Balboa Park: A Place for Everyone

I’ve spent the better part of the last six weeks embroiled in the controversy over paid parking in Balboa Park. It has been frustrating, disappointing, and, I must admit, somewhat strange. I’ve lived most of my life on the East Coast. From New York, to Philadelphia, to Boston, and DC, paid parking is the norm. In fact, in some places it felt like you had to pay just for the privilege of looking for parking.

So, I have to ask myself, why do I find the idea of charging for parking in Balboa Park deeply upsetting?

The answer, it turns out, lies in Balboa Park itself.

On paper, Balboa Park is a collection of gardens, trails, museums, theaters, and public spaces. This combination alone makes Balboa Park a unique and distinctively San Diego experience, but it is also something more.

Balboa Park is a place of first glances, first dates, first chapters. It’s the place you proposed, and they accepted. It’s where you watched your daughter pose in her quinceañera dress and then, a few years later, walk to receive her diploma. It’s a place of birthdays, anniversaries, retirement parties, and millions of memories. It’s a place where artists find their muse, where nature lovers connect with their city, and where future scientists and astronauts first discover their calling. Balboa Park is more than a unique and special place; it is a powerful one.

The park is often called the “Crown Jewel of San Diego.” I must admit I’ve always disliked that description. Crown jewels belong to royalty, are kept behind glass, and brought out only to dazzle. That is not Balboa Park. No, Balboa Park is not San Diego’s crown jewel; it is our beating heart. It is the place where we mix, mingle, exchange, and become the uniquely connected community that is San Diego.

A few years ago, 5,000 people from across the county converged outside our building to witness a solar eclipse. As I made my way through the crowd, I had conversations with biotech founders, truck drivers, farmers, students, and caretakers. I met people of every political, social, and cultural background from every corner of the county, right outside our doors.

They could have been at home watching the eclipse from their front porches, or even streamed it on their phones, and yet they traveled here to Balboa Park to experience it together with 4,999 strangers. There they stood, shoulder to shoulder, sharing eclipse glasses, personal stories, and wonder.

That doesn’t happen because it is just a park, or a cultural district, or a “crown jewel.” It happens because Balboa Park is this city’s heart, a heart that only beats when everyone has uninhibited access to it.

We are at a time where so many forces are pushing us into smaller and smaller circles, isolating us in our social media bubbles, and teaching us to fear the stranger next door. Now, more than ever, we need places that have the power to bring strangers together and remember that they belong to the same community.

That power is what’s at stake in the parking debate.

Anything that serves to separate us, particularly by income, geography, or circumstance, is upsetting. But policies that restrict, even unintentionally, who can take part in the park run against its very spirit.

I've lived in cities where you pay to park everywhere. I understand the logic. I also recognize that the city faces very real budget pressures that I won't dare to minimize.

But if I have learned anything from working in Balboa Park, it is that a place can belong to everyone, and this one does. We can’t let a budget line-item draw boundaries in that belonging. We must work together to ensure that the price of admission to San Diego’s beating heart is never anything more than simply showing up.

Our mission at the Fleet Science Center is to realize a San Diego where everyone is connected to the power of science. It is only right that our home is in Balboa Park, the place where everyone in San Diego can come to connect with arts, science, culture, and most of all, each other. We will fight to preserve that connection, and we hope you will too.