I would too, but I like the weather better up there. :D

You're a braver man than I. ;)

I'm spending up until July in Honolulu (for work), but after that I'm heading to Europe for at least a couple of years. If I come back to the US, San Diego will be on my short list of places to live despite the crazy nimbys. Pardon the pun, but it is one fine city. Finest? Only if you work in marketing.

Oh yeah Mr "San Diegan for Life"?

What happened to Chicago? Did it have to do with losing the 2016 Olympics in the 1st round?:haha:

:P



Things changed. Hell, I'm from New York! I'm just looking from a little bit of change. :)

Parking Lots
 

Does anybody know of some new parking lots going in?

Downtown Hotel Acquired For Affordable Housing
 

The City Council Tuesday unanimously authorized the San Diego Housing Commission to acquire a 130-room downtown hotel to be preserved as affordable housing for low-income seniors.

The San Diego Housing Commission will purchase the Sandford Hotel, at 1301 Fifth Ave., for about $6.8 million and spend an estimated $5.3 million on renovations.

"It makes sense to preserve much-needed affordable housing for low-income seniors in our urban core, where there is public transit as well as access to health care and other social services," said Richard Gentry, head of the Housing Commission.

The Centre City Development Corp., San Diego's downtown redevelopment arm, will lend $6 million to the Housing Commission to purchase the building.

Rehabilitating the Sandford, which was built in 1914, will take about nine months, according to the Housing Commission. The project will include a seismic retrofit, repairs to exterior walls and windows and new carpet, paint and bathroom fixtures inside the single-room occupancy hotel.

http://www.10news.com/news/22651668/detail.html

Just checking in, haven't logged onto this site in a long time...

http://voiceofsandiego.org/opinion/a...cc4c002e0.html

With the arrival of well-paid consultants, it appears that a publicly financed football stadium for the Chargers is closer to becoming a reality than ever. Regardless of where you stand on the question of building a stadium, it is important for all San Diegans to realize that using downtown redevelopment money is the wrong way to do it.

Unlike regular taxes collected by the city from residents, which can be used at the discretion of local elected officials, redevelopment dollars are governed by state law. The law makes clear that the "fundamental purpose of redevelopment is to expand the supply of low- and moderate-income housing, to expand employment opportunities for jobless, underemployed, and low-income persons, and to provide an environment for the social, economic, and psychological growth and well-being of all citizens."

One of the few things that pointy-headed academics agree on is that building sports stadiums is an incredibly ineffective way to achieve these redevelopment goals. One expert has written that "most academic studies measuring economic impact of sports facilities (not teams or sporting events) fail to find enough net gain to a community to justify the often large public outlays." A book on the subject, titled appropriately Major League Losers, begins:

Too many community leaders do not understand -- or they choose to ignore -- the reams of information describing the minuscule impact of teams on local economics and the ways in which the four major leagues control the number of teams and manipulate revenue-sharing programs to victimize taxpayers and sports fans.

Proponents of a new football stadium point to the gentrification that followed Petco Park as evidence for the redevelopment potential of sports facilities. Yet we should remember that what transformed downtown wasn't Petco Park -- it was $1 billion in ancillary development that Padres owner John Moores agreed to invest in the East Village as a condition for getting public money for his stadium. Given the small area available for a football stadium, city officials and Chargers executives have ruled out a similar deal this time around.

Mayor Jerry Sanders has endorsed the use of redevelopment dollars to build a stadium because, he has claimed, doing so would spare the city's General Fund, the account that pays for police, firefighters, parks and libraries. The mayor is wrong.

Funding a stadium would require the city to extend the life of its downtown redevelopment project areas, allowing downtown property taxes -- known as tax increment -- to go into a separate account reserved for large capital projects. If the project areas were allowed to expire, 22 cents of every tax increment dollar would go straight into the city's general fund, totaling hundreds of millions of dollars over the life of the extension.

A similar amount would go to the county, to pay for important social programs, the Sheriff's Department, and other public services. The rest of the money would be shared by other local governments and the state, to help fund education and public safety, among many other important programs.

Unless you think a football stadium is a worthier use of taxpayer money than the services funded by the city, county, and the state, redevelopment money is the wrong financing route.

So what would be a better way to pay for a new stadium? If San Diego voters believe that the Chargers are an important city asset, one that deserves public investment, they could pass a general obligation bond to fund stadium construction, in the same way that they pass bonds to pay for new school facilities.

Because bonds are repaid through separate property taxes, this is the only route that both protects the city's General Fund and preserves existing redevelopment dollars for use on what the state law has intended.

Vladimir Kogan is a Ph.D. candidate at UCSD's Department of Political Science and a research fellow at Stanford University's Bill Lane Center for the American West. He can be reached at vkogan@ucsd.edu.

Hmm...well...I love the Chargers more than my money, so let's do this thing! :jester:

Keeping the Chargers in San Diego is a worthwhile investment, financially and also for the city's morale. If downtown redevelopment money is what is going to fund this venture, then I am perfectly fine with it.

I love the Chargers along with all of you but I fall in line with the op-ed writer. Moving the Padres resulted in a huge net gain for the city, moving the Chargers will not have the same long term economic benefit, at least in my opinion. I feel this way only looking at the relative cost. The value from the padres redevelopment was enormous, i dont think we can realize the same effect through subsidizing the chargers development. Rather, it simply uses up a ton of capital for very little gain. I mean there'd be no net job growth created by building a new stadium downtown for them. We'd be moving mission valley jobs into downtown. So what? I know we want to keep the team, but I don't want the city to become the sucker in Mark Fabiani's shell game. If they want to produce a study that proves me wrong, then great, but I'd rather be sure its worth the investment.

http://media.signonsandiego.com/img/...34634cbc5420f3
City Hall project will get public vote
Four San Diego council members now support that step before moving forward
BY CRAIG GUSTAFSON, UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER
WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 24, 2010 AT 12:56 P.M.

No matter what negotiations over a new San Diego City Hall yield, it will go before voters for final approval.

Four City Council members — Carl DeMaio, Kevin Faulconer, Donna Frye and Sherri Lightner — have all committed to a public vote on the project. That means it can’t get the five votes needed to move forward unless it includes a requirement that it must appear on the ballot in a future election, possibly as soon as November.

Faulconer, who had previously voted to move forward with the project without a public vote requirement, provides the swing vote on the issue. Mayor Jerry Sanders also supports a public vote but has limited power to force one.

The City Council entered into exclusive negotiations with Portland, Ore.-based Gerding Edlen for the $432 million project in October. DeMaio, Frye and Lightner voted against the negotiations because it didn’t include a public vote.

In a joint statement Wednesday, the council members explained their decision.

“Put simply, we will not vote to move forward with any project resulting from negotiations with Gerding Edlen for building a new City Hall unless the project is put to voters for approval,” the statement said. “It should be noted that our requirement for a public vote on the project does not indicate our support for, or opposition to, the project itself, but simply states one necessary condition for our support.”

The developer negotiations are expected to finish by April at a cost of nearly $705,000. The money pays for environmental experts, construction consultants and financial gurus.

The project calls for a 34-story City Hall with an underground garage at C Street and First Avenue, just west of the current building. It would consolidate city offices now spread throughout downtown and eliminate several city leases. The city is negotiating to ensure that building a new structure would save money over maintaining the current City Hall and paying leases on offices that don’t fit in it.

After constructing the City Hall, Gerding Edlen hopes to build retail, housing and a parking structure around it to generate profits.

I recommend linoleum throughout and drains at the low point in each room. just saying.

Though there are clear economic benefits to building a stadium and keeping the Chargers (several articles have been posted here), my contention is that the benefits of doing so go beyond just the economic (e.g., emotional, morale, national relevance).

Ok so what does you guys think the chances of the new city hall ballot initiative passing? And do other major cities put everything up to a vote? If Chicago, Minneapolis, Miami, Houston etc. put issues like this on a ballot for the citizens to decide or do they just go ahead and build things without voter consent?

:previous:
The councilmembers who recommended to put this on the ballot (Frye, DeMaio among others) are the ones originally opposed to it. They're pretty confident that it won't get past the voters.

I'm not so confident that it would pass. Too many uninformed idiots in this town who'll shoot down anything within their reach.

That is funny I saw you on the comments section of the tribune battling it out with the nimbys on the new city hall article. So I wonder what happens if it doesn't pass, that just means the development is dead?

I wouldn't doubt it. :(


God help this city...

In normal times I think this would have been passed by the voters, but given the state's economic crisis and the political bickering across the nation I think most people are hell bent on voting against all incumbents and voting down measures like this out of emotion, instead of thinking rationally.

New Chargers Stadium
 

http://tinyurl.com/ChargersStadium

Hi All, Linked above is our Amended Ballot Proposal for a New Chargers Stadium and Event Center. Please read and review. If you would like this Ballot measures to be part of the November 2, 2010 election, please email the City of San Diego with your comments.

jerrysanders@sandiego.gov, donnafrye@sandiego.gov, carldemaio@sandiego.gov, cdemaio@sandiego.gov, sherrilightner@sandiego.gov, martiemerald@sandiego.gov, kevinfaulconer@sandiego.gov, benhueso@sandiego.gov, toddgloria@sandiego.gov, anthonyyoung@sandiego.gov, Cityattorney@sandiego.gov, jgoldsmith@sandiego.gov, atevlin@sandiego.gov, cityclerk@sandiego.gov, emaland@sandiego.gov, gbraun@sandiego.gov