DAVID L. CODDON • LAST WORD
North Park gets a boost, and maybe a new booster

May 27, 2004

Are bigger, brighter days ahead for North Park?

Could be.

Before "Ray at Night," the art and music block parties held the first Saturday night of each month on Ray Street (between University and North Park Way), the most time I spent in "downtown" North Park was driving through it on the way to somewhere else.

It hadn't always been that way. I used to regularly go hear jazz at the International Blend coffeehouse on 30th Street. I saw my share of movies at the North Park Theater on University.

But North Park deteriorated into a "transitional neighborhood," an economic (or real estate) euphemism for "some funky businesses amid a load of dumpy businesses."

"Ray at Night" brought me back.

Now, with the renovation of the North Park Theater moving steadily forward, I'm optimistic about getting to know the neighborhood again.

Groundbreaking for the final phase of the 1928 building's restoration was held last week, and the new theater, whose managing tenant will be Lyric Opera San Diego, is scheduled to open next year. It doesn't require a cheerleader for North Park redevelopment – and I'm not claiming to be one of those, necessarily – to see that the working return of that theater would be a major boon to the area.

Already, pockets of North Park's business corridor benefit from the personality and enterprise of places on University like Claire de Lune – and, farther west, on El Cajon Boulevard, the Chicken Pie Shop, Live Wire and the long-standing Red Fox Room.

The movie theater building, however, is right in the dead center of North Park, and its revitalization could make it a hub for positive change. Nothing over the top, a la Little Italy – just safe and entertaining diversion for residents and visitors alike.

Naysayers will warn of everything from creeping gentrification and rent hikes to the demise of the North Park Water Tower. Would those same naysayers have preferred that the North Park Theater be torn down to make room for a strip mall?

That's what every neighborhood needs, of course, another dry cleaner-slash-doughnut-shop-slash-convenience-store.

Even a water tower has more class than that.

 David L. Coddon: (619) 293-1348; david.coddon@uniontrib.com

Copyright 2004 Union-Tribune Publishing Co.