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About Coronado
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Coronado, also known as Coronado Island, is an affluent resort city located in San Diego County, California, 5.2 miles from downtown San Diego. Its population was 24,697 at the 2010 census, up from 24,100 at the 2000 census. U.S. News and World Report lists Coronado as one of the most expensive places to reside in the United States. Coronado lies on a peninsula connected to the mainland by a 10-mile isthmus called the Silver Strand (locally, The Strand.) Locals sometimes call Coronado The Island or Coronado Island, and they denote the core living and business area as The Village. In 2011, Stephen Leatherman (Dr. Beach) ranked Coronado Beach as the second best beach in the United States.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coronado,_California
Coronado is Spanish for "the crowned one," and thus it is nicknamed The Crown City. There have been three ships of the United States Navy named after the city, including USS Coronado (LCS-4).
Orange Avenue's Pedestrian-Scale Atmosphere
Coronado's Orange Avenue serves this Pacific Coast city in a similar fashion to the role 3rd Street (SR A1A) plays in the Jacksonville Beaches. Similar to 3rd Street, this commercial spine is also four lanes with a median and parallel parking. However, the major difference comes in the form of zoning. Along Orange Avenue, buildings are designed to come to the street edge as opposed to being separated from the street with surface parking lots. This little touch creates a linear spine of walkable urbanity in this city of 26,000 residents.
Orange Avenue (State Highway 75) terminates into a park overlooking the San Diego Bay and downtown San Diego.
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Downtown Coronado's Orange Ave is a village-like, slow-paced, area with mainly local, mom-and-pop stores, just a few blocks from Coronado City Beach. Downtown Coronado runs along Orange Ave on the west side of Coronado. The city discourages chain stores. Many of the buildings are old and quaint, adding to the village atmosphere. At night, store roofs light up with white rooftop lights. Orange Ave is great for strolling and enjoying the sights.Driving can get congested at times along the narrow, windy road. At the south end of the shopping district is the Del Coronado Hotel, and just beyond that, The Silver Strand.http://www.sandiegocoastlife.com/attractions/san-diego-coast/shopping-orange-ave-district.html
Many boutique stores, jewelry stores, and so forth, cater to visitors with upscale merchandise, while "regular" stores and offices round out the shopping district. Downtown also has a good selection of restaurants.
Downtown has a beautiful, grassy median. Differently themed gardens are located in different areas of the median. Each garden is funded by private donors and the design is approved by MainStreet’s Design Committee and the City Council.
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Coronado is home to the famous Hotel del Coronado, built in 1888 and long considered one of the world's top resorts. It is listed as a National Historic Landmark and appeared in films such as Some Like It Hot and The Stunt Man. It was the setting of the Dashboard Confessional song Stolen. The historic hotel has had many notable American guests, including Charles Lindbergh, Thomas Edison, Babe Ruth, Jack Dempsey, Willie Mays, Magic Johnson, and Muhammad Ali. Many presidents have also visited, including William Howard Taft, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton, and George H.W. Bush.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coronado,_California
"The Del" was supposedly also the inspiration for the Emerald City in The Wizard of Oz. (However, other sources say Oz was inspired by the "White City" of the Chicago World's Fair of 1893.) Author L. Frank Baum would have been able to see the hotel from his front porch overlooking Star Park. Baum designed the crown chandeliers in the hotel's dining room. Because of the reported association with Oz, Coronado is often associated with the color green and is sometimes referred to as "The Emerald City". The colors of Coronado High are green and white; the Coronado city flag is a tricolor of green-white-green with a crown in the middle; and a local surf/skate shop is named Emerald City. The hotel is said to be haunted, with room 3372 being visited by the ghost of Kate Morgan.
A Lesson For Jacksonville
3rd Street in Jacksonville Beach.
San Diego County's Orange Avenue and Duval's 3rd Street (A1A) serve the same role for their communities. However, one is pedestrian-scaled and the other is designed for automobiles. Needless to say, the pedestrian-friendly corridor has become a gathering place for all modes of mobility while the automobile-oriented highway severs the communities it serves. The lesson for Jacksonville's beaches is a simple one. Think pedestrian-scale when it comes to deciding land use policies and accommodating the automobile into the urban landscape.
3rd Street in Jacksonville Beach.
Article by Ennis Davis.
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ben says
October 19, 2011, 07:00:05 AMI'm not saying I even like it (it kinda looks sterile!), but sheesh, why do Californian cities always look so damn clean/cookie-cutter/put together??? I know that's probably a huge positive for most people, but it sort of leaves me asking, "where's the flavor?"
thelakelander
October 19, 2011, 08:47:41 AMI've only been to Southern California but I found it to have a lot of flavor. If a place like Coronado or Santa Monica is to pristine, it also has communities like Venice Beach....
The one common thing they all had were that they were quite pedestrian friendly, full of life and human scale activity....
Captain Zissou
October 19, 2011, 09:14:11 AMWhat is the length of Orange avenue compared to 3rd Street. We could definitely do a better job of making the street pedestrian scaled, but from 16th South to Atlantic Beach is a long way. I'd love to see a streetcar down the middle of 3rd with more infill from 16th South to 14th North and the area near the Beaches Town Center.
Tacachale
October 19, 2011, 09:32:29 AMWe'll have to do something about 3rd street eventually. As more and more people are walking and biking in an area bisected by a large arterial, 3rd Street is getting dangerous.
tufsu1
October 19, 2011, 09:45:32 AMOrange Avenue is about 1 mile in length from the circle down near the hotel to the park overlooking the bay
In Jax. beach terms, that would cover the area from around 7th Ave. North to 7th Ave. South
thelakelander
October 19, 2011, 09:58:49 AM3rd Street from 16th Street South to Atlantic Beach is 3.5 miles. Orange Avenue from 1st Street to Pomona Avenue is 1.5 miles. South of Pomona, the name changes to Silver Strand Blvd and stretches another +7 miles before leaving Coronado's city limits. However, that stretch is suburban (although it does have a parallel multiuse path for cyclist and pedestrians).
Captain Zissou
October 19, 2011, 10:26:12 AMThis article prompted me to explore San Diego on google maps. How is it that San Diego can afford to have so many museums and cultural attractions. Balboa park has 15+ large museums, theatres, concert halls...etc. There's also point loma, the aircraft carrier, and dozens of other venues. How is this possible??
stephendare
October 19, 2011, 10:28:28 AMThey arent trying to maintain the lowest possible taxation rate of any city or municipality in the United Sates, no matter what it costs to their quality of life in order to attract companies that still havent flocked to Jacksonville after 60 years of tempting them with our "low taxes' hanky.
thelakelander
October 19, 2011, 10:36:49 AMSpeaking of Balboa Park, that place is beautiful. I spent a whole day exploring the various attractions in it, wondering what would it take to establish a similar type recreational open space atmosphere with the chain of parks lining Hogans Creek. That's another article I'll probably do at some point.
thelakelander
October 19, 2011, 10:43:37 AMHere are a few pics of Balboa Park:
fsujax
October 19, 2011, 10:49:15 AMvery nice pictures. they have a will to do things like that, where as here we just want to continue to build things like SJTC, and strip malls.
Keith-N-Jax
October 19, 2011, 05:58:52 PMLooks pretty nice,love those parks and palms. See those gas prices ugh?
fieldafm
October 19, 2011, 07:04:22 PMI'll have to respectfully disagree. Coronado is pretty much a mirror image to Sarasota/Siesta Key. Neither communities have ad valorum or sales tax rates that are any higher than their neighboring communities... however each community places a high value on quality of life issues. While Jaksonville Beach still has room for improvement, clearly over the past 20 years they have started to make these same investments in themselves given their limited resources and downtown Jacksonville Beach has reaped the benefits of this investment(believe they are not perfect, but clearly better than the dump it was when I was a kid). It's not always about how much money you have, but how you chose to allocate your resources.
fieldafm
October 19, 2011, 07:05:48 PMYou really need to take a week-long vacation to San Diego. Stay away from Tijuana though
vicupstate
October 19, 2011, 07:14:32 PMThe 'neighboring' community in this case is San Diego. San Diego and California in general have high taxes compared to just about any state, and certainly compared to FL. So saying Cornado has the same taxes as it's neighbors is not indicative of low taxes overall.
Also, the tax RATES don't have to be high, if the PROPERTY VALUES are already higher than average.
Certainly how efficiently you allocate resources is important, but you still have to pay for quality.
vicupstate
October 19, 2011, 07:17:41 PMIt's because they took out all the benches and chess tables.
fieldafm
October 19, 2011, 07:35:09 PMYou don't need to have all the money in the world to create a vibrant urban community. The communities that value these things choose to allocate their resources in such a way to encourage this goal.
You missed the point, but to counter your assertion Sarasota County is certainly not lacking in property value compared to Coronado/San Diego County. You also heavily discount Prop 13 and its affects on property tax revenue in California.
Have you been to either communities? They are both former resort towns that place a high emphasis on quality of life, the art community and pedestrian-scaled commercial districts. With all due respect, the comparison is actually pretty spot on.
vicupstate
October 19, 2011, 09:34:39 PMI've been to both places. You can't compare a CA city to a FL city, as there are too many variables involved. The services provided and paid for by the state versus localities, differs greatly from one state to another.
I seriously doubt Corondo, or nearly any CA city of substance has a low tax rate compared to the US average, or the FL average. Does Sarasota County have low taxes by Florida standards? If they do, it is most likely due to higher property values versus the state average.
Revenues lost to Proposition 13 were largely replaced by state appropriations. Fidelity left CA for FL because of lower taxes.
Allocation of resources and efficiency DO matter, but to have 15 museums in a gigantic park (Balboa) doesn't happen on the cheap.
dougsandiego
October 19, 2011, 11:20:16 PMI have to ask who does the planning in Jacksonville? Is it handed down from "on high". or are citizen groups responsible for creating the plans for their neighbourhoods? It is dispiriting to read the many laments and disappointments that accompany almost all the excellent articles on this great website. There are obviously many citizens in Jacksonville who care and love their city. To them I say: Organize and take back your hometown!
Since San Diego is cited several times on this site, I hope you will indulge me a few comments that may help you understand why San Diego is the way it is to-day?
Good community form does not occur because a region has wealth or spends lavishly. In California, San Diego is considered a cheapskate region. I believe that healthy communities have to have an activist citizenry.
Coronado to-day is a wealthy town, but it, along with much of San Diego, was in decline in the 1970's and early 1980's. At that time, there was a sort of revolution in our region. Citizens in the City of San Diego went to court and won the right to hold district elections because they were not happy with the declining quality of life in their neighbourhoods. Overnight, the old Republican establishment and their developer cronies were thrown out, and citizen planning came to the fore. There are still Republicans in government, but not so many, and they are "San Diego" Republicans, the kind who like open space, support public transportation etc.
At the same time, large areas of coastal and inland North County voted to form independent towns because the County of San Diego had plans to build a grid of Orange County (California) style super streets and massive office and apartment complexes that would overwhelm long established towns. When the towns formed, the County of San Diego lost great amounts of tax revenue and was stymied in its plans.
Redevelopment was being pursued in Centre City San Diego, and the San Diego trolley was conceived and built after authorizing legislation sponsored by a San Diego State Senator was passed. Old, long stable neighbourhoods surrounding the downtown began to flourish. Many battles were fought with developers for many years, but the residents won. I was part of it, and I am proud of it, but there is always more to do. The work never ends.
All these things, along with the birth of community and regional planning groups throughout the county occurred over the course of a few years because people were afraid of losing their quality of life. It is because of this commonly held concern and relative unity of purpose that we are seeing the rebirth of the region.
There is now a region wide effort underway on-line to envision the region we want to become over the next 50-100 years. It is neither being orchestrated nor funded by the government. The current $5 million budget has come from a concerned citizen. The effort can be accessed at: OurGreaterSanDiego.org. It is an interesting project.
Good luck Jacksonville!
vicupstate
October 20, 2011, 07:52:09 AM^^ I wonder if the 'old republican establishment and their developer cronies' in San Diego moved carte blanche to Jacksonville after losing control there?
tufsu1
October 20, 2011, 08:23:20 AManother thing San Diego has recently done....merged their Planning Department into another agency...Jacksonville may be on the same path.
fieldafm
October 20, 2011, 08:24:23 AMThanks for your insight Doug, exactly what I was saying... but obviously much more eloquently and from a resident's point of view.