Category: San Diego

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

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 Zachary Roth, Jim Saksa / Democracy Docket / September 1, 2026

A whistleblower claims in a new report that the U.S. Postal Service (USPS) defied a court order by moving forward with a “secretive, rushed” effort to implement President Donald Trump’s mail voting order, which is now mostly blocked.

The report, published Tuesday by Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), along with a letter sent by Blumenthal to Postmaster General David Steiner, warns that the hurried development of a data portal for states to upload the new mail ballot envelope designs and mail voter lists required by USPS’s rule carrying out Trump’s order risks disenfranchising millions this November.

“According to the whistleblower, USPS’s effort to develop and deploy the Portal has been ‘rushed,’ ‘risky and haphazard’ because leadership has demanded an impossible timeframe,” Blumenthal wrote. “In an effort to meet impossible deadlines, USPS has eliminated standard and needed testing, thereby creating substantial risk of a ‘catastrophic failure’ of the system that could ‘derail the midterm elections.’”

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.

By JW August / Special to the OB Rag

The allegations are serious. Nursing homes, the exact number is unclear, across California including San Diego County, have employees who wear Ray-Ban Meta AI glasses while on duty.   The glasses are being used to record unsuspecting residents, a possible violation of a number of privacy laws, including those which address a resident’s expectation of privacy.

In a recent report the California Advocates for Nursing Home Reform (CANHR), a statewide nonprofit 501 (c) (3) advocacy organization, says: with a simple voice command like “Meta start recording” a nursing home employee can  “capture the entirety of their day on video while simultaneously feeding that footage into the glasses’ AI companion.”

A resident’s most personal or private moments can be captured on video without them knowing. For the unknowing patient there is no clear indication a recording is in progress — just a small white light that can be easily covered, says the report.  The non-profit warns that “residents at several facilities across the state have reported staff, including nurses, wearing the glasses and refusing to remove them upon request. In some cases, staff have recorded video with the glasses in areas that contain residents’ protected health information without obtaining prior consent”.

They continue “Many residents may not even be aware of the technology and its capabilities. This is a direct erosion of patient trust.” They add “These glasses, in most instances, are not prescription, meaning there is no explicit need for the user to wear them for medical purposes.”

A 10-unit, 2-story townhome apartment complex on Cape May Avenue has just been sold for $3,850,000 to a local multifamily investor.

The property at 4957 Cape May Avenue consists of eight (8) 1Bedroom / 1Bathroom units and two (2) 2Bedroom / 1.5Bathroom two-story townhomes — all on a 6,993 square foot lot.

Amenities for tenants include an onsite laundry facility, plus what the realty group providing the news calls “ample off-street parking spots, and a spacious floorplans.”

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.

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 Jamelle Bouie   / RSN – New York Times / August 30, 2026

So far, the president’s plot to subvert the integrity of the midterm elections looks like this.

Issue a rule requiring states to give lists of mail-in voters to the Postal Service if their citizens hope to receive mail-in ballots. Knowing that this is a blatantly unconstitutional seizure of the states’ prerogative to run their own elections, count on a federal court to block the rule. Then challenge the injunction, arguing — under the Supreme Court’s “Purcell principle” — that it is too late to make any adjustments to voting procedures, and that the new rules should be treated as the status quo. Then hope that the Supreme Court accepts the argument that the new rules are the status quo and therefore can’t be blocked.

This would leave states that rely on mail-in voting scrambling to accommodate the new rules, leading to the kind of chaos that might keep voters from casting a ballot in the first place. And in states that reject the rules, the administration can tar the results as fraudulent. None of this would stop the public from electing a Democratic majority, but it could give that majority the taint of illegitimacy — and even tee up a situation where new members are challenged in the next session.

It is important to say that there is no way to know, at this point, if any of this will actually work in the end. But it clearly is the plan.

By Debbie Sklar / Times of San Diego / August 25, 2026

Today, Mission Bay is known for beaches, boats, hotels and recreation.

In 1949, however, the area was still being developed into the recreational destination San Diegans know today.

To celebrate the official opening of Mission Bay Park, the city staged a three-day festival — and one of its most unusual attractions was a floating barge that served as a stage for musicians and entertainers.

Fiesta Bahia, or Festival of the Bay, was held Sept. 3-5, 1949. The city of San Diego’s Digital Archives preserves a photograph of the floating stage taken Sept. 4.

The Sept. 3-5, 1949, celebration officially opened Mission Bay Park. The 3-day event included the use of floating stages, a Central Labor Council water parade, showing the movie ‘Man’s Conquest of the Air’ each night, vaudeville shows, and aquatic exhibitions by the San Diego Swimming Association including water ballet, high- and comedy-divers, and water ski, boat and paddleboard races.

The festival was built around the water.

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 Marcella Bothwell and Karen Ventimiglia / Special to the OB Rag

The Pacific Beach Town Council and Pacific Beach Planning Group hosted a community Town Hall with Rep. Scott Peters focused on the proposed Turquoise Tower and the broader housing policies reshaping San Diego’s coastal communities.

The discussion made clear that Peters remains strongly supportive of building more housing, but he also acknowledged that California’s current approach can be too blunt. Peters described the political momentum behind state housing mandates as a ‘sledgehammer approach.’ He said Turquoise Tower shows what can happen when those laws are applied without enough nuance.

On Turquoise Tower itself, Peters reiterated that he does not believe the 23-story project should move forward as proposed. He pointed to his previously issued letter opposing the project and said he was willing to help facilitate discussions with the California Coastal Commission about how housing laws should be applied in coastal communities. When asked what height he would consider acceptable, Peters said that under the density-bonus framework he believes should apply, the project would be closer to roughly 60 feet, or about six stories, and said he did not believe it should be higher than that.