Category: Economy

Players Have Begun Petition to Restore Hours

By Michael Hernandez

A group of pickleball players are waving their paddles in frustration after a reduction of hours at the North Clairemont Recreation Center leaves them without a court to play on.

New hours of operation, as part of city council-approved budget cuts, went into effect for at least 16 different rec centers in San Diego at the end of last month, including at the North Clairemont Rec Center at Officer Austin Machitar Memorial Park.

For years, a tight-knit band of pickleball players have called the facility home, taking advantage of the free pickleball lessons offered every Tuesday and Thursday at 9 a.m. and the open-play from 10:30 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. However, under the new schedule, hours of operation would drop from 60 down to 40 hours, and the center would not open on Tuesdays and Thursdays  until 2 p.m., virtually eliminating their routine morning games.

By Kate Callen

When my sister and I were children, we loved making Christmas wish lists: pedal-powered mini-cars, two-story dollhouses. But we understood that Santa had to provide for a world full of kids and we wouldn’t get everything we wanted.

Rational people faced with limited resources set realistic expectations. So why do Balboa Park planners keep inviting San Diegans to envision upgrades this cash-strapped city can’t afford? Why ask the public to sit through two years of presentations and workshops that will only raise false hopes? Why not revisit the original 1989 Balboa Park Master Plan to learn about valuable ideas that were never implemented?

These issues surfaced when the latest Balboa Park Master Plan Update kicked off at the September 3 meeting of the Balboa Park Committee. In a 45-minute presentation, San Diego Planning Director Heidi Von Blum and her team slow-walked the Balboa Park Club’s capacity audience through a 35-page slideshow.

People new to park planning might have been bewildered by the mash-up of abstractions: from “vision and guiding principles” to “conceptual framework” to “priorities and phases.” For those of us who have participated in Balboa Park presentations, studies, surveys, and workshops over decades of steady park decline, the slideshow resurrected ghosts of failures past.

By Tanja Kropf / Explore Clairemont / Sept. 2, 2026

Linda Vista has always been a scrappy neighborhood, fighting to avoid being overlooked, with fiercely loyal residents leading the charge to protect their home turf. One of Linda Vista’s earliest scrappy residents was a woman who fought the pending evictions of Linda Vista’s public housing residents and led the way for them to become proud homeowners instead.

[Please go to original for all the great links.]

A neighborhood of small homes and big dreams
Besides being a Linda Vista resident, Margaret Hottell was the editor and founder of the local newspaper, the Linda Vista Reflector. In 1952, she used it as the platform for her movement to keep her neighbors, who were military and defense workers, in the homes they’d lived in for a decade. The Defense Housing Act of 1951 had recently passed, allowing the enforcement of certain guidelines that were squeezing residents like the Hottells out of their homes.

Housing in Linda Vista was erected at a fever pace in the early 1940s. Despite the City of San Diego’s objections, the federal government pushed forward, building thousands of homes as World War II raged on. San Diego’s population had exploded 67% from 1939 to 1945, and military families and employees of local defense companies desperately needed homes. The federal government chose Linda Vista because the land was cheap, vacant, and easy to acquire. The Linda Vista Housing Project became the largest low-income defense housing project in the world.

By Debbie L. Sklar / Special to the OB Rag

In 1925, a trip through Point Loma could include a stop at the Point Loma Service Station on Rosecrans Street, where motorists could get their automobiles serviced while traveling on one of the peninsula’s main roads.

A photograph from that year, preserved by the San Diego History Center, shows two men working on an automobile outside the station. Their names aren’t recorded, but the image captures a time when the automobile was changing the way San Diegans traveled — and creating an entirely new type of neighborhood business.

Service stations were becoming familiar sights during the 1920s as automobile ownership expanded. Gasoline, repairs, and maintenance were no longer occasional needs for a small number of motorists. They were becoming part of everyday life.

Point Loma was well positioned for that transition. Rosecrans Street connected the peninsula with the rest of San Diego, making it an important route for motorists heading toward Point Loma and the military reservation at its western end.

The Point Loma Service Station became part of that automobile landscape.

Ongoing

Every Saturday at 10:30 am. San Diego Climate Mobilization Coalition Meetings. September 5th, 12th, 19th and 26th.

Every Saturday 10 am – 12 pm Peace Vigil for Palestine: Advocate for Peace and Justice in Gaza and Everywhere

September 2nd. Wednesday 6:30 pm – 9:30 pm Monthly Social for Makers, Tinkerers and Creatives Event by Zero Waste

September 3rd Thursday 10:30 am – 12 pm Trial by the People

September 4th Friday 5 pm – 9 pm San Diego Sustainable Night Market

September 5th Saturday.  12 pm- 1:50 pm Protest at Del Mar RaceTrack

It has begun. San Diego’s recent budget battle has now reached Ocean Beach and Point Loma.

It started on Saturday, August 29th — over a dozen San Diego recreation centers had their operating hours cut drastically — including the Ocean Beach Rec Center. Hours were cut from 60 to only 40 hours — that’s 33% — a third!

Other rec centers with these kind of cuts include La Jolla, Ocean Air, Pacific Beach, North Clairemont, Canyonside, Carmel Mountain Ranch/ Sabre Springs, Hilltop, Rancho Bernardo Glassman, Scripps Ranch Community, Kearny Mesa, Allied Gardens, and Tierrasanta.

These drops in a third of the hours opened were the results of the $118 million budget shortfall that the electeds couldn’t deal with. And they may mean that community groups – like the OB Planning Board – will have to find alternative locations.

After Lengthy Delays, the Project Will Turn Hundred Year Old Buildings into Restaurant, Marketplace, Game room and Wedding Venue

When restaurateur Ryan Thorsen, fresh off the acquisition and remodel of Mister A’s, began raising funds a couple of years ago for an ambitious makeover of the long vacant officers quarters at Liberty Station, he expected to have the $15 million project finished by this summer.

Summer has nearly come and gone, and the now $20 million hospitality complex known as The Admiral at Naval Training Center has yet to break ground. But the good news, says Thorsen, is the project remains very much alive, with financing nearly secured and an expected groundbreaking before the end of this year.

The Arts District Liberty Station, the major leaseholder and overseer of 26 of the 45 historic buildings at Liberty Station, is much encouraged by the progress Thorsen and his team have made — so much so that it expects to have a critical lease with the city signed in the coming months that would clear the way for the redevelopment to move forward.

No longer a pipe dream, the admittedly challenging project is well on its way to becoming a reality, says Lisa Johnson, CEO of the Arts District. That’s a promising prediction given that so many other skilled developers predating Thorsen have failed, she said, in their efforts to revive the 7-acre site fronting on Rosecrans.

by Nadia Lathan / Cal-Matters / August 31, 2026

Facing a shrinking budget, San Diego Mayor Todd Gloria made few commitments during his annual address to the city in January.

One of them was to win approval for a controversial plan to build a billionaire-backed professional sports stadium and a housing project in a long-vacant arena parking lot.

“Let me be crystal clear,” Gloria, a Democrat, said. “The redevelopment of the sports arena will move forward. We will get this done.”

He may finally fulfill that promise for California’s second-largest city, despite the 165 foot-tall structure vastly exceeding the neighborhood’s 30-foot building height cap.

In the final days of the legislative session, lawmakers Sunday approved a last-minute deal to fast-track construction for Midway Rising, a project to construct a 25-story professional arena, 4,250 housing units and nearly 15 acres of public parks. If signed by Gov. Gavin Newsom, the new law would immediately shield the planned development from potential environmental lawsuits.

It’s a break for San Diego officials whose ambitions for the city’s Midway District have been fraught with legal challenges for years, namely because of the California Environmental Quality Act.

The San Diego Community Coalition publishes this email bulletin to keep our members and the general public informed about important Council hearings and other city public meetings.

Monday, August 31: City Council, 2:00 p.m.

Agenda:

Item 200: Amend Sole Source Contract For OpenGov to Extend for One-Year Period with One-Year Option Renewal

Why it matters: On July 13, after the Independent Budget Analyst harshly criticized city staff for lack of due diligence in seeking competitive bids, the Council ordered staff to try again. This follow-up item should make for an interesting discussion.

By Mat Wahlstrom

It’s astonishing, the extent to which political norms and the rule of law have been perverted by an elected official who imagines himself a king and has a cabal of cronies and an entire political party enabling his madness.

There’s no level of government or public policy where he won’t intrude for personal gain, no grievance too petty to express, no punishment too harsh for those who oppose him. Any engagement with him that is less than fawning is met with insult (if not also litigious and/or paramilitary measures).

No one is allowed to tell him “No.”

But while a majority of Americans disapprove of the current federal regime for these reasons, what is interesting is how long it has taken people in San Diego to recognize a variant of this
same derangement in our “strong-arm mayor” form of government and his neoliberal party machine.

While I am certain that there are those at this point thinking this comparison is hyperbole, I contend that any difference in lawlessness is one of degree not of kind.

The rumblings were abundant in 2024. Todd Gloria’s ‘irrational exuberance’ in going on a hiring spree to fund a redundant layer of YIMBY-identifying city staffers as his personal enforcers finally ran into the iceberg of budget reality. Middle-manager positions swelled from 70 in 2011 to 393 today; and the personal cost of city services to individual San Diegans increased by 29% -or $346 more per year.

By Doug Poole

What is going on with 820 Fort Stockton? I’ll break it into sections for ease of reading.

Status of the Permit
There has been no activity on the permit since February/ March 2026. The same 17 deficiencies remain, the most critical being the number of affordable units and the building height. There has been no communication from the Development Services Department (DSD) to our attorney, DeLano & DeLano, nor any response to repeated requests from Ralph Teyssier — a very experienced structural engineer who, together with me, tried to arrange a meeting with the DSD engineers and the project manager.

Fees and Why Developers Love Micro-Units
City records show the developer paid several permit fees on 6/6/2025, totaling $52,000. These fees so far are based on what was on the site — the six units in the three buildings Stockdale demolished.

The Development Impact Fee (DIF) portion of that appears to be about $33,000. For a Complete Communities project in Uptown (which includes Mission Hills), DIFs run about $16,000 per unit, as long as each unit is under 500 square feet — versus roughly $28,000 per unit for regular units over 1,301 square feet. Complete Communities projects also get a 25% DIF discount, largely because they’re “near transit.” DIFs are meant to fund parks, mobility (bike infrastructure), libraries, and fire service