Midway Planners Table Vote on Famosa Canyon

Google map showing Famosa Canyon – circled in red – and Famosa Slough – in blue.

By Geoff Page

“Point Loma” was the only action item on the Midway-Pacific Community Planning Board’s agenda at the Wednesday, February 20 meeting. That seemed odd, even to some board members.  The action item was a request for a letter of support from Midway for the Save Famosa Canyon group’s position of keeping a piece of land in Point Loma as open space instead of having affordable housing built on it.

The Midway meetings start like most planning boards and after introductions, approving minutes, and non-agenda public comment, come the “City Government Office Reports.”  Midway’s agenda listed ten of these government reports.  Not all of them show up at every meeting, and mercifully for all, this meeting was lightly attended. Only Josh Coyne, representing Dr. Jennifer Campbell, District 2 Councilmember, was there and his report was brief.

The next item on the agenda was the single action item “Famosa Presentation-request for support.”

The chair turned the floor over to the group of about five people.  Two of this group did the most talking, Cameron Havlik and Margaret Virissimo.  For reasons not entirely clear, the group didn’t have a presentation to give, although said they would offer printed Powerpoint presentation that they had. The meeting room at the Urban Corps where Midway meets is not set up with audio visual equipment.

The group proceeded to explain its position on what is being referred to as Famosa Canyon.  This is the open piece of land on the south side of Famosa Blvd. and the east side of Nimitz, across from Bill Cleator Park. A lot has been written about this property so there is no need to rehash it here. To summarize, the San Diego Housing Commission has the idea of building 78 affordable housing units there and a lot of people want to keep it as open space.

The group launched into an explanation that was, frankly, confusing for anyone who had never heard of Famosa, and it appeared that none of the board members had. They listened to a series of doom and gloom comments first from Virissimo about how this project would affect everywhere from OB through Midway. Traffic would become a “living nightmare,” “we live on the “very dangerous tip of a peninsula,” “there is no way out in a catastrophe,” “city is piling people in here,” “traffic will definitely impact Midway.”

It was obvious the hyperbole was having the opposite effect it was intended to have by the looks on the faces of board members.  At some point, it was just too much. All of these terrible effects from a 78-unit development way over by Nimitz Blvd. seemed a stretch.

The group then claimed that part of the land is a wetland, which would be protected from development if it was officially designated a wetland. If that were true, the point was lost because a wetland would not need protection from anyone, much less the Midway planners.  They did not appear to have documentation of it being a wetland with them at the meeting.

They claimed that the area drains into Famosa Slough and said they had video of water going back and forth between the canyon and the Slough from “major flooding” during the recent rains. Considering the distance between the two locations it was difficult to understand how a video would show the exchange of water between the two.

The oddity of the presentation continued with Virissimo relating that they met with Dr. Jen Campbell Wednesday morning to make their case and she said they were going to look for “another area” and “look into blighted properties” that exist in Point Loma and “make them affordable.”  Later, Virissimo said there was plenty of land, “hundreds of acres,” “along Highways 52 and 15 where you could put people, why squeeze them in here?”

This was déjà vu all over again.

Virissimo was heavily involved in the effort to boot the Prince Recycling Center from Stumps.  At that time, she promised that she and her group would help Prince find another location and would help financially with the move.  None of that ever happened when Prince was forced to leave.

At the time, Virissimo kept promoting putting Prince’s behind Big Lots.  The problem was that no one had ever done the research to see who owned the property or if this was feasible.  The other problem was that they never talked to the Midway board about it and when Midway found out about it, they were unhappy, to put it mildly.

It did not appear that the Midway board members realized, this idea of pushing the affordable housing out east was coming from the same person who advocated for pushing the recycling center out of Point Loma into the Midway area. It was another bit of irony that they didn’t hesitate to come to Midway now that they needed something

Virissimo went on to say they were going to “meet with the mayor ASAP,” that they were going to “watch out for Midway,” that the Famosa site has in it a “wetland within one nautical mile of the ocean.”  She explained they planned to get rid of a bike pump track inside the property because they had learned it would be a liability.  This was ironic because the first time anyone tried to do something with this land was ten years ago and it was mainly the dads, some moms and kids who built and used the bike track.

The Save Famosa Canyon group explained that they were not asking for City money that the open space would be maintained by community groups.  It would not be a park and there would be no facilities such as bathrooms.

This accounting of events may seem confusing because it was; it was not hard to see why the Midway board was confused.  They listened and were very polite and asked for information to be sent to them to review for the next meeting.  They tabled the action item until the March meeting wisely deciding that they needed more time and information than this group brought before making any decision.

The chair did express that they were sensitive to making any actions about something in another planning board’s area, in this case the Peninsula Community Planning Board. They asked if the PCPB had supported the group’s position and were told the PCPB had stayed neutral on it.  The chair of the PCPB, Robert Goldyn, had sent a copy of a letter to Midway that the PCPB wrote and passed last year that stated the PCPB position.  The letter explained the PCPB had not taken a position because no project had come before them.

Virissimo was very critical of the PCPB and has been on social media.  She was a PCPB board member until she had to resign after a complaint was filed against her last year, so her opinion of the group is now unfavorable. The Midway vice chair said she would invite Goldyn to the March meeting to provide the PCPB perspective if they wished to.

The PCPB did have representation at the Midway meeting, of sorts.  Board member Jerry Lohla, who leaves the board in April after the March election, explained the PCPB position and stated he was attending as a community member and not representing the PCPB.

Lohla has a background in affordable housing and worked for four years at the Housing Commission before retiring five years ago and he is very open about that.  Lohla provided coherent information about affordable housing and corrected some of the misinformation the Save Famosa Canyon people had provided.  He remained very even-tempered even though Virissimo and her group have posted a number of unflattering comments about him on social media accusing him of being on the take and in cahoots with the Housing Commission.  There was a bit of a testy exchange when Virissimo went after him and the Midway chair had to step in and end it.

The board voted to have another presentation about Famosa Canyon at the March meeting.

Midway Board Elections – The Midway board holds its elections at the March meeting.  The election starts at 2:30 in the afternoon at the Urban Corps building on Jefferson Street before the regular Wednesday meeting held the third Wednesday of every month.  Candidates and voters are encouraged to participate.