Save Our Heritage Organisation v. City of San Diego

Balboa Park, a large urban park created on pueblo lands almost 150 years ago (Stats. 1870, ch. 42, § 1, p. 49), includes within its confines and as its central core the buildings and plazas designed and constructed for the 1915 Panama-California Exposition and the adjoining buildings and improvements subsequently constructed for the 1935 California Pacific International Exposition (the Complex). When visitors approach from the west to enter the Complex, they traverse a canyon via the Cabrillo Bridge (the Bridge), a significant part of the original 1915 design and construction. The Bridge and the Complex were declared a National Historic Landmark and a National Historic Landmark District nearly 40 years ago. Proposed alterations to the Bridge, an integral element of a revitalization project (the Project) spearheaded by The Plaza de Panama Committee (Committee) but opposed by the Save Our Heritage Organisation (SOHO), have become the focal point of the present appeal.

The Project seeks to eliminate vehicles from the plazas within the Complex, and to return the plazas to purely pedestrian zones, simultaneously preserving (for the convenience of those vehicles coming to…