the small purchase, I posed questions to the counter person.

The lot was owned for years by an elderly gentleman who didn’t have an intended use for it.  But he

 had a grudge against the city, so chose not to sell the lot to the city.  After his passing, the city was finally able to acquire the lot, but funds were too tight to create a new city park.

Instead, Boxd filled the void.  In exchange for a land lease, the waffle shop installed a container for a small restaurant, another container to serve as a downtown restroom, and enough tables and artificial turf to create an eating area.  With a few details such as old-style lamp posts, the site made an appealing addition to downtown.

According to the counter person, there was no significant obstruction from the brick-and-mortar stores in downtown.  Nor was the City building department a major hurdle, despite the unusual structure.  However, when I first spotted the business on the evening before my snack, an employee was on the roof installing a vent despite the business having been open almost a year.  So there seemed to be a least a few issues with shipping container approach.

The counter person didn’t know the term of the City lease.  However, I can see a use like Boxd being a land-banking operation.  It would allow a short-term productive and aesthetic use of a piece of property until economics can justify brick-and-mortar.

So, can Boxd provide a model for the North Bay?  My thoughts went immediately to the Petaluma Station Area.

As the Station Area plan is implemented, two potentially contradictory goals must be met.   First, multiple buildings must be constructed, requiring sequential staging throughout the Station Area.  Second, the rail passengers must be made to feel comfortable so their daily patterns become engrained.

It seems that a containerized pop-up coffee stand could help achieve the latter goal without getting in the way of the former.  The business could be a container or two that are moved to new locations in the Station Area as construction progresses and as the access routes of the train passengers evolve.

Perhaps the initial site for the containers would be close to the SMART station.  But as the initial buildings near construction, which would hopefully happen soon, the containers could be moved closer to D Street, a route by which many passengers will approach the station.  Later, as the length of Transverse Street nearest to the station is completed, perhaps another location for the containers can be found adjoining that alignment.

At this time, it’s a premature idea, but I think there’s worth in it.

Back to Boxd.  You may be wondering about my thoughts on the waffle.  It was fine, but I was surprised at how runny peanut butter becomes when enclosed in a fresh-from-the-griddle waffle.  The flavors were excellent, but the messiness factor was high.  If I again find myself in Carlsbad, I’d probably be more tempted by the pulled pork and slaw waffle.

As always, your questions or comments will be appreciated.  Please comment below or email me.  And thanks for reading. - Dave Alden (davealden53@comcast.net)