This is another post as part of the Rag’s response to a U-T commentary by Harry Bobbins about lifting the coastal 30 foot height limit.
By Frances Zimmerman
Like Union-Tribune commenter Harry Bobbins, whom I don’t know, I too have done time on the La Jolla Community Planning Association (LJCPA.)
I have lived here since 1970, first as a renter and then as a homeowner, in the flats, with no ocean-view, but near Windansea Beach. I don’t recognize Bobbins’ description of my neighborhood as “job-rich” and “well-connected.” I do know there are more and more home rentals and the beach is jammed and street parking is tough in the summer. But it’s easier off-season, and there’s no Miami-wall of high-rises between me and the water’s edge, for which I am grateful every day of my life.
LJCPA is like other “planning” groups throughout our City, comprised of a mix of well-meaning and opportunistic elected locals with zero policy clout over the physical configuration of their communities. Notably, LJCPA has been toothless to prevent villa-fication and mansion-ization of single-family neighborhoods. Smaller homes and lots regularly are sold and rebuilt bigger in every way, as new flat-roofed concrete behemoths that resemble either prisons or VRBO hotels loom over their neighbors.
At best, community planning groups oppose bad ideas, usually fruitlessly, and City Council or the Planning Commission, in league with the Mayor, approve them anyway. And now Sacramento politicians are interfering with long-established “local control, ” ostensibly to create the chimera of “affordable housing.”
Fortunately, the 30-foot coastal zone height limit was established by a vote of the people long ago and remains largely intact. (I personally am grateful for it every day of my life.) Bubbins falsely calls the law “drastic” and “never about the coastline.” He says it is “inflexible.” He sounds almost democratic about “voting” it out of existence and claiming the result will be a public benefit of “affordable housing” in this most expensive city in the United States.
What’s really inflexible is the push to build, build, build in San Diego — and drastically to the water’s edge — to the sole benefit of politicians and developers. What’s needed in the crazy hodgepodge of the Midway area is a broader vision to include vast parks and recreation, along with low-rise lower-cost housing and commercial centers that could even embrace another sports arena.
Myriad apartment towers without provision for parking at the intersection of I-8 and I-5 would create a tremendous traffic snarl to the east and to the west and public access to the ocean at that point would be but a memory. Bidding on such redevelopment needs to be open and without insider dealing. These are some of the reasons why the Midway District “height relief” measure got shot down again in court. Let’s design better solutions within existing law, Mr. Bobbins.
Excellent piece. Thank you for sharing!