After 7 to 8 years of at-times contentious community debates and discussions, of this group and that group vigorously lobbying the San Diego City Council, the council on Tuesday finally made a decision in how to transform much of northeastern Mission Bay. Supporters call the decision a win for a “climate-friendly marshland that can fight sea-level rise and pull carbon from the air.”
It’s a compromise! supporters yell, and it’s a fair one. A back-and-forth between environmentalists, city staffers and camping and recreation sports advocates has been going on so long, a certain fatigue has set in – and many are just happy to have a final decision, even if it’s a compromise.
Of course, a compromise assumes some kind of equal give-and-take between the parties. But it’s not like tennis proponents and camping dons have the same gravitas as nature — and a need for all of us to gain benefits from more marshland because the climate crisis is accelerating.
At any rate, the vote has been taken, the golfers are not happy – there’s a cut in the footprint for golf – the campers are not feeling wonderful because camp space will shrink from 62 acres to 49 acres and from 970 campsites to roughly 500. And environmentalists are not especially happy either. They feel the plan caters too much to camping, tennis, softball and water skiing interests, contending that more of the 505-acre area should become marshland.
Not only all of this, but city officials have been told by agencies — the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the California Department of Fish and Wildlife — that they support the environmentalists’ calls for additional marshland.
So, just what was passed?
- New plan would actually increase recreation space in the park’s northeast corner from 60 to 66 acres,
- It would allow two more courts for tennis
- two more courts for pickleball
- Enlarging some playing fields to regulation size;
- Marshland, wetlands and dunes would be tripled from 82 acres to 262 acres; (coalition of environmental groups wanted 315 acres);
- Campland would become marsh, camping would be relocated to De Anza Point, where the mobile home park used to be, and get less space;
- New features include
- a nature center,
- a small boating area on the beach of De Anza Cove and
- an extensive network of multi-use waterfront trails.
More to consider
- New marsh areas — sometimes called wetlands — serve the dual purpose of removing greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide from the air and fighting sea-level rise by acting as a coastal sponge.
- The plan adopted Tuesday would take many millions, possibly more than $1 billion, to fully develop. City officials said it almost certainly would be done in phases over many years; and there is more than $3 billion in state and federal grants available for coastal resiliency projects.
- The plan adopted Tuesday is a high-level master plan – its specifics won’t be decided until city planners, with feedback from the public, create a general development plan. In the meantime, no existing activities would be forced to move until those decisions get made, city officials said.
Some background
- The fight over Mission Bay’s northeast corner began more than seven years ago, when the closure of the De Anza Cove mobile home park prompted San Diego to explore how to revamp the entire area.
- City officials decided in the 1990s that the 50-acre Campland on the Bay site would eventually become marshland so it could be joined with the existing Kendall-Frost Marsh Reserve north of Crown Point.
- Kendall-Frost has the only remaining marshland in Mission Bay Park, which was essentially all marshland before it was aggressively dredged after World War II to create what city officials call the world’s largest aquatic park.
Thanks to David Garrick at the San Diego U-T.
