The California Supreme Court has declined to hear the city of San Diego\u2019s appeal to exempt the Midway Rising project from the area\u2019s 30-foot height limit on buildings, dealing a blow to the yearslong redevelopment project around Pechanga Arena that has been at the center of multiple ballot measures and faced subsequent lawsuits.<\/p>\n
The Supreme Court declined to hear the appeal on Dec. 30, leaving in place the 30-foot limit, after an October ruling from the appellate court that the city did not adequately assess in its environmental review how taller buildings could affect air flow, construction noise and Peregrine falcons\u2019 ability to nest, among other issues.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhile we are disappointed that the Supreme Court declined to hear the City\u2019s appeal, this procedural decision does not change our commitment or our momentum to redevelop the Sports Arena site. We continue to disagree with the lower court\u2019s ruling, but we are not standing still,\u201d San Diego Mayor Todd Gloria and City Attorney Heather Ferbert said in a joint statement. \u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cThe City is actively pursuing options that will provide a clear and durable path forward for this transformational project \u2014 one that will deliver thousands of new homes, including affordable housing, permanent jobs, a modern entertainment venue, and significant economic benefits for San Diego,\u201d the statement continued.<\/p>\n
For the better part of a decade, the city has been looking to redevelop the publicly owned land in the Midway District with a new 16,000-seat entertainment venue, 4,250 homes, retail space, parks and other amenities.<\/p>\n
In 2020, voters approved a ballot measure allowing construction to be built higher than 30 feet, which is a restriction passed by San Diego voters in 1972 to preserve beach access and the character of coastal communities.<\/p>\n
After the 2020 ballot measure, a group called Save Our Access sued the city under the California Environmental Quality Act, or CEQA, arguing the city failed to properly study the project\u2019s impacts in its environmental review.<\/p>\n
The group won, and San Diego did another environmental review, returning to voters with a second ballot measure to lift the height limit. The ballot measure passed in 2022, and Save Our Access sued again.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt’s a city within a city. It’s a second downtown. It is such a dense amount of people that you have immense impact,\u201d said John McNab of Save Our Access. \u201cBasically, you create a tipping point on all the freeways. It’s a traffic Armageddon.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tWhat will the economic impact be from the proposed Midway Rising project that hopes to revitalize 50 acres around the Sports Arena? NBC 7’s Todd Strain breaks down a report that crunched the projected numbers.\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s a whole neighborhood being lifted up vertically,\u201d said Mandy Havlik of the Peninsula Community Planning Board. \u201cIf we continue to densify our neighborhoods and not invest in those neighborhoods and invest in the future that we’re selling our communities, we’re going to continue to have issues with the infrastructure, with traffic, with environmental issues.\u201d<\/p>\n
Late last month, Gov. Gavin Newsom and Attorney General Rob Bonta sent a letter to the Supreme Court asking them to hear the city\u2019s appeal in part because it has broader implications, asking the court to help clarify what can and should be evaluated under CEQA, to help address California\u2019s housing crisis more quickly.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe lack of clarity in judicial precedent as to what CEQA requires when land-use and zoning plans are amended subjects governmental entities to the threat of multiple rounds of approvals and litigation, and perhaps to multiple rounds of voter referenda. Given the urgency of the housing crisis, clarity on the subject is urgently needed, and should be provided by this Court,\u201d their letter reads.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt kind of creates an impossible situation for cities if every time they do an environmental study, an individual who is dissatisfied with the project can go to court and get the court to second guess something that maybe could have been studied, but the city didn’t think to study it initially,\u201d said Chris Elmendorf, a law professor and land use expert at University of California, Davis.<\/p>\n
The city has not specified what its options for next steps on Midway Rising may be after the Supreme Court declined to hear the appeal. Elmendorf said possibilities include new state legislation, or using California\u2019s density bonus law to exempt the project with a waiver based on its affordable housing units.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere’s some legal risk that if you request a waiver. Someone might sue and say, \u2018Oh, that waiver can’t be provided,\u2019\u201d Elmendorf said. \u201cI think that lawsuit would fail. But obviously a developer who’s thinking about a project would prefer to have a path to getting the project approved that doesn’t present any risk of litigation at all.\u201d<\/p>\n
Save Our Access said Tuesday it would challenge any such attempt to use the density bonus law.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey can’t use it,\u201d McNab said. \u201cWe\u2019d also probably end up having to bring legal action.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThe thing is, the height limit, they can look to get around it,\u201d he continued. \u201cBut they\u2019re going to have a lot of trip wires along the way.\u201d<\/p>\n
This story was originally reported for broadcast by NBC San Diego. AI tools helped convert the story to a digital article, and an NBC San Diego journalist edited the article for publication.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The California Supreme Court has declined to hear the city of San Diego\u2019s appeal to exempt the Midway…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":123149,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[13010,74,76,75],"class_list":["post-123148","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-diego","tag-midway-district","tag-san-diego","tag-san-diego-headlines","tag-san-diego-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/123148","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=123148"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/123148\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/123149"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=123148"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=123148"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=123148"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}