Serving OB, the Peninsula and San Diego Beaches
The owner of a 3-level home designed by renowned San Diego architect, Robert Quigley, has placed the property on the market. It’s called “the OB del House” and the building sits off an alley in the 4600 block of Del Monte Avenue in Ocean Beach.
It has 3-bedrooms, 2 1/4-baths in 2,113 sq. ft. on a 7,000 square foot lot. The seller / realtor offers the building in glowing terms, naturally:
Before the community of Point Loma says adios to that patch of dirt along Famosa and near Nimitz — that’s been called various names over the years, like the “Famosa Pump Track” and more recently “Famosa Canyon” — there has to be some kind of reckoning with its history.
Here is an edited version of Katie Mae B’s “Some History of the Dirt & Kids at the Famosa Pump Track – With Plenty of Questions Remaining,” posted on the Rag March 19, 2019.
At the Famosa Open Space pump track, what makes it a perfect place is “the dirt,” — The unique mix of dirt, sand and organic materials,” locals say. Two of these locals have been active in Famosa Open Space pump track at different points over a few decades and with the same core group. Now [in 2019] they are a part of the larger group working together to save the whole space.
Ever since Measure E failed, the one-cent sales tax, City Hall observers and critics have been carefully watching what Mayor Todd Gloria and the City Council do in terms of the budget and any potential cuts. Reportedly, there’s more than $1 billion budget deficit over the next five years.
About a month ago, Axios San Diego published a post that was astounding because it encapsulated ideas and concerns of Michael Zucchet, head of the Municipal Employees Association, who made a presentation to the council’s budget committee around that time. (Zucchet used to sit on the City Council representing what’s now District 2, Point Loma and OB, so he’s well aware of how the budget process works.)
Zucchet’s main issue was the astronomical growth of nonunion managers over the last decade, who earn higher pay and give the mayor more flexibility over their employment.
Simply put: there’s just too many middle managers. Check these numbers out.
The San Diego City Council has a new president and it’s Councilmember Joe LaCava who represents District 1 – which includes the north side of Mission Bay. LaCava, who has a history of community activism, wants to put a stop to the nightly fireworks that SeaWorld shoots off. He told Voice of San Diego:
“Fireworks, night after night, is something that has to end. It’s one thing to do Fourth of July or start of the summer season shows, but 150 nights a year is just way beyond.”
LaCava also told the Voice that laser or light shows via drone could be a viable substitute. And actually, five years ago, SeaWorld did just that — it held a light show using 500 drones.
In addition LaCava pledged to work with the city’s legal team after the first of the year to see how the city could limit fireworks under its 50-year lease agreement with SeaWorld which sunsets in 2048.
Now that the City of San Diego is making noises once again about developing the land over the historic industrial landfill along the southern end of Mission Bay, it’s time for the Rag once again to remind residents of what lies beneath the sands and dirt of what’s called “South Shores.”
These noises came to light just recently with Union-Tribune front bench writer, David Garrick’s piece January 5th and 6th entitled, “Can a once-toxic shoreline solve Mission Bay’s recreation needs? San Diego readies rival visions for South Shores.”
Garrick was indeed alluding to the dump that activists two decades believed was toxic. He wrote:
Development of South Shores, just east of Sea World and just south of Fiesta Island, has been delayed for decades by concerns over its history — industrial waste was dumped there in the 1950s.
Originally published April 5, 2017
It was the 1980 presidential election and Republican Ronald Reagan – the governor of California – was running against the incumbent, Democrat Jimmy Carter. And in 1980 a foreign country intruded into our election –the nation of Iran.
What was going on internationally was key to the context of the presidential election. For a year before the 1980 election- in early November 1979 – 52 Americans were seized and held hostage in the American Embassy in Tehran, the capital of Iran.
Because of decades of US intervention into Iranian affairs and due to our crucial support for the dictator, Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi, the Shah of Iran, when the Iranian Revolution broke out in 1979, in retaliation for those deadly years of American monetary and military support for the Shah, one wing of the revolution seized the hostages.
It was a huge crisis for the Carter administration. The nightly news channels had those constant tickers counting the number of days the hostages had been held. And as the hostage crisis carried over into the presidential campaign, candidate Reagan hammered Carter for his failure to resolve the international crisis that the captivity of the hostages represented.
Amid all the laudatory and respectful accounts of former President Jimmy Carter in today’s press — he just passed away at the age of 100 — one key thing is missing in all the biographies of the Habitat for Humanity builder of affordable houses that was not covered — or even mentioned. And it was something that turned off an entire generation of college students to the peanut farmer-turned politician.
Carefully reading both the 6 pages of today’s Union-Tribune and the multiple pages at the LA Times tributes to Carter, there was not one mention, not one word of this Carter move that ruined his reputation among the young.
During late 1979, Carter called for the re-instituting of the military draft for all young Americans — during an era where relations with the Soviet Union were tearing thin and there was much saber-rattling in our country. The draft for the Vietnam war had ended in 1973 — and now, a mere 6 years later, Carter wanted it back. And in doing so, he caused the creation of a nation-wide and militant anti-draft movement that formed as a direct result of his fomenting another round of US militarism.
Immediately, anti-draft groups formed and held demonstrations against Carter and his draft amid calls to resist.
San Diego was no different. College and university students were the first group to mobilize in the new movement, other than longtime peaceniks who had paused their activism after the Vietnam war had ended.
The development team that was selected by the Navy to redevelop the 70.3-acre NAVWAR facility has released a preliminary project summary to the City and we can now have a glimpse of what they’re planning.
Recall that when the Navy first released its 2021 draft environmental impact statement, it caused quite a roar of pushback because it showed buildings as high as 350 feet. The pushback — the City and Navy called it “a panic” — was substantial enough for the federal agency to put the federal environmental work on hold.
U-T reporter Jennifer von Grove wrote:
Last month, the development team led by San Diego-based Manchester Financial Group and McLean, Virginia-based Edgemoor Infrastructure and Real Estate submitted a preliminary project summary to the city of San Diego. The draft document is a precursor to starting California’s mandated environmental review process, which is expected to begin early next year. San Diego will be the lead agency for the state environmental work.
The document, obtained by the Union-Tribune, details that the mixed-use project calls for:
Opponents of Building in Famosa Canyon Once Characterized as ‘Racist’ NIMBYs
By Frank Gormlie
Is the battle over Famosa Canyon over?
The City of San Diego, the City Council and the Housing Authority believe so. The Housing Authority on Tuesday, December 17, approved the sale of Famosa Canyon to Bridge Housing Corporation, to build more than 70 affordable housing units. The vote was 9 to 0.
This clears the way for three affordable housing buildings, each three stories high.
Yet, this lot on the corner of Nimitz and Famosa boulevards has been at the center of controversy for years. Some saw it as a tug of war between the need to preserve open space and the need for affordable housing.
Local residents and neighbors have been fighting the sale of the land to … anyone … for many years. The lot is considered a community treasure and local kids use it as a bike track, crafted by neighbors for many a moon. People have circulated petitions, set up an opposition website, contacted their local councilperson, gone to the local planning board meetings — all seemingly in vain. At one meeting, Housing Commission members called opponents of any project there “racist” NIMBYs.
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Former San Diego Mayor Jerry Sanders announced earlier in the month that he would be retiring at the end of the year as the head of the San Diego Regional Chamber of Commerce and, as he has been lauded, “capping a career of public service of more than 50 years.”
It’s true that Jerry Sanders has had quite a career — most of it, yes, in the public arena that began in 1973 when he joined the San Diego Police Department. Twenty years later he became Chief. He retired as Chief in 1999 and then headed the United Way of San Diego and then the local Red Cross in 2003. Sanders first ran for elected office in 2005 for San Diego Mayor — and won. He had two terms as Mayor and then went on to lead the Chamber where he’s been for the last 12 years.
The Chamber is and always has been quite a partisan (Republican) establishment network of powerful business and corporate interests — and Jerry became its face for over a decade — but it’s difficult to call that “public service.” But still ….
So, with his retirement from public service, Jerry has built quite a legacy.
Yet, from a progressive point of view, that legacy is a checkered one — and now stands as a warning to our current mayor, Todd Gloria. This appraisal will not follow the lavish praise Jerry Sanders has achieved from most media and press since his announcement — you may have guessed that by now.
But no, Sanders does have a checkered history with San Diego — and two events — stand out to cloud the shiny armor of a retiring public knight.
The outlook for America is very dismal if Trump carries through on his threats to deport millions of undocumented people – which he made again this week in a TV interview.
Specifically, California’s agriculture will close down if the people who pick the vegetables and fruits are removed from the fields. And, notably, the costs of those foods will skyrocket, even if offset by the missing mouths of those deported.
Since the pandemic, foreign-born workers have taken positions in such sectors as construction, agriculture, technology and health care, fields where domestic labor supply has been a challenge for those looking to hire. Immigrant workers made up 18.6% of the workforce last year, a new record, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data.
From 2021 to 2023, 1 in 3 workers in California were immigrants, according to the California Budget & Policy Center. Certain sectors, such as agriculture, are closely watching developments on immigration plans, as the industry has increasingly relied on H-2A workers on temporary visas to fill roles in production.
Plus, there would be a ripple effects from deportation, such as the closure of farms in the state and the reliance on importing food from overseas due to a dwindling labor force. That means higher costs to the consumer.
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