Muni Gym Nears Completion

   By Roger Showley

After four years of careful planning, the Balboa Park Committee of 100’s second major restoration in the Palisades area — the $700,000 reconstruction of the Municipal Gym’s exterior artwork — is nearing completion by Memorial Day.

Bellagio Precast staff stand back to admire their completion of the mold to be used in casting the bronzed bas-relief for the front of the Municipal Gym. Photo: Bellagio Precast

The centerpiece is a 14-by-22-foot bas-relief bronze mural, artist Arturo Eneim’s depiction of engineers at work in an electricity plant and factories. There’s also a giant gear at the center of the decorative work on the marquee over the building entrance; 54 decorative tiles;  a restored terrazzo floor artwork; and recreation of the original building sign, “Electricity and Varied Industries.”

This was one of several buildings erected rapidly over the first few months of 1935 and opened on May 29 for the California Pacific International Exposition that extended through 1936. They were largely the work of Richard Requa, the expo architect, an expert in Mexican and Spanish mission architecture for homes and commercial buildings in the 1920s and ‘30s throughout San Diego.

“During more than a quarter century  of strenuous activity in my profession, I have had many hopes, dreams and aspirations,” Requa  said in his book on the expo, “the most cherished of which were associated with schemes for the development and beautification of our nature-blessed home city, San Diego.

“Happily many of my dreams are being realized, and it is a satisfaction to feel that at least, in a small way, I have been identified with their accomplishment.”

The expo, a sequel to the more famous Panama-Calilfornia Exposition of 1915 -16, was a marvel of civic hutzpah and Depression-era, make-work projects like those for unemployed construction workers on municipal projects around the country. The fair was launched in only nine months once it was approved and resulted in a new activity zone of Balboa Park that today hosts Starlight Bowl, three museums, dozens of international cottages and other buildings and gardens that still delight visitors today.

The 1935 buildings were built to last, unlike the temporary structures erected 20 years earlier. But to make the expo deadlines decorative features were temporary, fashioned from fiberboard  and other materials typically used on movie  and stage sets. They were removed soon after the expo closed.

In 2015 as San Diego marked the centennial of the first expo, C100’s board, led by Mike Kelly, voted to turn its attention to the second expo and restore or reconstruct the ornamentation on the buildings surrounding Pan-American Plaza outside today’s Air & Space Museum.

In 2020 the city cleared out half the parking lot and turned it into a pedestrian-only space. C100 led the drive to repaint the buildings in their historic colors.

By 2022, the first project,  the San Diego Automotive Museum, got back its four tile murals, two California grizzly bear statues, flagpoles, building signs and accompanying ornamentation. This was the California State Building in 1935.

Then work commenced on the Municipal Gymnasium, led by C100 board member and citizen architect Robert Thiele. Bellagio Precast and its principals MIke Matson and his son Kevin were signed on to fabricate the missing elements.

At their construction yard on Island Avenue near Interstate 15, drawings, models and molds preceded the casting of the sculptural pieces in glass-fiber reinforced concrete. The goal is to complete the project by Memorial Day, with the inevitable touchups and minor punch-list fixes to follow if necessary.

“Frankly, my personal opinion of the original mural was that it was quickly done — it was like a float building for homecoming,” the elder Matson said.

There were no construction drawings or clear black and white or color images available to guide the Matsons as they did their best to recreate the original design.  As one example, there are two figures depicted in the mural. Was one of them with longish hair a woman, the Matsons asked. They’ve left that determination to visitors to decide.

Structural engineering, overseen by the late Michael Krakower,  was necessary to figure out how to attach the two halves of the 3,600-pound mural to the stuccoed wall. Eight stainless steel members, five feet long, have been embedded in the murals and will be attached to a steel frame.

The murals will be lifted onto trailers, trucked to the park and craned into place. It will take all morning for the transportation to be arranged and the rest of the day and perhaps another to complete installation of the murals, followed by the marquee ornamentation. Kevin Matson and other Bellagio staff will then attach the ornamental panels, each about 18 by 30 inches and weighing about 20 pounds.

As with any construction project, onsite conditions have the habit of upsetting the best-laid plans,  but the Matsons are ready for any contingencies, and Barnhart-Reese Construction, C100’s general contractor, stands by to assist as necessary.

If the schedule holds, completion day will fall almost exactly 91 years after the expo opened in 1935. A grand ribbon cutting and dedication are expected a few weeks later as C100 officially turns over this monumental piece of public art to Mayor Todd Gloria.

Archibald Sheet Metal fabricators attach stainless steel bars to secure decorative element to the Muni Gym’s marquee, above. C100 President Kevin Carpenter, left, and project architect Robert Thiele confer with Bellagio Precast’s Mike Matson, right top. Bob’s Crane Service lifts a steel frame into place at the gym to which the bronzed bas-relief will be attached. Photos: C100