By John Mann
Wayne Buss died tragically. But he accomplished much, and inspired others to accomplish much, in his short lifetime.
Wayne was born in San Diego in 1957, attended Crawford High, and studied architecture at Cal Poly, Pomona. He became an architect, developer, and environmentalist. He made a difference in the city he loved. He thought that providing attractive places to live downtown would draw people there, prevent urban sprawl, protect open space. He worked energetically to transform fading neighborhoods into vibrant centers of art and culture. According to the East Village Association, Wayne was the originator of the community’s “East Village” identity. He was instrumental in launching the ArtWalk artists’ open house. As an architect and developer, he devoted much of his career to recycling the city’s old buildings.
In the mid-‘90s, inspired by the revitalization of Manhattan’s Lower East Side, Wayne bought the 1927-vintage Carnation Dairy processing plant, disused for 20 years, amidst warehouses and factories at 10th and J. This was just four blocks south of his grandfather’s and father’s auto-repair garage, which Wayne had converted into Jacaranda Studios, one of the first condo lofts downtown. With the aid of City redevelopment funds, he turned the Carnation building into offices, artists’ studios, residential lofts, and performance venues, and dubbed it ReinCarnation. It was the springboard for the resuscitation of the entire neighborhood. Part of that resuscitation, though, was the construction of the baseball stadium, which attracted other developers and suddenly drove up property values beyond what his dreamt-of Little Bohemia could afford.
Wayne was disillusioned. As someone who loved San Diego, he had served as a director of Citizens Coordinate for Century 3 and other civic organizations. He had been recognized for his service with numerous awards, including the Alonzo, the Ruocco, a People in Preservation Award from SOHO, and the Gaslamp Quarter Historical Foundation Good Neighbor award. But now he decided on a new path.
He had always appreciated the natural world as much as the man-made. With a dream, in his words, of “preserving places of intense natural beauty,” he moved to New Zealand. He started planting trees and restoring the native ecology on a large tract of land that he owned on the North Island coast. Under his welcoming stewardship, the wild flora and fauna began to return.
Wayne was just a few months into his project, and engaged to marry Amy Bankoff, a New Zealander originally from Phoenix, Arizona, when he, in 2004 at the age of 47, lost his life in a car accident. Wordsworth was right. The good die young.
San Diego: Carnation Milk Processing Plant. Ned Paynter Collection/FSDA