San Diego's lively new-and-old downtown

Long a city of sunshine and suburbs, SanDiego is enjoying a change of heart. For years its downtown has been considered a wasteland--a place where only the train stopped and sailors played. But no longer.

There's the new: new theaters, galleries,restaurants, and a four-block-square, pastel-painted shopping center whose architecture makes visitors stop and take note. There's also the historic: a downtown newly revived, the Gaslamp Quarter's Victorians, the elegant U.S. Grant Hotel, 1920s office buildings latticed with the scaffolding of renovation. The eras come together to create a redefined urban center for sprawling San Diego, offering many new reasons to go downtown.

We've chosen more than 40 of those reasons--walking tours, restaurants, bank lobbies, and more--all within a 15-minute walk of Horton Plaza park (downtown's center for 120 years). These finds are keyed to our map on page 70.

If you visit Horton Plaza shopping center,try lunch, too, in the historic district. If you come to the waterfront, check out G Street's galleries or take a walking tour. You can spend a weekend--splurging on rooms at the Grant and tickets to the theater--or simply drop in for the day, rent bikes, and explore.

Downtown can also be a jumping-offpoint for San Diego's other attractions, such as Balboa Park, Old Town, or Sea World. At the new Transit Store (8 on map), you can get bus schedules and information. To get to Tijuana, take the red San Diego Trolley, which runs frequently from the Santa Fe train depot (2).

From Alonzo Horton to Horton Plaza

In 1867, when Alonzo Horton arrivedfrom Wisconsin, San Diego was a scrabble of adobe buildings in Old Town. Impulsively, Horton bought 960 acres to the south, then gave some away to those who'd build immediately. He laid out streets and a small park, Horton Plaza (9), whose formal neatness and fountain by architect Irving Gill have always been the city's center. Banks and stores came steadily after 1880, peaking in the 1920s.

With the coming of World War II, theNavy became an increasingly visible presence downtown. While respectable businesses, following a national trend, began to move to the suburbs, tattoo shops and burlesque houses catering to sailors kept the area alive--but not attractive to developers. The Navy, as one architect puts it, kept the area in mothballs.

This began turning around when, in 1976,then-mayor Pete Wilson fought for a "Centre City' plan to revitalize the downtown. He and other civic leaders felt that the city's far-flung communities needed a center. The Santa Fe depot was restored, and a feisty group of citizens succeeded in making the Gaslamp Quarter a historical district in 1980. Though the area is still redolent of its past, the city's redevelopment agency has worked to bring in condominiums, offices, and Horton Plaza.

The weekend it opened in August 1985,Horton Plaza (21) drew a crowd of 250,000 people enticed by promises of its being not just another mall. Though the crowds have thinned, the center fills on weekends.

What's coaxing people away from theirneighborhood malls to a downtown they've not visited in years? Architect Jon Jerde, also the designer for the 1984 Olympic Games, capitalized on San Diego's sunshine by opening the center to the sky. He also seized on the fact that this was to be not a suburban mall, but an urban one; he gave the center a "street,' edged by arcades of stores rising four levels, that curves through the mall and ends either way in department stores.

It's more intricate than it may sound. Atstreet level, it's virtually hidden from the city, with indirect entrances. Stairways, ramps, and escalators crisscross overhead to link the levels. Architctural styles collide: the Palazzo looks vaguely Italian; a tower at one end of the plaza echoes the landmark Balboa Theatre at the other.

This electic mix is painted turquoise,salmon, and yellow and is highlighted with a circus of banners, neon signs, and arches. There is much to engage the senses: eye-catching banners, displays, and jugglers; musicians; a cinnamon roll store, designed by a local architect, jetting its delicious aromas through a giant funnel onto passersby. Visitors stroll, comment, stop to enjoy views framed by arches. It's been said that the shopping mall is the new piazza; at Horton Plaza it's become, in Jerde's words, urban theater.

A note on parking: 3 hours are free behindthe center; after that, it's $1 an hour. The parking levels are marked with signs that can be confusing. To avoid losing track of your car, remember which parking-area exit and mall entrance you've used.

New theaters, grande-dame hotels

While Horton Plaza has sparked downtown'scommercial life, an increasing concentration on the arts is spurring its cultural life. Theater, dance, and opera are thriving. Although financial problems caused this year's season to be canceled, the San Diego Symphony opened in 1985 with much promise in an elegantly restored movie house; for details on future performances, call (619) 699-4200.