Kevin Faulconer’s Unwelcome Gifts for San Diego
I hope San Diegans will learn the hard lessons coming out of the deals made by our Republican ex-Mayor in recent months. A pending court decision upending plans for redeveloping the Midway and Sports Area areas is just the latest example of just how much the past administration relied on blue smoke and mirrors to hide its misdeeds.
This was the second setback for visions addressing a wasteland part of the city with so much potential.
The first error in judgement involved ignoring a state law regulating the repurposing of land owned by local governments to encourage the construction of affordable housing. Faulconer’s people knew this could be a problem but went ahead and made a deal with Brookfield Housing and ASM Global to redevelop the 48 acres that encompass the arena,
After that deal floundered and died, Mayor Todd Gloria asked the city council to restart the bidding process. The city must now give priority to developers offering the greatest number of affordable units at the lowest average affordability level, and has said it will only consider proposals with a new or refurbished sports arena.
Proposals involving mixed level housing, a hotel, shops, restaurants, office space, a skate park, biking and pedestrian paths, and neighborhood schools, along with a privately financed arena have surfaced in recent weeks. More were said to be in the pipeline.
Now those proposals are on hold.
As part of setting the groundwork for new development, the city successfully asked voters via Proposition E to eliminate the 30 foot height limit in the areas under consideration. A bitter fight against that move led to a lawsuit by Save Our Access.
From Voice of San Diego (emphasis mine):
This is yet another real estate mess the previous mayor has left the city. Some may call this a technicality but the city very methodically planned this all out: It was going to let leases expire on its land around the Sports Arena. It was going to update the community plan and then it was going to pursue the height limit increase. City staff didn’t forget about the need for an EIR. They chose to avoid it and argue that the height limit removal was not a project that required an EIR.
They lost.
Superior Court Judge Katherine Bacal issued a (likely to be affirmed) tentative ruling, noting that the city improperly placed the measure on the November 2020 ballot because it did not study the environmental impacts of taller buildings.
Again, there were people in the Faulconer administration who knew there might be a problem, but chose to proceed regardless. Lawyers defending the city didn’t even bother to proffer a defense beyond “because we said so.”
Via Voice of San Diego:
The issue: You have to do an EIR before a project can be approved. The city had done an EIR for the Midway-Pacific Highway Community Plan, approved in 2018. The question is whether Measure E was a new project. And then the question is, if it was a new project, whether it was substantially different than the development the community plan envisioned.
The city held that the amount of development allowed by the community plan would still be the same with or without a height limit in place. The lawyers suing the city said no, it was now different.
Bacal agreed, it is substantially different and it should have been studied separately.
Her take: Bacal focused on views and scenic vistas. She said the community plan only contemplated impacts to views in the area based on the 30-foot height limit remaining in place and not how things would change with taller buildings.
Renderings matter: Bacal hit the city for not providing any artistic visualizations of what may change with the building height limit lifted.
“Respondent also does not cite to any drawing renderings or public commentary as to the ways in which those vista and views may be impacted by buildings exceeding the 30-foot height limit.”
So now San Diego has two options as I see it. Either go back to the ballot box with a measure preceded by an environmental impact report, or just leave the fetid mess to fester. Either way, no redevelopment company is going to sit around and wait with that sort of uncertainty in the air.
The environmental impact of driving down Sports Arena boulevard with its strip clubs, strip malls, and strips of outdated properties is quite possibly just something we’ll have to learn to live with. Ugh.
I’m fairly certain that if there was a redevelopment idea that involved not changing the height limit, yet was still profitable, we would have heard about it by now. And the political naivete of the well-meaning folks opposed to raising heights (they lost on Prop E, failed to get recall for City Councilperson who supported the measure on the ballot) tells me the status quo is the future for what most everybody agrees is one of the most blighted areas of the city.
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For readers unfamiliar with the Faulconer administration’s other failed deals, here’s a glimpse.
What seemed to be sensible (even if controversial) plans to address real needs have turned out to be expensive duds.
Politically difficult tasks of addressing municipal needs and consolidating workforce operations were seemingly accomplished by spending more than $230 million on problematic real estate deals. There were “missteps, lack of policies and oversight, and misrepresentation during acquisition proposals to its city council,” according to a City Auditor report.
The audit focused on deals for 101 Ash Street, Civic Center Plaza, Housing Navigation Center, Kearny Mesa Repair Facility and Palm Avenue Hotel.
Via KPBS:
"My 500 square foot condo had more inspection than these city buildings," said Councilmember Vivian Moreno, who chairs the council's Audit Committee. "After seeing all of this in this audit, it is absolutely critical that moving forward every proposed real estate acquisition before council needs to have a due diligence checklist."
The 101 Ash Street deal would appear to be the most egregious example of misdeeds and/or incompetence.
The easy read on it is that a building was procured for an above market lease-to-own price without due diligence as to its condition and in manner designed to protect Mayor Kevin Faulconer from political fallout over profiteering by campaign donor Doug Manchester.
There are lawsuits over this, and --to me anyway-- there is little evidence that the city’s involvement had/has little-to-no interest in representing the taxpayers who paid for this steaming pile of crap deal. What I see reeks of a cover-your-ass strategy by the City Attorney’s office… And, no, there is zero reason to trust these folks.
Although San Diego has a checkered history when it comes to criminal investigations of deals made by elected officials, the San Diego County DA’s office has served search warrants of the offices of real estate brokerage Hughes Marino and Cisterra Development, both of which have been linked to 101 Ash Street.
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