Mira Mesa Community Park Phase II: A Family-Friendly Makeover

Transformative Upgrades Include New Pools, Play Areas, All-Wheels Plaza and More

As the City of San Diego Parks and Recreation Department continues to upgrade park amenities throughout the region, Platt/Whitelaw is proud to be the Mira Mesa Community Park Phase II architect.

What Will Mira Mesa Community Park Phase II Include?

While Phase I, approximately 17 acres at the park’s north side, was focused on ballfields and a playground, Phase II of the park will diversify the amenities available to the public.

Phase two includes:

• An aquatic complex with two pools and a splash pad
• An aquatic center building with a community room
• An expanded parking lot
• Sidewalks and a pedestrian plaza
• Bio-retention stormwater basins
• Two children’s play areas
• Two basketball courts that also accommodate pickle ball
• Improvements to the four existing ball fields
• Passive-use turf areas
• A renovated and upgraded recreation center
• Upgraded lighting, landscaping and irrigation
• An all-wheels plaza
• A shade structure and outdoor furnishings, including ping pong tables and public art

As with many of our public projects, we worked with community members to discuss what they wanted most and what makes their neighborhoods distinctive. Our goal is to weave in the amenities they want and implement design elements that help create a place unique to, and reflective of, the culture and character of the area.

Top on the community’s wish list was the aquatic complex. A lot of our architecture work was focused on the aquatic center buildings and community room, while Aquatic Design Group led the design of the pools and water features.

Platt/Whitelaw is fortunate to have a long history of working with the talented team at Aquatic Design Group. Working with the staff from the City of San Diego’s Parks and Recreation and Aquatics departments is a great experience, too. And we want to give a special shout out to the consummate professionals on the City’s project management team.

What We Heard

Mira Mesa is a vibrant family neighborhood, and many of the requests we received were centered around kids and young adults. Community groups and City of San Diego Aquatics staff told us that having a competition pool and bleachers for swimming and water polo meets was important. Splash and spray areas, as well as a pool for recreational swimming and swimming lessons, were also on their lists.

To support these functions, the aquatic center building will offer lockers, changing areas, restrooms and more. The building mimics the design of the park’s existing recreation center, featuring roof overhangs with exposed beams and a combed concrete masonry pattern on the exterior.

Another fun resource at the park for kids and adventurous adults is the all-wheels plaza. Designing an all-wheels plaza is the job every young skateboarder might want when they grow up. We’re coordinating with Schmidt Design Group to integrate what can best be described as a playground for skateboards, bikes, scooters, roller skates and even athletic wheelchairs.

It will have “street style features” and “flow features.” The former would include grind ledges and flat rails, while flow features are things like pump tracks and quarter pipes. The plaza will also emulate iconic terrain, including spots in Mira Mesa, and will include the colors and patterns of the surrounding community.

Other Amenities

We’re also responding to the community by repairing, renovating and upgrading the existing recreation center. Inside the building, upgrades will include paint, flooring and cabinets. We will also upgrade the restrooms to meet ADA standards.

The building will have a reception area, a multi-use gymnasium, an activity room, a game room, a craft room, a kitchen and more.

Outdoor furniture and other features will include sports tables, an array of seating options and a shade structure that doubles as public art. Artists at Parkeology are providing the design.

Thinking Outside the Box

Mira Mesa has a very strong and creative community group. The City and our design team were motivated to include as much of their wish list as possible in the park.

We value opportunities to go the extra distance for our clients and our communities. We worked together with the City and the rest of our team to identify a creative approach for project bidding and budget control that helped make nearly all that wish list possible.

If construction bids came back too high, the project could have been in trouble. To avoid this risk, we worked with our client to generate an unconventional approach. We would create design documents for each component separately, while maintaining cohesive design threads, so that the City could bid out each component separately.

This way, if any one component proved too pricey, the rest of the project could still move forward. Remarkably, the City was able to advance the entire project while still controlling the budget.

Last Thoughts

Mayor Todd Gloria helped kick off the groundbreaking for phase two in the fall of 2024, and construction is still underway at the time of this writing. The park’s completion is estimated for the fall of 2026. Updates can be found here.

Special thanks to our staff working on this project, Sandra Gramley (ret.), Naveen Waney AIA, Dave Madigan, Yolanda Velazco and Arjun Urbonas.

Rounding out our marvelous Mira Mesa Park team are industry leaders Kimley-Horn, Aark engineering, Turpin & Rattan Engineering, Ninyo & Moore, Campbell-Anderson & Associates, PCL construction and Brady/WHB Engineers.