Mission Bay Park Is Not ‘Surplus’ Land — UT OpEd by Donna Frye

By Donna Frye / Op-Ed San Diego Union-Tribune / August 15, 2025 

Mission Bay Park is one of the most magical and wonderful places in our city. I remember in the late ‘50s asking my dad what the boats were doing in Mission Bay and he said they were dredging it to make parkland for all of us.

In 1962, when Mission Bay Park was dedicated as public parkland in perpetuity, I asked my mom what the word “perpetuity” meant and she told me it means “forever”.

So imagine my reaction after reading a story in the OB Rag last month that said the city wanted to declare parts of Mission Bay Park as “surplus” land. Let’s just say the words coming out of my mouth reminded me of a recent sticker that read, “Mermaid Soul, Pirate Mouth, Always Salty”.

I could not understand how or why anyone with any common sense would want to declare any portion of Mission Bay Park as “surplus” land so I started doing a bunch of research.

As it turns out, the elected officials in Sacramento recently updated the Surplus Land Act and because of that, the city believes they are required to declare portions of Mission Bay Park as “surplus” in order to issue a request for proposals for a new, 15 plus year lease to redevelop some of the park’s properties.

If that happens, the “surplus land” declaration would allow developers to submit proposals to the city to build affordable housing in Mission Bay Park. And the developers would receive first priority.

If that last sentence takes some extra time to digest, do not feel alone. In my many decades of dealing with the city and state, this proposal ranks right up there as one of the all-time mind benders.

It appears that the mayor wants to “redevelop and activate” three properties in Mission Bay Park, specifically Marina Village, Sportsmen’s Seafood and Dana Landing. On its face, that sounds reasonable.

But it is not as it seems. If the city council does what the mayor wants and declares the land “surplus” the city will be required to send out a notice of availability to a list of people that includes housing developers who will get priority for developing the properties with, you guessed it, affordable housing.

But wait; it gets worse and more confusing. After reviewing some documents I recently received, it appears the mayor has based his decision (to have the city council declare the Mission Bay Park properties “surplus”) upon some emails and phone conversations with state agency staff members in Sacramento.

Here is a quote from a July 3 email to the city from the state, “Based on the staff report, it appears that the City is interested in pursuing development of low-cost housing on these properties.”

However, two months earlier on April 8, the city sent an exemption request from the Surplus Land Act requirement  to the Sacramento office of Housing and Community  Development stating that “The City is interested in issuing a Request for Proposals (RFP) to enter into a 50-year lease to redevelop Marina Village into a 500-room hotel with limited retail, conference facilities.”

And just to make things more fun, the city received an unsolicited proposal to redevelop Marina Village! We don’t know who sent it or when they sent it because, despite requesting the information, the city has not told us.

Housing? Hotels?

Who the heck knows.

What we do know is that common sense tells us that dedicated public parkland is not “surplus” land. We need more, not less of it. We also know that this is one big mess and needs to be stopped, because if it can happen in Mission Bay Park it can happen in any of our public parks.