By Jennifer Van Grove / The San Diego Union-Tribune / September 6, 2024
The city of San Diego has pushed back the deadline to finalize a deal with the development team selected two years ago to remake the city’s 48-acre sports arena site in the Midway District.
The parties, tied together in an exclusive negotiation agreement that was set to expire on Dec. 5, now have through Dec. 5, 2025, to negotiate a long-term ground lease and complete the environmental review of the Midway Rising project.
The Midway Rising project calls for 4,250 residential units, a 16,000-seat replacement arena and 130,000 square feet of commercial space alongside an unspecified number of acres of parks, plazas and public space.
“We have agreed to administratively extend (the ENA) for one year, at (the development team’s) request,” Christina Bibler, who oversees the city’s real estate division, told the Union-Tribune. “There are delays on both sides in terms of going through our various processes. Ours was procurement and contracting for getting our consultant on board (to analyze the Enhanced Infrastructure Financing District). And theirs was finalizing their specific plan and going through development services for certainty as to the development footprint.”
Bibler characterized the protracted timeline as a six-month slowdown. She now expects to present a negotiated deal to City Council members before the end of June. Terms have not been publicly disclosed.
In September 2022, San Diego City Council members selected Midway Rising to redo the city’s property at 3220, 3240, 3250 and 3500 Sports Arena Blvd. Later that year, the city and the development team signed the negotiation contract, creating a two-year window to reach a deal. The contract allows the mayor to extend the agreement for two one-year terms.
Part of the delay is linked to the city’s review of a proposed subsidy that is said to be needed to make possible the project’s residential units for low-income households.
The Midway Rising team has promised to build 2,000 affordable housing units, a technical term that refers to units formally set aside for households earning 80 percent or less of the area median income. The housing type typically requires a combination of local, state and federal subsidies given that developers are also required to rent out the deed-restricted units at reduced rates set by the government.
For the balance of this article, please go here.
GOOD! Hopefully Larryturnerformayor is elected, since common sense leadership has been his working world for about 30 yrs. total, so I’m sure the City will benefit when Larry Turner is elected as San Diego’s new mayor.
McGrory maintains that Gloria told him not to pursue the deal in Mission Valley because he was moving forward to redevelop the existing Sports Arena site into a new mixed-use project with affordable housing and a new, 16,000-seat sports arena.
Just a few months later, Gloria pushed City staff to select developer Brad Termini and his Midway Rising group to enter into exclusive negotiations over two other competing development teams. City staff had complained they were not allowed to properly vet Termini’s proposal because the Mayor’s office had already decided which team to pick.
Midway Rising is a developer scam for Toad Gloria’s benefit. Vote no on Toad.
This scam is linked with the SDSU quash on the free arena. Updates on La Prensa. The city attorney should be investigating, but her campaign mgr is involved too.
IF we are to build a new arena, we should build it UP somewhere, where it can be used as shelter after the next hurricane (our first one was last summer) or major floods which will wipe out everything in Mission Valley and all low laying lands, like the Midway and beach communities… and downtown.
The mayor is smart enough to know that approving development on the mudflats of the Midway district is a bad move before an election….
I hope he is smart enough to know that for San Diego’s future, less development on the fragile coast is a good thing.