Nearly Impossible for Public to Participate in Last-Minute Legislative Procedure
By Donna Frye
On Sunday, August 30, a little after 3 p.m. the California State Assembly voted to support Senate Bill 344 (SB 344) and eliminate the public’s ability to challenge in court any unmitigated environmental impacts that may be caused by the Midway Rising project. The official vote was recorded as 72 Ayes, 2 Noes (Castillo and DeMaio) and 5 No Vote Recorded (Addis, Boerner, Connolly, Hart, Muratsuchi).
Shortly thereafter, the California State Senate followed suit and voted 39 to 0 to support SB 344.
It now goes to Governor Newsom for his signature or veto. He has until September 30 to do so.
SB 344 eliminated the public’s right to fully participate in the judicial system and shielded the City of San Diego from any legal challenges related to the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) documents for the project.
This legislation was driven, in large part, by the City of San Diego’s failure to prepare an adequate Environmental Impact Report for the Midway Rising project. The City of San Diego was sued in court and lost because of that failure.
It’s no surprise that you may not be aware of this legislation because it was brought forward at the last minute in a legislative procedure known as “gut and amend.” This procedure allows amendments to be made to legislation to remove the current contents in their entirety and replace them with different provisions.
Instead of going through the normal legislative process, the gut-and-amend procedure allows a last minute change to legislation that does not necessarily have anything to do with its original intent. This makes it next to impossible for the public to participate in a meaningful way because often times they have no idea it is even happening before it’s too late.
That’s what happened here. SB 344, a bill about the disposal of human remains at sea, was moving through the usual legislative process but was placed in the inactive file in July 2025. Then, in mid August, 2026, SB 344 was removed from the inactive file where it was gutted and amended for the Midway Rising project. Best as I can tell, there was no public hearing on the amended legislation until August 26 when it rose through the ashes.
What began as legislation about the disposal of human remains at sea turned into a shameful end run around the public process. The legislative branch of government eliminated the public’s ability to have full access to the judicial branch of government for the Midway Rising project.
So what can be done to address the gut-and-amend process and make it more difficult for Sacramento elected officials to do stinky stuff like this?
It seems to me that there needs to be a process that requires the California Legislative Counsel to prepare a written legal analysis in advance of a Assembly or Senate vote for any bill that uses the gut-and-amend process. Ensure that the analysis can be challenged by the public as to whether the change is germane to the original intent of the bill.
Currently, the legislators get to decide what is germane and they just showed us they can’t be trusted to make a reasonable or sensible decision about the meaning of the word.
I have yet to hear any of the elected officials who voted for SB 344 explain how the “burial of remains at sea” is related to a new sports arena and development project in San Diego. I suspect we won’t get that explanation any time soon, but I sure am tempted to ask some of them.
Open government matters and the public right to know and participate matters. But when those basic rights are circumvented and ignored, we need to do more than just throw out the current elected officials and elect someone new under the same old public -process -crushing rules. We need to change those rules and make sure that whoever is elected has to follow them.
That does not mean we should not stay fully engaged in the current public process that is available for the Midway Rising project because there is a lot that needs to be done and can be done. It also doesn’t mean we should not engage at the ballot box to hold our elected officials accountable for their votes.
We can stay involved by sending letters and emails, making phone calls and attending public hearings. We can educate ourselves about the myriad documents that will be discussed and voted on in the coming months and make sure to vote in every election.
But I believe there are additional actions we can take to prevent this type of legislative stunt from happening in the future; changing the gut-and-amend process seems like a good next step.
Thanks as always to Donna Frye for calling out this blatant corruption of the legislative process, which benefits a billionaire developer and his cronies, and the elected officials (including Mayor Todd Gloria) they fund with generous campaign contributions. Equally offensive is the fact that this special legislation deprives San Diegans of their legitimate option to mount a legal challenge against this very controversial Midway Rising project and its negative and irreversible environmental impacts.
Shame on Mayor Gloria, state legislators Chris Ward, Akilah Weber Pierson, and their colleagues who wrote and supported this reprehensible end-run around the a CEQA process, which was endorsed by the state Supreme Court, and the option of another legal challenge based on the City’s repeated refusal to perform a comprehensive analysis of the project’s environmental impacts.
Damn it! These people are giving Democrats a bad name. Gloria, Ward, Pierson.
and you’re finally waking up to that? Hah, that would be an excuse.
My words were dripping with sarcasm.
Really? Which of the 3 truthfully did you vote for the last go around?
I agree 100%. What galls me is the “Progressives” vendetta against CEQA and the height limit.
If anyone needed further confirmation that this is NOT the “power to the people” Democratic Party of the 60’s, 70’s, &80’s, look no further than this. Both established parties have become shills for well funded special interests. Embrace only politicians who oppose projects as Midway Rising. Hopefully people who will fight this trend can emerge, but if not, vote for the opposite party to EVERY supermajority to kick these extremists to the curb, in Federal, State, and Local elections.
I agree with your every word, Norman. Chris Ward is coming up for reelection in November. I will do my best to get him kicked to the curb. Let’s vote for Payton!!”
The local democratic party head is Kennedy-Rodriguez who is has a criminal past. But because he has a Hispanic last name, the local party thought he would get the Hispanic vote. The local party needs to understand we are an informed public and are not buying their tired ‘labels’ talk. None of this certifies anyone to be in public service. But decency does and someone who wants to serve the public no matter who they are, what their heritage is, who they love, or anything else. Tell me what you will do to help the community you were elected to serve and stop the label talk!
Couldn’t have said it better myself, Donna. You have identified a perfectly sensible and much needed reform to prevent this from happening again in the future: pressure must now be put on the Leg to clean up its act.
At this point, there is still a remote chance to get Gavin Newsom to veto both SB 958 and SB 344. People need to remind him both of his duty as a steward of the public’s trust — and as a politico with ambitions of his own that could be jeopardized by signing these bills.
Here’s part of what I sent him earlier today:
“I think it bears remembering that CEQA was passed in 1970 and signed into law by Republican Gov. Ronald Reagan.
The realization that it is Democrats who are militating to dismantle it — specifically in this instance, to reward the developer of this project, who was Mayor Gloria’s single largest campaign contributor, and avoid environmental scrutiny — is exactly what CEQA was intended to prevent and should rightly appall those of us who still identify as Democrats.
I ask that please consider your legacy should you be the one associated with ending the quality of life, safety and citizen empowerment that CEQA has provided to all Californians for over 56 years.”
Right on: Changing what’s wrong with a rule-making mechanism that allows legislation to pass in this way is essential. I’m writing our governor not only to ask him to veto SB 958 and SB 344 (guided by Mat’s argument) but, additionally, to leave a positive legacy instead by advocating for reform of the gut-and-amend process.
I know that Frank will edit my last email because it says some negative things about the local dem party which I know is off limits but I hope you won’t edit this:
Write Gavin Newsome and tell him to Veto SB 344. It was created and ends with corruption. Save our democracy and write Newsome today. https://www.gov.ca.gov/ click the Contact tab and use ‘other’ in the subject line since SB 344 has not been registered on the portal yet.
Done. Thanks for the link. A “Trumpian ploy” to say the least.
The people of San Diego voted to approve this twice. It’s laughable to claim that repeatedly trying to overturn the will of the voters is acting in the public interest.
Which were both overturned by the courts for misleading voters by not providing the analysis of the environmental impact. Is this guy new? Measure C was repealed last week, keep laughing.
Yes, Mike, you are correct, and thanks for explaining that the state courts, (twice) and the state Supreme Court (once), ruled unanimously that the City failed to complete a comprehensive Environmental Impact Report that fully documents the significant and irreversible negative impacts of the proposed Midway Rising development. As a result, voters and city council members were deprived of the knowledge they needed to make an informed decision about the pros and cons of waiving the 30 foot height limit in the Midway/Pt. Loma corridor. The city owes it to all of us to complete a comprehensive EIR that can withstand a legitimate legal challenge, should it come to that. This special legislation was crafted to provide special extra-legal protections to a billionaire developer and his cronies, who have undue influence with our Mayor and other elected officials. And that’s reprehensible perversion of the democratic process.
I would love to briefly talk about another kind of “reprehensible perversion of the democratic process” Paul. I also want to be clear I am, unlike almost everyone else in these comment sections, someone who lives off of West Point Loma Blvd., so yes, this is actually my backyard.
Jon McNab certainly has some unique ideas. He originally wanted to stop the development of Liberty Station and turn the former NTC into “homeless shelters and soup kitchens” that included “8,800 beds and dining facilities capable of serving over 120,000 meals per day” per the Voice of San Diego. He told the Times of San Diego last year that he was worried a new apartment building would “bring in ‘young singles’ to a family-oriented neighborhood.” He continues to believe that Midway is a beachfront neighborhood despite the Sports Arena being nearly 3 miles away from the ocean.
Another thing he has is money. For over 20 years Jon McNab has used his seemingly unlimited resources to bend the City of San Diego to his will through lawsuits. In the early 00’s McNab filed three lawsuits to stop the redevelopment of Liberty Station, one of which he settled for $100,000 with Corky McMillan’s insurance company. He sued the city of San Diego to stop the creation of a maintenance assessment district in his neighborhood (after the creation of the MAD had been approved by the community). He’s suing to stop an apartment building from going up in Golden Hill. He’s set up multiple one man non-profits, The Golden Hill Neighborhood Association, Save our NTC and of course, Save our Access, his latest vehicle to sue and stop progress and make it seem he’s representing a movement, not just himself.
Save our Access was the formal opponent to both Measure E in 2020 and Measure C in 2022. His cause lost both times. Instead of allowing democracy to take it’s course, he sued, and sued, and sued again to get his preferred outcome through Save our Access, where he is the only public member of the organization. He did this to, per a Voice of San Diego article, save the views of those in Mission Hills. (“‘It’s like stadium seating. If someone stands up in front of you, you can’t see the field,’ said Everett DeLano, an attorney representing Save Our Access in the lawsuit.” said in that piece.) He wants to build a park that has no funding instead, but really just wants to keep everything exactly as it is.
Measure E passed in 2020 by a margin of 13 points, Measure E passed in 2022 by nearly 4. Both times hundreds of thousands of San Diegans said yes to this question “Shall People’s Ordinance O-10960 be amended to exclude the Midway-Pacific Highway Community Plan area, which includes the Sports Arena, from the 30-foot height limit on buildings in the Coastal Zone, with any future development still required to comply with other governing laws?” Despite the howls of discontent from this website, each time people in San Diego looked at the Midway district and said “yeah, we can do better.”
Meanwhile McNab has never attempted, beyond starting one person non-profits, to represent anything but his own ideas. He’s been doing this longer than any councilmember or mayor or elected official in the region, just a man with deep pockets, willing to write checks without ever having to face the public with his ideas. For all the talk of those nefarious developers and backroom deals, how can we not mention one man’s ability to consistently gum up the works for decades? It’s as big of a scandal as anything else that get’s people’s attention here.
McNab doesn’t get to have a personal veto over progress just because he has unlimited sums to spend on oveturning the results of an election he doesn’t like.
For all the talk of Gloria on this website, his actions are the most Trumpian of all. I’m glad that our elected officials are listening to the people – the MAJORITY OF SAN DIEGANS – who said “yes, we can do better” in a decrepit part of our town and not let one man stand in the way of a better future for San Diego.
They really have nothing, look at the desperation. Deliberately ignores the point of the comments, that voters were lied to in order to pass those measures which were just repealed by court order. Understand? Just a bunch of blah blah character assassination low tier slop. Hoooooooowwwwwwwl.
The point of the comments and the crusade against a revitalized Midway is to overturn the will of the voters by any means necessary. Paul even says above “Equally offensive is the fact that this special legislation deprives San Diegans of their legitimate option to mount a legal challenge against this very controversial Midway Rising project and its negative and irreversible environmental impacts.” The whole idea here is the side that lost the election wants to win through “reprehensible perversion of the democratic process”, aka frivilous lawsuits that stop this city from building the affordable housing all of you talk about.
Just say “I don’t want anything to change”, at least that’s what McNab says!
Any lawsuit filed by attorneys who have pursue this issue would not be “frivolous.” They have never filed a “frivolous“ lawsuit on this issue. The state Supreme Court unanimously upheld the appeals court decision that the city’s EIR was inadequate. And before that ruling, another court had made the same determination on an earlier and equally inadequate EIR. All the City had to do was perform an adequate EIR that studied all the impacts and provided that information to voters and to the decision makers at the city council. Instead, the mayor sought and got special legislation that benefits a billionaire developer (and his own political ambitions) to insulate this very controversial project from legitimate environmental review and possible legal challenges resulting from yet another purposely inadequate EIR. I don’t understand why the city refuses to follow the courts ruling and guidance and commission a legitimate EIR.
Huh? The lawsuits were legitimate hence the rulings. Do you really not get that? Next time put on the ballot 25 story buildings in a 30ft height zone, which was the will of the people in a citizen driven measure since 1972, tack on a decade of obscene construction, July 4th like traffic everyday going to the beach and getting out in emergencies, no more Kobey Swap Meet, total and extreme transformation of an area spearheaded by an out of town billionaire with bought politicians, not to mention most of the ‘yes’ votes were from outside areas unaffected. Apartments are already going up all around Midway, look at the old Post Office, the 7 story going up at the old Perry’s Cafe, and the potential Nanwar redevelopment towers coming. There can be change without it being extreme change and that is a perfectly reasonable position for people who live and grew up in these areas to hold. Representative democracy is also about protecting the minority from the tyranny of the majority. Wrong project for this area, take it elsewhere, protect the San Diego we love.
Agree!
Okay, you’re veering off a discussion of the issues and are targeting a particular person and are getting repetitive.
The appeallate court and state Supreme Court justices don’t know or care who John McNabb is.
Their rulings were based on the facts and the case law.
And John McNabb is not the presumptive plaintiff that the Stan Kroenke, Brad Termini, and Todd Gloria are so concerned about that they engineered this end-run around established environmental law.
This is from a March, 2026 UT story:
“A letter sent last week to San Diego leaders asserts that the environmental analysis for the Midway Rising project is legally flawed, and will, if approved, not only lead to additional gridlock in the area but force taxpayers to bear the brunt of infrastructure needs because of the limited scope of study.
The legal letter, addressed to Mayor Todd Gloria and San Diego City Council members, identifies six areas where the project’s state-mandated environmental impact report is described as substantially deficient. The most severe omission is said to be the report’s failure to evaluate the cumulative impacts of the anticipated redevelopment of the Navy’s nearby NAVWAR property.
The letter comes in the weeks leading up to the report’s presumed certification by the council members, which would pave the way for the city’s sports arena real estate in the Midway District to be remade with thousands of apartments and a new entertainment venue.
The letter was written by Kathryn Pettit, an attorney with Chatten-Brown Law Group, on behalf of her clients, J. Keith Behner and Catherine Stiefel of Point Loma. The couple hired the law firm, as well as a traffic engineer, during the environmental review process to study the documents as they became increasingly alarmed about the project’s long-term implications for congestion, Behner told the Union-Tribune.”
https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/2026/03/03/letter-disputes-legality-of-midway-rising-environmental-analysis/
If Mayor Gloria and his allies on the City Council and in the state legislature want to overturn CEQA and Proposition D, they should put it on the ballot, not carve out special exemptions for billionaire developers whose generous campaign contributions helped Gloria and his allies win elections (and re-elections).
All the while the City of San Diego was hiding that SDSU had offered their Mission Valley site for a Sports Arena. A site well served by mass transit which Midway lacks. Oops… can’t let the public have all the information during an election cycle. There was money involved.
Right On Donna. This tactic is older than my neighbors dog and just as stinky. Year after year they use it to vaccum up “awkward” legislation and move it along. These are laws they don’t like talking about to the media or citizens until its a done deal I recognize the last minute sweeping is sometimes needed but this is wrong. Its dishonest and unfair to the citizens they are supposed to represent. It’s ingrained, unmovable and impervious to efforts to stop these practices.
It ain’t right…
We, the public, have been banned from participating in our own government laws and processes by the very politicians who the majority voted for.
I continue to do what Donna has suggested, write to your representative, show up, don’t give up. But with these two State Bills , they have made it very clear, our needs don’t mount to a hill of beans.
Thank you, Donna, for giving us this road map to restore democracy. Public fury has whipsawed Gloria, and the same should happen to Ward and Weber Pierson, who have brazenly sold out their constituents. We need to keep a close eye on everything these two do. And we need to intensify the fight to stop Midway Rising.
Great article and comments. Hard to believe today this is still exists- Under federal law, specifically 18 U.S.C. § 201, an explicit quid pro quo—giving, offering, or receiving anything of value to influence an official act—constitutes criminal bribery.
Thanks, Donna. Not sure if anyone else mentioned it, but there was an accompanying bill to SB 344, SB 958 which was approved the same day. SB 958 specifies that increased building height alone cannot be considered a significant environmental impact under CEQA for certain projects. This has the potential for great harm to public views of the California Coast. This piece of legislation covers the entire state, not just Midway Rising. It was written by the authors of SB 344.
Along with SB 344, the same bad actors wrote and then passed an additional bill, SB 958 which “specifies that increased building height alone cannot be considered a significant environmental impact under CEQA for certain projects. This bill applies to the entire State of California and poses a direct threat to the Coastal Commission’s ability to deny a project based on its impact to public views of the coast.
Let me offer a dissent here, because I think two separate things are getting welded together in this thread.
The gut-and-amend was bad process. I’ll say that plainly. A bill about burial at sea becoming Midway legislation in August with one hearing is exactly the kind of thing that corrodes trust, and Donna is right to go after the mechanism. But bad process on the last step doesn’t retroactively make the project bad, and that’s the leap most of these comments are making.
So look at what’s actually being built. The Midway Rising Specific Plan is roughly 4,254 homes on the 49-acre city-owned Sports Arena site, including up to 2,000 affordable units — deed-restricted at 80% AMI or below — plus 8 acres of public parks and 6.4 acres of public space. It’s one of the largest affordable housing commitments in state history. This site is city-owned. It’s currently an arena and a parking lot.
Frank, you’ve written repeatedly that the problem isn’t a housing crisis but an affordable housing crisis. Fine — this is 2,000 income-restricted units. Not trickle-down, not “build baby build.” Deed-restricted, on public land. If that project isn’t the one, name the one that is, and name where it goes.
On the 30-foot limit: Prop D passed in 1972 to protect coastal views. The Sports Arena site is inland, behind Sports Arena Blvd, roughly three miles from the water, surrounded by big-box retail and surface parking. There is no ocean view being protected there. The limit applies because of where a line was drawn on a map fifty-four years ago, not because of anything you can see from that parcel. That’s the definition of arbitrary. And San Diego voters said so twice — Measure E in 2020, Measure C in 2022. Both passed.
Mike B — the appellate ruling found the city’s environmental review inadequate on visual impacts. That’s a procedural defect in paperwork. It is not a court finding that voters were lied to or that the buildings would harm anyone. Those are different things and conflating them is doing a lot of work in this thread.
And “protecting the minority from the tyranny of the majority” — a building height cap is not a civil right. The people with the strongest claim to protection here are the 2,000 households who’d be housed and currently have no seat in this conversation because they don’t live in Point Loma yet.
Push hard on the gut-and-amend. Demand the EIR. Both are legitimate. But the underlying argument — 4,254 homes, half of them affordable, on a public parking lot, three miles inland — is one the Rag’s own stated values should support. Unless theres some sort of deep rooted attachment to the Chic-fil-a that sits there?
Javier, thanks for your “dissent.” It’s not dissent if it’s the prevailing view — which it is. You line up perfectly with Gloria, Ward, Weber Pierson — who have all the power here along with their buddies in Sac. Donna Frye is the true dissenter here, so you’re dissenting from the dissent.
There’s a time line here that you’re not dealing with. It’s not like the developers will wave their magic wands and poof! 2,000 “affordable homes” will show up. They’ll be in stages and the affordable ones are down the road, susceptible to wavering funding sources. So, who knows if they’ll ever be built. Avg income in SD? $108,000, so 80% of that is $86.4K. So, unless you have a two-working household, good luck with that. Most of the housing to be built will be market rate — and there’s no hole in those kind of housing.
And then there’s that terrible boogeyman than nobody in the mainstream is dealing with. Infrastructure. Then there’s the sealevel and water level rise in the Midway, building on sand, liquefaction. Oh, not to mention the redevelopment of that other project just down the road — NAVWAR. No one in the establishment is dealing with the combined impacts of both these redevelopment projects, Midway Rising and NAVWAR. There’s an estimated 50,000 new residents being planned for this area. There is not the infrastructure. (Rosecrans is already a parking lot twice a day.)
Then there’s the 1972 popular votes, which you just carelessly toss aside like they’re nothing and proclaim, ‘well, the people voted, let’s follow the will of the people!’ What about the people’s will in 1972 which was overwhelmingly in favor of the 30 foot height limit and obviously if you want to play a nuumbers game, easily overwhelms whatever votes you like to mention. People knew what they were voting for back then and knew clearly that the sports arena area was within the coastal zone. And BTW, look at a map, Javier, and see how close that area is to the San Diego River and Mission Bay. These are coastal waters, my friend.
Nice response with one more point. With all the traffic generated with the general area currently, why is there a need for another arena gumming things up (that isn’t large enough for a pro team to begin with, as if that’s an excuse)? What truly is the point there? The I-8 & I-5 interchange is a horrendous bottleneck. The placement of the ramps and columns, there is no simple fix. Drilling 20ft down for the trolley electric poles just north of old town was enough of a mess with underground water caving the holes. This El Nino is going to paint a picture that may cause pause if as strong as predicted.
Frank, Mat, Chris — a few things.
On the vote math. You say 1972 “easily overwhelms” 2020 and 2022. The Rag’s own reporting says otherwise: 350,855 people voted yes on Measure E in 2020, while 294,975 people voted in total on Prop D in 1972. Prop D’s 63.06% worked out to 186,007 yes votes. So more San Diegans voted to lift the limit in Midway than voted on Prop D at all — in either direction. Percentages are flattering when the city was a third of its current size. If we’re playing the numbers game you invited me to play, you lost it in your own archive.
On the coastal zone. The Rag’s own history of Prop D says the organizers “saw I-5 as a division between the east and the coastal zone” and picked 30 feet because 80% of the city already had a 30-foot limit. That’s an honest account of a reasonable shortcut in 1970. It is not a site-specific view study of a parking lot on Sports Arena Blvd. Yes, I looked at a map. I looked at it before I commented, which is why I know nobody is watching the sun set over the Pacific from the Chuck E. Cheese.
Mat, on the density bonus floor — you’re right, 25% is the requirement. Midway Rising is 2,000 of 4,254. Roughly 47%. You have just carefully explained that the project offers nearly double what the law compels, and presented this as a problem. And yes, the number came with contingencies. So write enforceable affordability milestones into the ground lease and hold them to it. Phasing risk is an argument for conditions, not for zero.
Frank, on the AMI math — you took an average income figure, multiplied by 0.8, and called it a day. That’s not how AMI works. It’s a HUD figure set by household size, and 80% is the ceiling of the range, not the target. Chelsea builds with tax credits, which require far deeper affordability — 30%, 50%, 60%. You picked the most expensive unit in the stack and described it as all of them.
Chris, on the arena — there is an arena there. Right now. Today. Generating event traffic onto the same interchange. Replacing a 1966 building with a smaller one isn’t adding a new traffic generator to the map.
On infrastructure and NAVWAR — this is the strongest thing anyone has said in this thread and I won’t pretend otherwise. Cumulative impacts of both projects deserve a real programmatic analysis, and Paul’s call for a serious traffic, hydrology, and transit study is fair. So do it. But the remedy for “we haven’t studied the combined impact” is studying the combined impact — not freezing a strip-club district at 30 feet forever and calling that environmentalism.
And Frank — pointing out that I agree with Gloria on one thing doesn’t make it wrong. Broken clocks. I’ve also said the gut-and-amend was garbage, which puts me alongside Donna. Two things can be true.
Last thing. You closed with “my friend.” Friends don’t decide someone’s politics for them because they disagreed on one land use question, and friends don’t quietly edit each other’s comments before publishing them. Pick one — the collegial sign-off or the moderation. Right now you’re doing both, and only one of them shows up on the page.
One thing Javier about the numbers. The % of voters who voted for Prop D is way over those who voted recently; you can’t compare voting numbers divided by half a century without the context; that’s like Trump saying more Americans are working “now than ever before,” — why? because there’s more Americans now, dummy Trummy.
Okay, you’re agin the gut-and-amend process. Good.
On my closing … just being polite. Could have said, ‘Figure it out yourself, asshole! — Don’t waste my time.’
Chris, on the arena — there is an arena there. Right now. Today. Generating event traffic onto the same interchange. Replacing a 1966 building with a smaller one isn’t adding a new traffic generator to the map.
LOL, a smaller building? This is 3000 more seats, for what? The 4250 units being developed? Besides the circus and some monster trucks what is the return on a 16,000 seat arena? Disney, Gulls games and regurgitated musicians reviving their careers? Put the equation together, 50,000 more people in the surrounding area with patchwork transit and likely no parking. There were people tossing around 4 billion to link the trolley to the airport. You’d think this would be an attempt to make something worthwhile and conjoin the two at least. Do so homework if you want to dismiss/ rebuff me.
Chris, Pechanga Arena is 77 feet tall. Built in 1966, six years before Prop D. So the building at the dead center of this whole height-limit fight has been more than double the limit its entire life, and in fifty-four years nobody has once suggested lopping it down to 30 feet to save the view. Apparently this sacred principle only applies to housing.
When the Planning Commission approved this unanimously in September 2025, they attached an amendment requiring the transit improvements be built in phase one, not promised for later. That’s the exact condition you’re demanding. Congratulations, you won that one before you asked.
BTW, the arena isn’t what’s being converted to housing. The parking lot is. Forty-nine acres, most of it asphalt, currently doing nothing for anybody but the seagulls, the occasional event and Kobeys Swapmeet.
You’re proposing an airport transit hub, instead to make it “worthwhile” which sounds nice in theory but the airport connection is a SANDAG project. Midway Rising is a city ground lease with a private developer. SANDAG had the NAVWAR plan and walked away from it in 2022. That’s a real failure, and nobody at Chelsea or Legends had a vote in it.
A trolley to the airport wouldn’t fix your problem anyway. That project moves air travelers. It does nothing for someone living in Midway and working in Kearny Mesa. What that corridor needs is local frequency and a real link to the Blue Line at Old Town, which is why the Planning Commission required transit improvements in phase one instead of letting them be promised for later.
And transit follows density, not the reverse. Agencies fund rail where riders already are. A parking lot generates no ridership case, ever. Keep it at 30 feet and the corridor is just as unqualified for transit money in 2050 as it is today.
Not sure what youre real suggestion for this underutilized land is… unless it’s keeping a 1966 arena and its parking lot staying exactly as they are, which does solve the traffic problem, I’ll grant you… by making sure nobody has a reason to go there in the first place.
And the new arena is planned to be 165 ft tall, so double the old one and then some. What’s was your point? Mine is a new arena is worthless unless it’s to occasionally clog the area further. Not sure why Viejas would want events syphoned off of them. Build the housing without the arena, keep the height limit, and improve the infrastructure, particularly the traffic.
In 1966 the City was smart enough to build the Sports Arena on a structural Bathtub Foundation to future-proof against Sea Level Rise (SLR), flooding, and inundation, and get rid of the seismic hazard of liquefaction. To enter the Sports Arena you have to climb up stairs, and then the stadium floor level seems to be below grade, and has additional basement levels below the water table. In 60 years the Sport Arena structural Bathtub Foundation has worked. The solution for Midway Rising is to build another structural Bathtub Foundation to at least the same level at the existing Sports Area. Problem solved, plus the subterranean space can be used for parking.
Back in 1938, the County Administration Center (CAC) along Pacific Highway and Harbor Drive was built on the same reclaimed saltwater marshland as Midway Rising, using the same type of structural Bathtub Foundation as the Sports Arena.
Now 88 years later the City of San Diego is playing stupid and trying to allow for heavy high-rise structures for Midway Rising to be built on 5 feet of additional compressible fill using cheap at-grade mat foundations in order to save the developer money. Any problems with future flooding or inadequate foundations will be paid for by City taxpayers, not developers.
That was an artful attempt at spin. But it still doesn’t pass the sniff test.
Although you recognize that the issues of ‘gut and amend’ and the need for an EIR are dispositive of how crooked this scheme has been, you end up saying in effect the ends justify the means, as the result will be “4,254 homes, half of them affordable”.
This isn’t just counting chickens before the eggs have been hatched. It’s counting the chickens before any eggs have been laid.
As this is public land, you’re correct that a tranche of deed-restricted affordable units are required in any development of public land. But the state Density Bonus Law requires only 25% of the units need to meet this threshold — not half.
As I and others pointed out at the time, the Termini team stated at the outset that their number came with a huge asterisk: “subject to land lease terms, land use, regulatory and entitlement approvals, infrastructure costs, gap financing availability, financial feasibility, legal validity of the increased height limit initiative and successful litigation filed against the project approvals”. https://obrag.org/2022/08/midway-rising-and-the-fall-of-san-diego/
All of which is to say that the real reason the Termini team (with zero experience with anything remotely as large and complex as a redevelop the size of the Sports Arena site) was chosen over the two good-faith teams with this experience and more realistic upfront numbers, boils down to Termini family members being the largest ‘individual’ financial contributors to Todd Gloria’s political ambitions.
So, no end is justified by these means. Your argument amounts to nothing more than putting lipstick on a pig. You might be willing to kiss the final result, but I’ll pass.
You’re correct on this, Matt. I think the city council needs to take a pause on approving this development/lease, rethink the density and need for an arena, fully and transparently discuss the negative impacts on traffic, infrastructure, parking, transit and hydrology, before approving any lease/development agreement.
But bad process on the last step doesn’t retroactively make the project bad, and that’s the leap most of these comments are making.
On this note, I’d say it is a bad project. There seems to be a raid with public lands to private development, circumventing the taxpayers, in the name of affordable housing, let alone environmental rules. There is a history where the Chargers tried to use the city for their means, and the public said no. And this Midway Rising is another reincarnation of that process.