Though San Diego City Council members disagreed with key changes that some considered “inappropriate,” the long-awaited community growth blueprint for Barrio Logan is just steps away from being implemented after nearly two years in limbo.
The plan update, which the City Council approved last week, aims to improve public health in Barrio Logan — situated just south of downtown on the San Diego Bay — by separating residents from the neighboring shipping industry, while ensuring no new industrial facilities are permitted in the pollution-weary neighborhood.
Since the City Council first signed off on the plan in December 2021, city planners have been working with the California Coastal Commission, which must weigh in on any planning policies and development that affects the state’s coastlines, to reach a compromise on key changes to the neighborhood plan.
After nearly all of the 53 modifications were agreed upon, the commission kicked the plan back to the council in June for final approval.
Included were two proposed policies the city had pushed back on regarding affordable hotel accommodations, which have been a point of contention in past community plan discussions.
“The Coastal Commission has placed the city in a very difficult position,” said Councilmember Vivian Moreno, whose district represents the neighborhood. “Inserting these items into one of the most contentious community plan updates in San Diego’s history was inappropriate.”
Although Moreno’s disappointment was echoed by Councilmembers Monica Montgomery Steppe and Marnie Von Wilpert, the council ultimately agreed Tuesday to move forward with the amended plan so as to not delay the process further.
The plan will now be submitted to the Coastal Commission for final certification. City planners expect that certification will be completed by the end of December.
Julie Corrales, chair of the Barrio Logan Community Planning Group, praised the council’s decision Friday to approve the plan, especially after her neighborhood has waited so long to stop industrial businesses from growing their footholds.
“We’re looking forward to having the protections to be able to push back against the polluters in the neighborhood that are causing residents to have unlivable conditions,” said Corrales, who is also a policy advocate with the Environmental Health Coalition.
Corrales and other community leaders have been fighting to halt the growing industrial presence, recently winning a battle against a controversial biofuel company’s construction plans.
Suggested changes to the community like improving access to the bayfront through bilingual wayfinding signage and restoring the Chollas Creek, a watershed that drains into the San Diego Bay, were agreed upon by the city.
However, the city pushed back on modifications that would change policy language from suggesting low-cost hotel and motel units to requiring them, arguing that it is not appropriate to require on an individual community basis.
The commission’s modifications will add language to require a one-to-one replacement of low-cost hotel or motel facilities and will require more expensive hotels to make a quarter of their rooms lower cost, or else pay a fee to help fund future development of cheaper accommodations.
City planners said the policy could have unintended consequences, potentially discouraging developers from building in Barrio Logan, and that they would prefer to implement these policies across all 12 coastal neighborhoods.
City staff raised similar concerns with affordable hotel policies in 2015 when the Ocean Beach growth blueprint was being considered. At that time, then-commissioners agreed to remove those policies — but current commissioners say that eight years later, the city still has yet to come forward with a comprehensive, citywide ordinance.
This policy was of utmost concern to some residents, including Corrales, who pointed to problems at the neighborhood’s only current low-cost motel — which city officials have described as a magnet for crime and declared a public nuisance.
However, the commission decided to include the one-to-one replacement policy — excluding the motel — for future development.
“This is a lot of overstep by the Coastal Commission,” Von Wilpert said.
The council voted unanimously — except for Councilmember Raul Campillo, who was absent — to approve the plan.
For decades, the primarily Latino community has uneasily coexisted with industrial uses they say have polluted the air and posed health risks. It is one of the most pollution-burdened communities in California, according to the state, and has a higher asthma rate than most other communities.
The new proposed community plan update — which guides development in the 1,000-acre planning area over the next 20 to 30 years — creates a 65-acre buffer zone between housing areas and the nearby shipping industry where any new or expanded industrial uses are prohibited.
It also calls for tripling the number of homes and for building eight new parks and more neighborhood-friendly projects.
If certified, it will be the first update to the community’s growth plan since 1978 after local business groups overturned a similar effort with the successful citywide referendum in 2014.
Corrales acknowledged the plan update wouldn’t have been possible without activists like Richard Juarez, who died in 2019, and community leaders who were a driving force in the city’s redevelopment of Barrio Logan.
“There’s been generations in this community that persevered through all the health hazards,” she said. “This is the first time in 100 years that we’ve had the separation of business and industry, so it really is fundamental.”
Corrales is looking forward to working with stakeholders in the community to encourage more residential construction in the neighborhood.
