Source: https://inewsource.org/2016/04/25/north-embarcadero-visionary-plan-san-diego/
Timestamp: 2019-04-24 00:05:57+00:00

Document:
A couple walks past the closed Grape Street Piers along San Diego's North Embarcadero. The piers, along with several other locations along the one-mile stretch of land, were never developed according to the Port of San Diego's visionary plan.
Massive projects are moving ahead along San Diego’s waterfront from Seaport Village through Lane Field and all the way to Harbor Island. Yet these changes are not part of a cohesive plan for the sort of world-class waterfront that distinguishes other cities. Instead, they’re piecemeal projects that many civic leaders and activists say illustrate San Diego’s overall approach toward development. With so much at stake along the waterfront, inewsource zeroed in on one particular stretch of land to find out how it developed and what lessons might be learned.
In 2001, a vision became law that laid out its future: large parks and public spaces would form a signature expression on the land and the piers for generations to come. Think Chicago, Baltimore or Sydney.
Today, the B Street Pier is reserved for cruise ships and their hundreds of thousands of yearly tourists. On Broadway Pier, just next door, a concrete plaza rolls up to a 52,000-square-foot steel and glass pavilion that’s empty most days. Navy Pier, to the south alongside the USS Midway aircraft carrier museum, mirrors the water surrounding it — a sea of car windshields reflecting the sun. To the east: parking lots and hotels. Small retail pavilions, park benches and a smattering of green spaces are scattered throughout.
Little by little through the past two decades, the legal plan for the one-mile stretch of the waterfront — called the North Embarcadero — was ignored. inewsource reviewed hundreds of documents and interviewed dozens of people including developers, activists, environmentalists, current and former politicians, lawyers and regulators to understand how and why San Diego’s front porch so radically veered from its planned future.
In digging into the history and probing the public’s ongoing stakes along the waterfront, inewsource was directed to two men repeatedly: longtime port commissioner, mayoral adviser, auto and travel industry guru and master negotiator Steve Cushman; and a man seemingly on the other side: Cory Briggs, an environmental lawyer who has made a business out of suing government agencies.
Their discreet alliance, along with moneyed interests, economic realities and toothless state enforcement, helped radically alter the waterfront of America’s eighth largest city.
It began more than 40 years ago when the smell of urine permeated the streets of downtown San Diego along with the tides of prostitutes and homeless who made their way back and forth from Market Street to Broadway with the sun.
Tuna boats, icons of an industry on the outs, bobbed along the rotting piers. The world’s oldest active sailing vessel, the Star of India, stagnated in the bay.
Davis, a former chief executive officer of the Bank of Commerce, joined the board of San Diego’s newly formed Centre City Development Corp. in 1976 and served on it for 17 years. The organization — charged with revitalizing downtown — was flush with property tax funds and running wild with downtown development projects that either had potential or were in the works: hotels, housing developments, Horton Plaza and Petco Park.
That changed in 1983 when McDade, then chief of staff to Mayor Roger Hedgecock, persuaded the port, which was also sitting on strong financial reserves, to fund the construction of a $165 million convention center on the water and lease it to the city for $1 a year.
to present and future generations."
Diana Lilly, who has worked for more than 20 years as a planner at the California Coastal Commission — a state agency that authorizes coastal development — said the master plan holds the port accountable.
McDade felt good about his vision, and after six years on the port board stepped down, never anticipating the plan would be dismantled piece by piece.
Although he was just one of seven port commissioners, Steve Cushman spearheaded major changes to the plan during his 12 years on the board.
Cushman and the port board altered the core elements of the vision — getting rid of the signature oval park, for example — without formally amending the law or notifying the state’s Coastal Commission, with the end goal being more commercialization.
“Public projects of this scope cannot be built if there isn't money to build them,” Cushman told inewsource.
Pat Flannery was a real estate broker and civic watchdog who followed the North Embarcadero Visionary Plan from the start.
Flannery gathered documents through the state’s public records act, questioned policy makers, wrote hundreds of posts for his Blog of San Diego (with links to documents well before the practice became popular), and was an all-around thorn in the side of the political establishment at port and city public meetings. The changes to the waterfront plan infuriated him.
There was a group, the San Diego Navy Broadway Complex Coalition, that took notice of the port’s actions. It consisted of “dozens of local urban planning groups and environment organizations and hundreds of individuals dedicated to preserving public access to San Diego’s downtown waterfront...” according to Cathy O’Leary Carey, who was involved in the group’s meetings and activities.
To fight their battles, the coalition members hired attorney Cory Briggs, who created his Upland-based law firm in 2002 and filed his first suit against the city of San Diego the following year over a downtown hotel development, eventually earning a reputation as an environmental and open government advocate.
Over the next decade, Briggs brought lawsuits against California cities, counties, the state, developers, Walmart and others on behalf of environmental nonprofits — many part of a network of corporations closely tied to Briggs, his family and close associates.
High-profile attorney Cory Briggs has represented the nonprofit Navy Broadway Complex Coalition since its inception in lawsuits over the Navy Broadway Complex, the loss of the oval park, the repurposing of the Broadway Pier and cruise ship security. (Megan Wood/inewsource).
Briggs became a major player on San Diego’s political scene: sparring with the City Attorney’s Office in court and through the media, leading a drive to get Bob Filner removed from the Mayor’s Office and most recently, pushing an initiative to boost the city’s hotel room tax and dissolve the Tourism Marketing District.
He has become so enmeshed in the city’s affairs that he was featured in the San Diego County Taxpayers Association’s promotional video for its award ceremony last year — he’s seen flailing about in the ocean, arms waving, as he yells to the mayor, City Council members and staff that he’ll let them “have the Convention Center” — a frequent subject of his litigation.
The Navy Broadway Complex has attracted the ire of activists and environmentalists concerned with a further “walling off” of San Diego bay — which happened along the South Embarcadero with the convention center, Hyatt, Marriott and Hilton hotels. Photo courtesy KPBS.
Briggs fought his first case for the coalition in 2007 against a 15-acre development on the south edge of the North Embarcadero called the Navy Broadway Complex, following quickly with three more suits over the mega-project through 2009. That same year, he began suing the port over the changes to the visionary plan: the loss of the oval park, the commercialization and loss of public space on Broadway Pier and the construction of the Broadway Pavilion.
From 2007 to 2015, Briggs filed 13 lawsuits on behalf of the coalition — three that dealt with the visionary plan. And while those cases worked their way through court, he was also meeting with Cushman, then-Councilman Kevin Faulconer and port staff.
What resulted from those discussions was a pivotal legal document, signed by Briggs, that enabled Cushman and the port to persuade the state to approve a North Embarcadero project that violated its master plan, its own law.
Briggs, in his first and only interview with inewsource in February 2015, said the legal agreement was a compromise, reached before he lost a lawsuit over a park on the water.
The Lane Field hotels were an integral element of the changes along the North Embarcadero Visionary Plan. With support from attorney Cory Briggs and the Navy Broadway Complex Coalition, the port was able to substitute a small setback park in front of the hotels in place of the visionary plan’s large oval park along the water — and gain Coastal Commission approval for the project. (Brad Racino/inewsource).
Briggs abruptly ended that interview after inewsource asked about his business practices, and he did not respond to questions emailed to him since then about the agreement and his reasons for signing it.
Flannery, a close acquaintance of Briggs and coalition members for many years, said Cushman and Briggs are close, despite their often very public sparring.
Cushman described a very close working relationship with Briggs, saying the two frequently meet at each other’s offices, talk on the phone and often “threaten” to have a beer together.
Cushman praises Briggs as a man of principle, a community do-gooder and an excellent listener. “I think I know him as well as anybody,” Cushman said.
Cushman also insists nothing about the waterfront agreement was done in secret.
While Flannery is a citizen with no real authority or accountability other than to himself — Laurie Black is the opposite.
Black, who was a port commissioner from 2007 to 2009, was president of the business-oriented Downtown San Diego Partnership during the 1990s and worked as a consultant for the port in developing the North Embarcadero vision.
“It’s my belief that the government,” Black said, “creates opportunity for the private sector and entrepreneurs and environmentalists and developers to create an economy and a quality of life for the people.
Cushman embodied the latter mind-set, Black said, and although today she counts him as a close friend, during her time on the port board she regarded the commissioner as a bully — a difficult man with a singular, revenue-driven plan for the port’s future.
Black said she and Cushman disagreed over the port’s role as a public agency entrusted with public land: Black believed in creating a vibrant landscape along the water for the people, while Cushman wanted to monetize that property for the port.
Murtaza Baxamusa, who sits on the board of Civic San Diego — a successor agency to the Centre City Development Corp. — told inewsource he felt good about the early stages of the visionary plan.
“(It) was a plan we should have worked toward,” Baxamusa said, recalling how happy he was with the county waterfront park on North Harbor Drive — a key element of the vision that was later developed independently by the county.
But as for the visionary plan’s future?
“I don’t really have that much confidence in the players at the table,” he said, referring to the remaining government agencies in charge of implementing the project — the port, the city, and his own agency, Civic San Diego, “but that’s sort of my own apprehension.
A quote, attributed to Steve Cushman, on a plaque in his conference room reads, “I DON’T LIKE TO LO$E MONEY!” It’s next to the coffee maker.
The 75-year-old is a homegrown San Diegan whose family’s Southern California roots stretch to the 1800s. He made his money in the travel and automotive industries, selling his Cush Automotive Group in 2005. “My family and I have been very blessed in this community, and we live very comfortably,” Cushman said.
Never elected to public office, Cushman has served on dozens of public boards and commissions. He’s been a voluntary assistant to five mayors and is known in town as a dealmaker and a backroom power broker — the guy standing just behind whoever is in the spotlight.
At one point in the interview, Cushman’s cellphone rings. He looks down and presses a button. “I just cut off a city council member,” he said with a grin.
Cushman often refers to himself in the third person and is expert at steering conversations toward what he sees as the triumphs in his career — “I just remember the victories” — while glossing over criticism.
“You could probably give me a lot of the dark side of what we did in all of these things, and how tough it was, and how we got beat up. I don’t remember those times.
Cushman’s first of three terms as a port commissioner began in 1999. He served as chairman of the board twice, once in 2002 and again in 2009, and worked alongside Peter Q. Davis, Mike McDade and Laurie Black at different times.
Taken together, the three former commissioners described a powerful, strong-armed and revenue-hungry workhorse of a man who could be as divisive as he was well-meaning.
Cushman said he relished working on big projects and believed that when he arrived at the port that most of McDade’s plan for the North Embarcadero was doable.
That changed as the years rolled on.
In 2001 — two years into Cushman’s tenure — state legislation took away the San Diego International Airport and its revenue from the port’s jurisdiction. The county pulled out of the North Embarcadero Visionary Plan in 2003, along with its share of the funding for the project. Then the Navy dropped out.
The port needed money and hoped the cruise industry could help.
Cushman began negotiating with Carnival Cruise Corp. — the port’s biggest moneymaker at the time — and worked out a deal for an $8 million loan. The terms: The port would upgrade its B Street Pier and in exchange, Carnival would get a guarantee of better spots for its ships.
Broadway Pier would host a temporary structure, one that could handle passengers while the terminals on B Street were being upgraded.
The port then asked Carnival to up its loan to $12 million and began to change the plan, redirecting money from B Street to build a permanent structure for ships on Broadway Pier. That eliminated the public park and fountain from the North Embarcadero plan and sidestepped a requirement that the pier supply public views. All seven commissioners at the time voted publicly in favor of the agreement.
Repurposing the pier was also a major strike against the oval park, which would have been in the way of the trucks needed to service cruise ships.
Max Schmidt, a former city planner, foresaw an inherent problem with aspiring for both a vibrant cruise industry and a pedestrian-friendly waterfront in a 1999 University of California Television series about San Diego's downtown development.
The California Coastal Commission caught wind of the action too late, said planner Diana Lilly, and instead of forcing the port to back up and go through the formal process of an amendment, it allowed the project to move forward.
“That’s another situation where I would say the process didn’t work as well as it should have,” Lilly said.
The commission mandated a replacement park be built somewhere else on the waterfront, which still hasn’t happened.
Briggs and Cushman clashed over the oval park, one of the jewels of the visionary plan for the North Embarcadero. Two city blocks in size and right on the water at the Broadway Pier, part of it would have stretched dramatically out over the bay. Briggs later said the oval park became a symbol for San Diegans fighting the port’s actions. But at trial, Briggs “did not present any evidence concerning an oval park/plaza,” according to a judge’s ruling.
Cushman thought the idea of an oval park was “ludicrous,” not just financially but bureaucratically.
“It would take 21 government agencies to get approval if you really want to cover the water,” Cushman said, adding that “none of us are young enough” to get through that many layers of government.
The former general and artistic director of the San Diego Opera, Ian Campbell, once helped arrange a philanthropist’s offer to donate $200 million for a combined opera house and concert hall on the site of Lane Field — at the foot of Broadway Pier just north of the Navy Broadway Complex.
But Cushman opposed the idea, saying he favored “a hotel to provide us with the money” for the rest of the visionary plan.
Former Commissioner Black, who supported the opera house offer, said it boiled down to Cushman not being an arts guy.
Cushman was also against a Coastal Commission mandate that the port build low-cost housing, like a hostel, to mitigate for the Lane Field hotels.
He sued over the Broadway terminal and the loss of the oval park. The court ruled in favor of the port.
He sued the port and U.S. Coast Guard claiming federal regulations required a “security zone” around any cruise ship entering and berthing in the San Diego port, then agreed to dismiss the case a few months later.
He sued the port a third time over the Broadway Pier and lost again.
Briggs never appealed any cases he lost against the port — only appealing cases he lost fighting the Navy Broadway Complex.
Black, McDade and others said some of those lawsuits were well-justified, especially over Broadway Pier. But the courts didn’t agree.
There are no public records of how much money was raised to support Briggs’ lawsuits, even though the plaintiff — the Navy Broadway Complex Coalition — is required by state and federal law to account for its revenues and expenses on public tax forms.
inewsource was able to independently confirm two payments — a $5,000 payment from a labor union, Unite Here Local 30, made in October 2010 — and a $105,000 settlement payment made to the Navy Broadway Coalition in 2010.
Briggs and his law firm have sued on behalf of at least 36 charitable nonprofits since 2006, almost all of which he and his family helped create. State and federal agencies have suspended more than half of the groups for failing to file legally required documents showing finances, mission statements and board structures. One nonprofit, which did file paperwork, showed an unexplained loss of nearly a quarter million dollars.
Five people — one since deceased — have directed the Navy Broadway Complex Coalition since its inception.
Ian Trowbridge, a former Salk Institute professor who was perhaps best known for his civic activism, is listed in documents as the group’s president and co-chair before he died in 2013.
In an initial interview about the North Embarcadero, May was open and informative. After a follow-up email asking if she was aware she was listed as the coalition’s CFO, May asked that a reporter “not report any” of the previous interview and demanded that if it were published, inewsource should “include the full content of this e-mail message so that your readers have a complete picture of how you operate...” (Readers can see the entire exchange by clicking here).
Don Wood is listed as the coalition’s secretary. Wood is a former policy planner for San Diego Gas & Electric and a well-known San Diego activist whose primary focus has always been the waterfront. Diane Coombs is listed as the coalition’s co-chair and CEO. She’s a former county Board of Supervisors employee and another longtime environmental activist. Karin Langwasser — Briggs’ cousin who has been on the board of at least eight other Briggs-associated nonprofits — is the group’s current CFO.
Despite multiple requests, all three declined to comment for this story.
Talks that culminated in the legal agreement Briggs signed took place several times, according to Cushman and emails mentioning the meetings, although the district has no records from the meetings themselves.
Peter Scheer, executive director of California’s First Amendment Coalition — a nonprofit dedicated to open government and public participation in civic affairs — found it “highly improbable” that the Briggs-Cushman negotiations left no paper trail.
The port’s real estate area manager, Shaun Sumner, is the only person who was involved in the meetings and is still working for the agency. As a city councilman, Mayor Faulconer was also involved. Through spokespersons, both declined to speak to inewsource about the agreement.
The Lane Field developers would reach labor peace with the local hotel and hospitality union, Unite Here Local 30, which is listed as a member of the Navy Broadway Complex Coalition on the agreement. One month prior, the union donated $5,000 to the coalition, according to union disclosure reports.
The port and Lane Field developers agreed to build a 150-foot wide setback park and the port would try to acquire a portion of Navy property, called 1220 Pacific Highway, to add to that park.
The port agreed to study the funding, feasibility and impact of another park — 205 feet long on Harbor Drive — in its forthcoming Port Master Plan Amendment.
As of today, neither the acquisition of the Navy property, the study nor the amendment has happened.
With their signatures, Briggs, Trowbridge and Coombs put an end to all discussions about a large public park at the foot of Broadway — the land Briggs had promised coalition members years prior — and according to his critics, delivered a victory to the port, the Lane Field developers and the hotel workers union.
The port used the agreement to show the California Coastal Commission, which was hesitant to award a permit for North Embarcadero construction, that the public supported the project.
Pat Flannery, an activist, former real estate agent and author of the “Blog of San Diego” speaks with inewsource reporter Brad Racino on Broadway Pier on Nov. 20, 2015. (Megan Wood/inewsource).
Two people who say they were members of the coalition and its legal committee also believe Briggs abandoned their fight. There is no public membership roster for the coalition, but both men — Scott Andrews and John McNab — provided inewsource with email communications that show their affiliation.
Andrews, an activist who has followed the port for decades, told inewsource he left the coalition and its legal committee in 2010 after learning about the agreement.
“Briggs is acting like a self-appointed arbiter,” Andrews said.
During meetups at a Mexican restaurant in Ocean Beach, Andrews offered collections from his archives: old board meeting minutes, developer schematics, lawsuits, emails and other public records gathered during the course of his more than 20-year fight against unmitigated development.
Today, Cushman regards the agreement as a pinnacle achievement.
He pointed, as an example, to a court case Briggs argued for the coalition in February 2015. No coalition member showed up, McNab said, because they didn’t know about it. Briggs lost that case last month in the court of appeals.
McNab and Andrews believe Briggs consolidated control of the coalition to Wood, Coombs and himself, shutting out anyone who questioned his actions.
Without access to private records, it’s impossible to say who, if anyone, is paying Briggs to continue representing the coalition. Questions about money and Briggs’ business practices have yielded few if any answers in the past.
Despite protesting inewsource's coverage in print and in court, Briggs has refused to explain why he frequently used his law firm to enter into more than $4 million in liens, or mortgages, with people throughout several Southern California counties — transactions that a host of experts called questionable and possibly fraudulent; how one of the many nonprofits closely associated with him was missing $230,000 from one year to the next and what that tax-exempt organization actually does; or what role Sarichia Cacciatore, his wife who worked for a San Diego-based environmental consulting company, played in his environmental lawsuits.
inewsource asked Cushman if he had ever paid Briggs directly for any reason.
“I am proud to tell you, nothing I have ever settled with him have I ever paid him dime,” Cushman said.
Had he ever facilitated a payment to Briggs for any reason?
Despite the perfect weather on a morning in November, the port’s environmental and land use program manager, Wileen Manaois, is nervous.
Although she has worked at the port for nearly 20 years, it’s her first time being interviewed on camera. She trips over a few sentences at the onset, but then, walking along the south end of the North Embarcadero, finds her rhythm in describing what the port has accomplished so far in its first phase of the North Embarcadero Visionary Plan, which wrapped up late-2014.
She describes the benches and trees on each side of the pavilion as “the formal gardens,” and explains the thinking behind constructing a nearby observation deck.
“We’re really happy with how things turned out,” Manaois said.
Tanya Castaneda, a port spokeswoman, said she doesn’t believe the agency has skirted its promises to the public, and that there are many contributing factors to a change in vision. “The planning process is messy, and it takes a long time,” Castaneda said.
“In fact, we can say that the initial visions not only might change, they will change for anything that is envisioned for the waterfront. And that's part of the process,” she said.
Owen Lang, a renowned architect and designer of the visionary plan, echoed Castaneda’s statement.
“Time, economics, who’s running the port, who’s the mayor, what the county feels like, what the Navy feels like, what Cory Briggs feels like — all these things affect the next decision. The next project that comes on deck. So have that in mind,” Lang said.
The scope and funding for the next phase of the visionary plan has yet to be identified, according to the port. On indefinite hold are: new piers and a piazza at Grape Street, the transformation of Navy Pier to a public park, a new 1.25-acre waterfront park, a “market square” at B Street Pier, large grassy lawns along Harbor Drive, art installations and infrastructure upgrades along the bayfront.
The port still owes the California Coastal Commission a new master plan amendment, which has been in the works since 2009. It is on hold while the port works on a new overall master plan, which has been in progress since 2013.
On a warm and sunny morning in November, former Commissioner Black took in her surroundings on the Broadway Pier.
McDade thinks, in the long run, the North Embarcadero will turn out to be “a very successful and permanent part of our city” — except the pavilion on Broadway Pier. “I nearly choked when I saw that being proposed,” he said.
For Flannery, it’s not so much what was built, but the way in which it was done in defiance of what he feels — and the Coastal Commission verified — is the law: the Port Master Plan.
Briggs lost the group’s biggest case against the Navy Broadway Complex last month, and lawsuits over the Convention Center and a pending plan for hotels on Harbor Island are still in the works, but the Navy Broadway Complex Coalition is no longer in the spotlight — despite massive commercial development planned for the port’s near future.
Yet Briggs isn’t finished with the waterfront as a whole. He has designed a 77-page ballot initiative aimed at financing a noncontiguous expansion of the convention center downtown while dissolving San Diego’s Tourism Marketing District. It could go on the November ballot.
As for Cushman, late last year in the office building bearing his name, a reporter told him this story would highlight not only his time on the port but also his detractors, those who take issue with the way the visionary plan turned out. He paused, appearing confused for the first time during the hourlong interview.
“There are people who don’t like it?” he asked.
1 Theodore Roosevelt visited San Diego's Exposition on July 29, 1915.
2 “What is the Port of San Diego?"
The San Diego Unified Port District was established in 1962 to protect, preserve and enhance the tidelands. The word “tidelands” means the land around San Diego Bay and the Imperial Beach oceanfront, a total of 3,415 acres of land and almost the same amount of water. The Port doesn’t technically own that land, but holds it “in trust” for the people of California.
The district is composed of five member cities: San Diego, Imperial Beach, Chula Vista, National City and Coronado. The agency’s seven member board of directors are appointed positions — each member city appoints one person to the board except San Diego, which appoints three. The board is responsible for setting policies.
A staff of more than 500 handles the day-to-day operations among various departments including engineering and construction, land use management, procurement, maritime, marketing, real estate and the Harbor Police. The Port has around 600 tenant businesses paying rent that account for the majority of the Port’s revenues: more than $93 million in FY 2015. The current budget projects more than $149 million in revenue this year.
3 "Who is Peter Q. Davis"
Peter Q. Davis' roots in San Diego County stretch back to the late 1800s in Coronado. He has 50 years of public service among county and city boards and commissions, which began in 1966 on the county’s Fiscal and Judicial Board of Directors.
Davis later joined San Diego’s small Bank of Commerce in the mid-’70s, became president and chairman a few years later and oversaw its growth to become the largest bank in town by 1999 when it was sold to Bank of America.
4 "Who is Mike McDade?"
J. Michael McDade was born in the then-agricultural community of Lemon Grove, went to high school in San Diego, undergraduate school at Georgetown and studied law at the University of San Diego School of Law while teaching history and government at St. Augustine High School.
During the 1970s, after passing the bar, McDade began practicing law in San Diego while rising quickly inside the Republic Central Committee to become vice chairman. He volunteered for Pete Wilson’s campaign for mayor, ran his re-election campaign and became known as someone who could make things happen politically.
Skipping ahead, McDade would end up running a total of four successful mayoral campaigns, becoming a top political adviser and chief of staff to Mayor Roger Hedgecock, as well as a successful environmental and land use attorney. In 1993, Mayor Susan Golding appointed McDade to the Port’s board of directors where he served for six years.
5 The original North Embarcadero Alliance consisted of five government agencies united in a common goal: to revitalize the one-mile stretch of bayfront downtown called the North Embarcadero, and make it a gift to the city’s people and to the world.
The first agency was the U.S. Navy, the mainstay of San Diego’s economy since the early 20th century. It controls nearly half the land -- almost 1,900 acres -- along the bay’s 54 miles of shoreline. These are the naval bases, air stations, training centers and military depots.
Then there’s the San Diego Unified Port District — big, powerful and wealthy with a long history of backroom dealing and strong personalities. It controls 3,415 acres of land and almost the same amount of water, and manages that land for the citizens. It’s important to note that the Port doesn’t own the land, but rather holds it “in trust” for the people. A board of seven commissioners oversees the agency.
Then there’s the (now-defunct) Centre City Development Corp., or CCDC. The City of San Diego created the nonprofit corporation in 1972 to carry out downtown redevelopment projects and collect huge amounts of property taxes from those projects to build even more.
The Port’s Master Plan was adopted in 1964 for the purpose of laying out the Port’s official planning policies for development of the tidelands. It guides policy decisions, serves as a basis for capital improvements programming and provides the public with information about its land being held in trust by the Port.
It’s important to note that the Port Master Plan is not a guidance document, like the North Embarcadero Visionary Plan, but instead is the law. Major changes to the document must go through a public amendment process and must be certified by a state regulatory agency — the California Coastal Commission. For example, if the plan calls for 50 acres of land to be zoned for commercial use, and the Port wants instead to make that land a public park, it must go through an amendment process involving the public, the Port staff and the California Coastal Commission (at least).
9 "Who is Laurie Black?"
10 Activists and others wanted cruise ship operations moved to the 10th Avenue Marine Terminal, a working dock a mile south. But in 2004, the Port had passed a resolution barring itself from having any future discussions about using the terminal for anything other than maritime trade.
“This was Cushman's doing one hundred percent,” said Peter Q. Davis.
Parties: NBCC v. Dept. of Defense, US Navy, Manchester Pacific Gateway.
Matter: Lease and development of the Navy Broadway Complex, NEPA and 2009 FONSI.
Notes: “As the court concludes that Defendants failed to comply with the public notice and participation requirement, the court does not reach the other issues raised by the parties.” Settlement awarded for $105,000 to NBCC.
Parties: NBCC v. City of San Diego, Centre City Development Corp., Manchester Pacific Gateway.
Matter: Challenging Navy Broadway Complex on the California Environmental Quality Act (Global Climate Change) Environmental Impact Report.
Notes: Coalition appealed loss to higher court.
Parties: NBCC v. US Navy.
Matter: Freedom of Information Act request for lease information regarding the Navy Broadway Complex and Manchester’s bidding documents.
Notes: Some records released, others not.
Matter: (Appealed from lower court) Challenging Navy Broadway Complex on the California Environmental Quality Act (Global Climate Change) Environmental Impact Report.
Notes: "We therefore conclude that the trial court did not err in denying the Coalition's amended petition."
Matter: Deletion of the Oval Park and the coastal development permit for the Broadway Pavilion.
Notes: “The Port did not agree to waive $622.56 [owed by the coalition] but no appeal was filed. So we searched and we never got any payment in that amount. Probably we should have. But we never did." — Port of San Diego spokeswoman Tanya Castaneda.
Matter: Challenging the 100 yard buffer zone around cruise ships related to terrorism.
Outcome: Dismissed by both parties.
Parties: NBCC v. Dept. of Defense.
Matter: Lease and development of the Navy Broadway Complex, NEPA and 2009 FONSI, EIS or SEIS.
Parties: NBCC v. Port of San Diego, Midway Museum.
Matter: Broadway Pier and Midway Museum mitigation measures, views.
Notes: “The port agreed to waive payment of costs in exchange for no appeal.” — Port of San Diego spokeswoman Tanya Castaneda.
Parties: NBCC v. California Coastal Commission, City of San Diego, Port of San Diego.
Matter: EIR, PMPA Convention Center Expansion and Hilton Hotel Expansion.
Parties: NBCC v. California Coastal Commission, Port of San Diego.
Parties: NBCC v. Port of San Diego, Sunroad Enterprises.
Matter: Sunroad Harbor Island Hotel, East Harbor Island PMP Amendment Project.
Parties: NBCC v. California Coastal Commission, City of San Diego, One Park Boulevard LLC, Port of San Diego.
Matter: EIR, CEQA PMPA Convention Center Expansion and Hilton Expansion.
“The Coalition will support and actively advocate for, in writing, and where practicable in person or orally: (1) all approvals of NEVP Phase I, (2) the acquisition of 1220 Pacific Highway, (3) funding for Future NEVP Phases, and (4) all approvals of a revised Lane Field project.
The report, called “Re-Envisioning Our Waterfront,” detailed a community event centered around planning for the Port’s future development in regard to the visionary plan. Wood helped prepare the report and submitted a set of seven “major recommendations” to the Port to consider when creating its new master plan amendment. They included bringing the county back into the alliance, creating a longterm plan for relocating the cruise ships to 10th Avenue, expanding the North Embarcadero planning area and implementing a bayfront shuttle operation. Aside from the shuttle, the Port hasn’t implemented any of the recommendations as of today.

References: v. 
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