Meet the Arts Master Planning Consultants

Recently, the consultant team started work on what will be a months-long process creating the new Arts Master Plan for San Diego International Airport.

We thought you might be interested in knowing a little bit about the team hired to work with the Arts Program staff to develop it.

The team is made up of five consultants who each have an area of expertise that is essential to the plan’s development; two public art planners; a cultural planner; a community engagement specialist; and an economist.

Todd W. Bressi, the team lead, is a public art consultant and urban planner with his own firm in Narberth, PA. Todd’s brings an understanding of how architecture, landscape design, public art, and information design can interact to create remarkable spaces in diverse public places.  Todd also has a practiced understanding of how to integrate artworks in architectural, landscape, and infrastructure projects. He is no stranger to the San Diego arts world either. He and our second public art planner, Meridith McKinley, worked together on the development of the Public Art Master Plan and Curatorial Strategy for the Port of San Diego’s Office of Arts and Culture.

Meridith McKinley, Co-founder of Via Partnership in St Louis, is currently the public art consultant for St. Louis Lambert International Airport.   Meridith works with public agencies, developers, cultural organizations and community groups, throughout the U.S. and Canada planning, curating and producing public art  programs and projects. Meridith and Todd often collaborate, as they did with the development of the arts master plan for the Denver International Airport. They also recently completed the first Public Art Community Investment Plan for Metro Nashville Arts Commission. This project was the result of an agency strategic plan that our third consultant Victoria Plettner-Saunders worked on for Metro Nashville Arts Commission in 2014.

A community arts and cultural planner, WolfBrown Principal, Victoria Plettner-Saunders is a third generation San Diegan with deep roots in the local arts community. In 2005 Victoria left her position with the the City of San Diego Commission for Arts and Culture and began an arts research and strategic planning firm, v.p.s. cartographie. She has worked extensively with San Diego arts and culture organizations as well as on community arts and cultural plans for the Cities of Santa Ana and Laguna Beach. For SAN’s Airport Arts Master Plan Victoria is using her local knowledge to consider opportunities for community partnerships.

Two additional consultants are experts in unique areas of the arts planning realm.

Surale Phillips specializes in audience development and market research in the nonprofit arts sector. Based in West Palm Beach, Surale has worked on several local projects including the community engagement research for Orchestra Nova and with Cultural Planning Group for the Port of San Diego.  She is leading our community online and visitor intercept survey work for this plan.

We also have an economist working with us to consider possible impacts of the Airport Arts Program on the local economy.

Steven Nivin, Ph.D. has a consulting firm based in San Antonio, Texas which focuses on research related to regional economic growth and development. Steve has special expertise in the role of arts and culture in economic development and has a particular interest in understanding how to quantify the economic impact of public art on communities.