Spicing Up Little Italy

Soon after moving here, my friend the East Coast snob made his first foray into San Diego’s Little Italy for lunch. “Well,” he said with a sniff, surveying the block-long stretch of India Street restaurants, “it’s a very Little Italy, isn’t it?”

Well, yes, it is. And no, it’s not.

In fact, in square blocks, San Diego’s Little Italy is bigger than San Francisco’s, St. Louis’ and New York’s combined. And that’s after having its heart bisected by Interstate 5. That happened more than 40 years ago—when San Diegans called it the Crosstown Freeway. But for the natives of Little Italy, the pain is still acute. Ask anyone who lived or worked here before the freeway came, and they’ll tell you it was a disaster for the neighborhood.

“I have roots here, and roots here,” says Rose Cresci, pointing first to the floor beneath her feet, then at her assisted-auburn hair. “The worst thing for all of us is when the freeway went in. It devastated this neighborhood. The freeway took our homes. Many of the old families moved to Hillcrest and Mission Hills, Point Loma, La Jolla.

“But,” she quickly adds, “I’m ecstatic about the comeback of Little Italy.”

Rose is standing in the center of The Gargoyle, the newest incarnation of the family grocery where she worked as a child some seven decades ago. Today, it’s a combination art gallery/café, operated by her youngest son, Dino. He’s the fourth generation of the family to run a business here. His niece, Jennifer Morrison, who works alongside him, is fifth generation. Rose, too, still works here—part-time.

“My great-grandparents, Angelo and Emanuela DeLuca, came to Little Italy in the early 1900s,” Dino says. “Their daughter, Julia, married Emilio Giolzetti, and their daughter, Rose, married my father, Sal Cresci.

“My family once owned all four corners here, at Fir and India. Every generation has worked this property,” he says. “So something inside of me told me I should do this.”

What Dino has done is transform the old family grocery—for a time it was leased out as a tool-and-die shop—into The Gargoyle, a mod arts-and-crafts gallery and cafe. A snapshot in the the café shows a group of rakish-looking chaps, posed team style, with the inscription “Warff Rats—1940 champs.” A baseball team photo?

“Well, no,” says Rose, “they didn’t play baseball. The Warff Rats were the 1940 champs, though. Dice champions. They played dice behind the drugstore,” she says, pointing kitty-corner across India and Fir to where Bay City Drugs—her father’s drugstore—once stood.

Behind The Gargoyle, climbing the south side of Fir Street, is a row of small homes where the Cresci forebears once lived. As part of his commitment to the revival of Little Italy, Dino Cresci launched his own redevelopment project on Fir, transforming the tiny houses into upscale design and fashion boutiques—including Villino Galleria (gifts, interior design), Carol Gardyne’s (hand-painted silks) and Tracy and Kerry McReynolds’ Sorella (clothing).

Shops like these, and restaurants like Trattoria Fantastica and Café Zucchero—opened in recent years by Joe Busalacchi and his family—are essential to Little Italy’s comeback. In the years between the mid-’50s and the early ’90s, the neighborhood shops were mostly devoured by a string of brake-and-muffler shops, salvage companies and car-rental agencies. But the tide is shifting again.

Despite the heavy nostalgia for what used to be Little Italy, there’s widespread optimism among old-timers and newcomers about what Little Italy is now, and will be tomorrow.

Today, Little Italy is defined as the 48 square blocks bordered by Laurel Street on the north, Ash on the south, Pacific Highway on the west and Front on the east. It’s smaller than it was before the freeway split, certainly, but compare those 48 square blocks of Little Italy to New York’s seven linear blocks on Mulberry Street. Or San Francisco’s six blocks on Columbus Avenue.

Says Marco Li Mandri, chairman of the board of the Little Italy Association, “In our Little Italy, India Street is the spine of the body. In New York, Mulberry Street is the spine, but there is no body. In San Francisco, Columbus is the spine, but there is no body.”

For redevelopment purposes, Little Italy is a Business Improvement District (BID). And BIDs are Li Mandri’s business. He’s overseen 19 of them; six in San Diego, including downtown El Cajon and the Sports Arena district. But Li Mandri’s a “full-blooded Italian,” born in San Diego’s Little Italy B.F. (Before the Freeway), and this is where his heart is. “This is where I’m most hands-on,” he says. “This is where I’m applying everything I’ve learned.”

In San Francisco’s Little Italy, Li Mandri notes, “80 percent of the commercial district is owned by overseas Asians.” Here, he says, though many of the old families make their homes in other neighborhoods, they’ve held on to the community. Many still own businesses here, like Pete’s Quality Meats & Grill and the Solunto Baking Company; many still come here to socialize. And they are key to the rebirth of the neighborhood.

“They know the history. They give us not only the moral but the political support we need,” says Li Mandri, “because no one can question their motives.” They have roots.

The big political issues today revolve around housing and parking. It’s anticipated 8,000 new residences will be built in the next two years, and design is a major sticking point.

“There was a time,” says Li Mandri, “when we really needed the missing link of density.” Restaurants and shops are not enough to create a neighborhood, he says. A neighborhood must have neighbors. “From the standpoint of new housing, these new condo developments were great,” he says. “But there were pieces of garbage being built down here. So now we have the only design-review committee downtown. Two years ago, we knew the onslaught was coming. We can’t legislate what someone builds in terms of beauty, but we can strongly influence it. And we are doing that by working with the Centre City Development Corporation and the developers to strengthen the focus plan.”

Architect/developer Jonathan Segal was a pioneer in building new housing for Little Italy. “He gets credit, and he should,” says Li Mandri, “for living in the neighborhood. He’s the only one to bring his kids and raise them here. And put them in schools here. Not many do that.” But Segal has his detractors, too, most of whom criticize the cold, stark sameness of many of his projects, including the most recent and most ambitious.

“A lot of people were heartbroken about his project at the Waterfront Bar,” says a neighborhood activist. “Jonathan gets credit for preserving the bar, at least [his condo and retail space are designed around the landmark dive bar]. But he would have been a pariah in the neighborhood if he hadn’t.”

With the new residents and new businesses come new problems. The question of long-term parking continues to vex the Little Italy Association. Li Mandri says there is $2 million in a fund that could be used for parking, but the amount is woefully inadequate. “A couple of years ago, that would have bought a whole block,” he says. “Now it might buy 20,000 square feet.”

Most of the new residential construction is one- and two-bedroom units—not the kind of dwellings that invite family living. That’s another problem, according to Li Mandri. But there are other lures to family life here, including two schools. And the freeway may have been the force that split the community in half, but the church is the glue that holds what remains of Little Italy together, most agree.

Every Sunday, Mass at Our Lady of the Rosary is packed, Li Mandri says. The people come back to the church.

“The church is where I was baptized and confirmed and married,” says Rose Cresci. “And this is the center of the old social world still today. You go to a wedding or a funeral, and you see everybody from the old neighborhood.”

If the church is the center of the social future for Little Italy, the neighbors may take heart. These days, it seems, the church is doing lots more weddings than funerals.

-- by Tom Blair

On Newsstands 12/1

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Spicing Up Little Italy

On Newsstands 12/1

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