ON Monday, December 18, the city published the “notice of preparation” for the sports arena area redevelopment — inviting the public and others to help craft what’s studied in the environmental analysis of the proposed development.
As we all know, the Midway Rising re-development team was selected in 2022 by the city council to remake the property in the Midway District. And as we all must know by now, the re-development team was headed up at the time by Brad Termini, head of housing developer Zephyr, who – along with his spouse – were the biggest contributors to Mayor Gloria’s campaign for mayor.
The mayor was the biggest fan of Midway Rising and convinced the city council to select it for one of the most massive redevelopment projects in modern San Diego history.
Importantly, as Jennifer van Grove instructs us in the U-T, in yesterday’s grandiose journalistic spread on the situation, the release of the notice of preparation “marks the official start of the environmental review process, as mandated by California’s Environmental Quality Act, and is a precursor to finalizing ground lease terms.”
Van Grove reminds us:
The development team, which last December entered into a two-year negotiation period with the city, is made up of –
- Legends,
- market-rate housing developer Zephyr and
- affordable housing builder Chelsea Investment Corp.
- In June, a subsidiary of billionaire Stan Kroenke’s real estate firm The Kroenke Group took a 90 percent ownership interest in the Midway Rising entity.
Van Grove points out the confines of the moment:
The Midway Rising development team selected last year to remake San Diego’s sports arena property in the Midway District has moved into the second leg of a negotiation period with the city that should, if all goes according to plan, culminate with a development deal by the end of 2024.
But van Grove understates what this “milestone” signifies, by saying:
As such, the milestone reveals for the first time new project refinements the development team has made to its housing, commercial retail and park plan over the past 12 months.
“Refinements”? She continues, “The team’s winning bid has evolved in consequential ways over recent months.”
Let’s focus on these refinements.
- Midway Rising’s previously proposed 200-room hotel was scrapped earlier this year,
- 250 residential units set aside for middle-income families was also scrapped. (The development team: a lack of viable financing options eliminated the subsidized housing type.)
- The project will allow for 4,627 total residential units at build-out — or 377 more units than originally proposed.
- The 250,000 square feet for commercial uses has been slashed to 130,000 square feet
- A vision of second-level shops, bars and eateries connected to the arena and residential buildings by elevated walkways changed to ground-level-only retail promenade cascading through the central spine of the project.
- green roofs and rooftop parks may be eliminated due to a city policy that requires solar panels on rooftops,
- This would cut down the total project acreage dedicated to parks and plazas, 20 acres of parks, plazas and open space.
- parking changes: now eight stories of podium parking as a part of residential buildings, with units wrapped around the garages to mask their appearance.
- Arena and retail parking will be distributed throughout the project, as opposed to spaces being housed in a large, central garage.
Other important points:
The notice of preparation is available for public comment through January 17.
No in-person public scoping meeting for feedback will be held by city; instead the city has posted a YouTube video that explains the project and next steps. Public comments can be submitted using the form available at sandiego.gov/ceqa/meetings.
Spring 2024: A draft environmental impact report is anticipated to be released for public review.
The development team hopes the work will be finalized alongside deal terms before the end of 2024.
Midway Rising is still supposed to build 2,000 residential units deed-restricted for families making 80 percent or less of the area median income.
The affordable housing commitment, which served as the basis for the team’s selection, is reflected in the notice of preparation and is an obligation memorialized in the team’s negotiation contract with the city.
The team is retaining its public square, or what they’re calling the Zocalo, near the arena, they said. …
the team is still planning to build a 16,000-seat arena that emphasizes entertainment uses over major league sports tenants….
The project’s environmental analysis — what’s called a subsequent environmental impact report — will build off the work completed in 2018 for the Midway-Pacific Highway Community Plan. The report will study the environmental impacts associated with greater density and a range of land uses — allowing for up to 109 dwelling units per acre in some areas — across four planning areas.
The Midway Rising Specific Plan requires a general plan amendment and community plan amendment.
With so many refinements, you’d think this would have to be a full resubmit. The parking garages I get, bc when you surround the garage the parking is spread more evenly up, down and to all sides vs. the highest being the least desirable.
I know a lot of people from OB don’t like the idea of this, but I think it’s going to be great.
We need more places to live, and I’d trade Kobe’s swap meet for a new arena.
The OB Rag has a way farther reaching audience than OB Reggie, and it’s circulation continues to swell in size.
Who is going to play in a “multi-million dollar Sports Arena without a team” Reggie? In case you didn’t get the memo, we have no sports teams to fill any arena and have several already, throughout the region.
Our infrastructure is collapsing around us. 160 San Diegans are made homeless on the 5th of each month for every 100 we are able to shelter. Despite the rhetoric and false narratives, the vast majority of San Diegans lose housing through no fault evictions, because there is no significant enforceable mechanism to protect them because there is no money in it for the Todd Fraud Squad. In fact the City doesn’t even have a metric to record their deaths on the streets. To the politicos they literally don’t count.
Everyday our situation for everyone in this city worsens and the only thing that the Jim Crow Council and Todd the Fraud want to do is, redecorate!
This whole project is a absolute fraudulent scheme! Astronomical rent increases will eliminate our minor league hockey team, the San Diego Gulls before they even break ground.
History has taught us that San Diegans will not support professional basketball, nor hockey (we’ve had two professional basketball teams that had to leave town, and the NHL has come and gone too) Ya see transplants do not support local teams, especially when they refer to their former city’s as “home”.
Furthermore hyper gentrification and the insanely manipulated rental market will eliminate the ability for any fan, to afford to go see any team. I digress though, did I mention WE HAVE NO TEAM TO BUILD A SPORTS ARENA FOR!
Though we will always love our San Diego Padres, they ain’t gonna be playing in this ridiculous “multi-million dollar Sports Arena without a team” For the record only the dedicated Padre diehards (myself very much included, win or lose) are gonna show up at the ballpark having endured the loss of Saint Peter Seidler’s support, God Rest His Soul.
Saint Peter Seidler is the only San Diegan that has brought any sense of pride or hope to this city in 3 decades.
What we do have are the worst maintained roads in the nation, regular flooding regularly sends raw sewage gushing into both of our bays and ocean in the very area slated for the”multi-million dollar Sports Arena without a team.” We have the most expensive electricity and routinely have to suffer brown outs because there ain’t enough to go around as it is now, without this preposterous proposal.
For the record, the presence of Kobe’s does not prohibit the existing Sports Arena from operating, it enables it.
Kobe’s has provided entry level entrepreneurship, and lead to many success stories, helped countless others to supplement their incomes, and paved the way for farmers markets throughout the region, all the while keeping minor league hockey games inexpensive enough for people that work for a living to attend and take their kids.
It’s all some thing of a blur, but what ever happened to OddTodd’s “Sexy Streets” program? (and why was it limited to 50 or so miles of SD roads? seems there’s quite a few more miles of road that need serious repair. Heck, Sewer Group 721 came and went, leaving quite a bit of local damage to curbs and streets. Naturally, never repaired.).
None of this will make rents come down. You and everyone else who supports dense housing know this.
Chris,
I’m getting real tired of hearing you say that proponents of housing developments don’t believe it will help affordability. You can disagree with our position but you should really stop trying to peddle that baseless crap.
Imagine I went around incessantly claiming you didn’t really believe what you asserted and that you were disingenuous? Would you like that?
Zack, look at east village, North park, Mission Valley, etc. You see rents going down? Other than deed restricted units, builders aren’t building for the low/moderate segments of the market. Even the so-called micro units (I think of them more as cells) are going for more than $2000/month. Units with lofts that you cannot stand up in? Same thing
Having been in the trenches on this, I can’t shake one gnawing suspicion: We know that under state law as city-owned property, fully 25% of the housing developed here needs to be deed-restricted affordable.
The rub is that this does not mean that 2,000 affordable units have to be built. No — only 25% of any total units that are finally built will need to be. Assuming that 2,000 affordable of the currently proposed 4,627 total residential units, or 43%, will hold is not required.
As the current whittling down of the promised residential component so far has demonstrated, it’s entirely possible the developers may conclude that a much lower total number of units offset by a much lower number of affordable will “pencil out” better for them, given the stadium, entertainment and parking income calculations, in addition to the tax breaks and subsidies they’re getting out of the deal.
Thank you Mat Wahlstrom! You are a San Diegan, for all San Diegan and what folks around here used to refer to as “Good People.”
I have said in this space previously don’t be surprised if the amount of parks and public open space shrink, and here it is!
I know all projects are subject to scope creep, but this is likely only the beginning of a diminution of the public amenities we will see from this project.
Although I have said it before: Thank you, Mateo, for your thoughtful and passionate advocacy for San Diegans against those profiteering off of us.
Please consider becoming a contributor to the ‘Rag, as many of us simply no longer have the “free time” — being squeezed like a sponge or bled as a turnip — to protest as we might.
Mateo, so well said, unfortunately, MONEY and Politics always control these issues and development…sad but true…thanks for your comments.
Merry Christmas ?