{"id":274165,"date":"2026-04-18T12:56:08","date_gmt":"2026-04-18T12:56:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/274165\/"},"modified":"2026-04-18T12:56:08","modified_gmt":"2026-04-18T12:56:08","slug":"despite-progress-toward-deals-san-diegos-fight-over-liberty-station-takes-a-rancorous-turn-san-diego-union-tribune","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/274165\/","title":{"rendered":"Despite progress toward deals, San Diego\u2019s fight over Liberty Station takes a rancorous turn \u2013 San Diego Union-Tribune"},"content":{"rendered":"

San Diego\u2019s roller coaster<\/a> effort to cement long-term public control of Liberty Station is becoming steadily more bitter as city officials and the complex\u2019s largest leaseholder trade barbs and accusations.<\/p>\n

City officials have managed in recent weeks to convince 10 of 12 other government agencies to agree to payouts needed for the city to retain control of Liberty Station, but the effort has prompted a war of words.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s because the leaseholder \u2014 Seligman Properties \u2014 has been simultaneously trying to convince those agencies to reject the city\u2019s efforts so Seligman can buy and control much of the sprawling district of parks, artist studios, shops and restaurants.<\/p>\n

City officials say Seligman is trying to scuttle the payout deals so the city will be forced to sell Liberty Station to Seligman at a substantially deflated purchase price.<\/p>\n

The conflict has led lawyers and consultants for Seligman to accuse city officials of being \u201ccoercive\u201d and \u201cdelinquent,\u201d not engaging in fair play and attempting to selfishly \u201csiphon\u201d money away from local public schools.<\/p>\n

In turn, city officials have called Seligman\u2019s representatives \u201cactive obstructionists\u201d making \u201ccalculated attempts to sow confusion.\u201d They also contend Seligman officials sometimes strategically contradict themselves.<\/p>\n

Seligman\u2019s efforts have had some success, albeit temporarily. Concerns raised by Seligman last month prompted board members for the San Diego Unified School District to delay a vote<\/a> on the district\u2019s payout offer from the city.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s not that I don\u2019t trust the city, but I don\u2019t trust the city,\u201d trustee Sharon Whitehurst-Payne said last month after Seligman raised questions about the city\u2019s offer and accused city officials of trying to dupe the school district.<\/p>\n

But the board revisited the issue Tuesday and voted unanimously to approve the city\u2019s payout offer.<\/p>\n

That decision came despite Seligman representatives arguing the school district would get much more money than \u2014 perhaps seven times \u2014 the city\u2019s $1.4 million payout offer if it rejected the offer and forced the city to sell.<\/p>\n

Grace Cho, an attorney for Seligman, told trustees they would gain financially by rejecting the city\u2019s offer.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe district cannot be forced or coerced into entering a contract,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Mitch Mullinix, a consultant for Seligman, said trustees shouldn\u2019t fall for the city\u2019s \u201clack of fair play,\u201d noting that the city only began pursuing agreements with government agencies after Seligman filed suit in 2022.<\/p>\n

Joe Haeussler, who works for Seligman\u2019s Liberty Station partner Pendulum Property Partners, said the city has delayed paying the agencies for more than a decade and now wants to \u201csiphon money away\u201d from needy schools.<\/p>\n

\u201cDon\u2019t reward their delinquency,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Andra Greene, the school district\u2019s general counsel, told trustees that Liberty Station is a \u201cvery valuable property to the community.\u201d<\/p>\n

She also told them that however much the district is paid for its share of Liberty Station won\u2019t impact district finances. That\u2019s because it\u2019s state policy to cancel out such payouts by reducing the state\u2019s contributions to districts that get them by an equal amount.<\/p>\n

The dispute over Liberty Station is mostly about a complicated set of rules the state created when it dissolved redevelopment agencies in 2012 and had to determine what to do with the properties those redevelopment agencies owned.<\/p>\n

Most were given to the cities where the property was located, and those cities were required to categorize the properties they received as a \u201cfuture development\u201d site or a \u201cliquidation\u201d site.<\/p>\n

San Diego declared Liberty Station a future development site so that it wouldn\u2019t have to sell. But using that designation requires a city to reach compensation deals with many other government agencies.<\/p>\n

The city must compensate those agencies because redevelopment law forced them to give up tax revenues they would have otherwise collected.<\/p>\n

After Seligman sued in 2022 with the goal of forcing the city to sell, Sacramento Superior Court Judge Shelleyanne Chang ruled that the city must show progress on redeveloping the area by agreeing to the payouts.<\/p>\n

The city has now agreed to payout deals with San Diego County, the county Office of Education, Lemon Grove School District, Grossmont-Cuyamaca Community College District, San Diego Community College District, Grossmont Healthcare District, the San Diego County Water Authority, Grossmont Union High School District, San Ysidro School District and San Diego Unified.<\/p>\n

Deals still must be reached with Southwestern Community College District, which is scheduled to vote on the city\u2019s proposed payout April 20, and the Sweetwater Union High School District, which hasn\u2019t yet scheduled a vote.<\/p>\n

What makes the situation with San Diego and Seligman unusual is that Seligman controls 330 acres of Liberty Station\u2019s commercial areas under no-rent leases that run through 2070.<\/p>\n

City officials contend those leases mean it wouldn\u2019t make sense for any other company to bid against Seligman \u2014 limiting how much the city could get in any sale and giving Seligman a great deal.<\/p>\n

In a 52-page update to Judge Chang filed April 10, City Attorney Heather Ferbert hailed the recent progress San Diego has made and harshly criticized Seligman.<\/p>\n

The update says Seligman and its partners have transitioned from \u201cconcerned stakeholders\u201d to \u201cactive obstructionists\u201d and calls Seligman\u2019s pleas to school officials \u201ca calculated attempt to sow confusion.\u201d<\/p>\n

The court filing also contends that Seligman often lobbies the judge to make the city speed up, but then lobbies the school districts to slow down.<\/p>\n

\u201cPetitioners continue to send conflicting messages depending on the audience,\u201d the filing says. \u201cThey demand the city\u2019s \u2018expeditious\u2019 compliance before this court while simultaneously lobbying the affected taxing entities to prevent or delay the city\u2019s compliance.\u201d<\/p>\n

Michael Wong, an official with the city\u2019s Economic Development Department, said San Diego has already set aside all the money needed to complete the compensation agreements and hopes to have them all finalized by June 30.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"San Diego\u2019s roller coaster effort to cement long-term public control of Liberty Station is becoming steadily more bitter…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":274166,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[387,181,23,205,100,13,388,74,76,75,1696],"class_list":{"0":"post-274165","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-san-diego","8":"tag-business","9":"tag-latest-headlines","10":"tag-local-news","11":"tag-local-politics","12":"tag-news","13":"tag-politics","14":"tag-real-estate","15":"tag-san-diego","16":"tag-san-diego-headlines","17":"tag-san-diego-news","18":"tag-top-stories-sdut"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/274165","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=274165"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/274165\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/274166"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=274165"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=274165"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=274165"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}