A ribbon-cutting ceremony was held Wednesday for the San Diego State University Mission Valley River Park.
“It’s an incredible joy," Glen Schmidt, the park designer with Schmidt Design Group, said. "You can just close your eyes. You can hear it now — the children squealing with delight."
The newly-opened park sits next to Snapdragon Stadium and is the latest addition to SDSU's Mission Valley development. The trolley line runs above the park, offering the playground a ribbon of shade.
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“For the first few times, when it went overhead, they were freaking out, 'Ah, train,'" said Victor Tocco, who brought his two kids and four friends to enjoy all the park has to offer. “My enjoyment comes from watching them have fun."
Schmidt's company partnered with SDSU and some other agencies to make the project possible. He said their goal was to create a place that offers amenities that everyone can enjoy.
“We have ball fields. We have children’s playgrounds. We have exercise areas. We have a two-mile walk and hike loop around the entire campus. We have all sorts of amenities for people,” Schmidt said.
Schmidt said the park is strategically engineered to handle flood waters. That’s why they raised the elevation where all the buildings will be and where the stadium is and lowered the elevation through the park.
“If you recall, when the original stadium, San Diego stadium, Jack Murphy, and so forth, that actually did. The field flooded during really high storm events,” Schmidt said. “This area that we’re looking at with ball fields here, the southern part of that, is underwater during really high storm events, and that occurred about a month ago, so we had a really good test and it worked.”
Gina Jacobs with Mission Valley development said this is just the beginning and San Diegans can expect more to come.
“SDSU Mission Valley is a master development that’s going to include lots of housing, affordable housing, retail space and an innovation district, which is going support research and other types of uses within some buildings that will be just right here adjacent to the river park,” Jacobs said.
According to Jacobs, the River Park portion of the project costed about $30 million to develop. She said the project was funded through donor contributions, grant funding from the river conservancy and from the state.
