August 4, 2025
PRESS ADVISORY
City Council Attempts To Give Away Mission Bay Park Land – Committee Meeting Tuesday, 6 pm., at Paradise Point.
The Mission Bay Park Committee (MBPC) will meet at 6:00 p.m., on Tuesday, August 5, 2025. The meeting will be at Paradise Point (Mission Bay Room)
It is reported that multiple City Councilmembers will be appearing in an effort to explain why the City is trying to sell parklands (potentially for upscale condominiums). The meeting will be held in Paradise Point’s Mission Bay Room.
Without input from the MBPC or San Diego Park Board, the Council attempted to move forward to declare three separate parcels in Mission Bay Park as “surplus land,” under State law, in order to put them out to bid. Under State law, once land becomes surplus, priority has to be given to low income housing projects. Most likely, any “low income” project would simply put expensive condominiums in Mission Bay Park, with the developer building low income housing elsewhere as a credit to get the long-
term lease.
This would be first time that the City of San Diego has sold off park land for residential development. Some City Councilmembers have suggested that the bid process would be drafted in such a way to preclude housing. That would violate State law, forcing litigation. The low income housing developers would end up getting the parcels.
Proposition C (2008) was designed to keep park money in the park. While we have allowed some commercial development, it is only to fund the park. It is feared that this proposal (declaring these parcels as surplus) will take those parcels outside of the park so that any money generated from the commercial development of the property will now go to the General Fund. This will circumvent the Charter requirements brought about in 2008 by Proposition C.
Three of the drafters of Proposition C (Bob Ottilie, Donna Frye and Kevin Faulkner) are expected to have input to the meeting. Ottilie, a former Interim Chair of the MBPC, and principal author of Measure C, will speak at the meeting:
“What the Council is doing here is unprecedented. They are trying to declare park land is surplus. It is not. It strikes me that this effort is illegal in many ways. No wonder they didn’t bring it to the two Citizen Review Committees.”
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For more information: (1) MBPC Committee Chair, Jeff Johnson
(619) 204-9061
jeff.johnson@AeonComputing.com
(2) Contact Attorney Bob Ottilie
(619) 231-4841
ro@ottilielaw.com
Selling off public parkland for high-end condos isn’t the answer. Marina Village is run-down and poorly managed — I’ve seen it firsthand over the past decade as a boat owner there, especially under Kristopher Ingram’s leadership.
Yes, the space needs reinvestment, but not at the cost of public access. A thoughtful plan could include a hotel, a properly run marina, and community-focused improvements.
The City should be looking at how to better serve locals and visitors — not handing the waterfront over to developers.
To be clear, the city cannot sell any land in Mission Bay Park. The land is Dedicated (a legal term) parkland under the City Charter and to change the use from parkland or to sell any of the Dedicated parkland requires a 2/3 city-wide vote to approve. See Section 55 of the San Diego City Charter.
I cannot imagine a majority, much less 2/3, of city voters agreeing to sell any part of Mission Bay Park.
No dedicated parkland in the City of San Diego can be sold or use changed to a non-park use without approval by 2/3 city voter approval.
The Mission Bay Park Master Plan already allows for a hotel to be proposed at the Marina Village site. A second hotel could be proposed on a parcel adjacent to Marina Village, plus Sea World has long had the right to propose a hotel within their leasehold at Perez Cove (near Hubbs Sea World). There currently are 6 hotels serving Mission Bay Park (the Catamaran is on private property but leases a number of Mission Bay acres for beach and pier).
While it may be feasible to consider alternative uses at Sportsman’s Seafood and/or Dana Landing, an amendment to the Mission Bay Park Master Plan would be required. This is a long, detailed and expensive process which must culminate at the California Coastal Commission.
The headline of this article is a bit overstated. I didn’t hear Chair Johnson “blasting” City Council but did express frustration with the speed and apparent secrecy of the docketing at Council with minimal public notice and discussion.
Chair Johnson did ask a number of important questions which need to addressed if the City chooses to move forward with the Surplus Lands in Mission Bay Park proposal.
Residential housing is illegal on both City of San Diego Dedicated parkland (per City Charter Section 55) and on State tidelands. Substantial portions of Mission Bay are state tidelands.
As for selling any part of Mission Bay Park, that cannot happen with – at minimum – a city wide vote requiring a 2/3 majority in favor. Definitely not going to happen.