Onion When Petco Park opened in 2004 it featured the “Park at the Park”, a public park space that could be used by the Padres for low cost ballgame seating and occasional, small scale music from Mariachis and the like. Today, this public space has been used for loud concerts on a regular basis usurping the public nature of the space. A permanent stage was built, taking up public park land for private benefit. The ‘public’ areas of the park are cordoned off from the public for days not hours as the original agreement stipulated. A stage facing the adjacent residential buildings blasts sound far in excess of the city noise ordinance levels. The “Park at the Park” is now the “Private Concerts at the Park”. The Padres have the right to hold concerts in this space, but it is a sad state when some of the limited precious downtown public park land is manipulated out of reach so often and so loudly. The Padres used to be good neighbors, now they take some of your property and are the obnoxious party animals that make you call the police to turn down the noise.
Address:
100 Park Boulevard / on J Street
Project Owner/Developer:
The San Diego Padres
Contact Name/Email:
Unknown
Project Architect/Designer:
Unknown
The transformation of the City’s public “Park at the Park” into the corporate-branded “Gallagher Square” (and “Sycuan Stage”) tells the tale. Since 2019, the space (one hesitates to even call it a “park” any longer) has been used for concerts blasting up to 100 decibels for hours at a time. [The City’s own maximum for public parks is 65 decibels.] The gates are increasingly closed so that those of us who like to take picnics, children, and pets into our neighborhood green space are unable to do so. The Padres purport to be community-minded, but their actions show that profit is what really matters to them.
The 1999 FSEIR for the Ballpark Project completed a noise analysis for rock concerts to be held inside the Ballpark Stadium. Based upon the assumption that the concert stage would be located inside the stadium and that sound from concerts would be directed south into the stands, the FSEIR required all rock concerts to set a maximum decibel level of 95. In 2019 the City and Padres built the new Sycuan Stage with only a ministerial permit. No sound study for this stage, which is outside the stadium, less than 400 feet from a residential neighborhood, and which faces north into that residential stadium, was required or conducted: instead the City and Padres relied only on the 1999 noise study that reviewed impacts only if the stage was inside the stadium, facing south. Our neighborhood no longer has a public park, but concerts blast at 95 decibels into residential homes for hours at a time, harming the health, hearing and welfare of San Diego citizens, while the City and the Padres pocket millions in private concert revenue.
Adding insult to injury: in addition to flouting the noise ordinances, the Padres, LP is making millions on the concerts INSIDE the public park OUTSIDE the stadium, while the taxpayers and the surrounding condo owners contribute to the maintenance of the often closed park, and the taxpayers pay for extra security and cleanup outside the concert venue (ada the City Park). Concerts should continue to be held inside the stadium as they have been in the past- that would eliminate much of the unnecessary hardship on the East Village neighborhood and extra cost to the City. It would also allow the grass and trees in this City park to remain.