Why this matters
Chula Vista’s waterfront is one of the prime areas in San Diego County. Developers and environmentalists have competing visions for its future.
It took years of collaboration between business leaders, community members, environmental organizations and the landlord — the Port of San Diego — to craft a plan to balance conservancy and development for Chula Vista’s booming bayfront.
Now some advocates worry a new project in the works could undermine that work. One observer literally pointed out what was at stake the other day.
“I’ve been here for 10 minutes or so, and we’re at 13 now, 13 different kinds of birds,” said Andrew Meyer, director of conservation for the San Diego Bird Alliance.
A 14th flew by. This one was endangered.
“Dude, that’s a California least tern!”
A small white bird with black marking on its head and wingtips took a sudden dive, orange bill first into the water in search of fish. The eelgrass below the water surface is home to fish that is food for birds and others important for commercial fisheries. Conservationists have been working to preserve this for years.
Now, months after the opening of the Gaylord Pacific Resort & Convention Center on 36 acres in South Bay’s largest city, developers want to build Pangaea, a sports complex anchored in tennis that could include a multi-purpose stadium, an IMAX theater and a water polo academy as well as retail and restaurant space.
The site is located on 124 acres of Port of San Diego land off J street, next to sensitive habitats that are home to endangered species.
Port officials and developers say that the project is in early planning stages and that they will work with advocates to balance business and environmental concerns.
The port’s board has formally agreed to work with developers for two years — and a possible third year — to explore Pangaea’s potential. For Ann Moore, the chair of the port’s board and a Chula Vista resident, it’s a matter of economic opportunity and youth access.
“No kid in the community I grew up in, or even now, I believe, has the opportunity to be able to go to a center like this and to explore whether or not they could become the next huge tennis star, or even be able to perhaps get a scholarship because they’ve been able to fine-tune their talents,” Moore said.
A coalition of environmental advocates, however, sees more problems than benefits. They want to block the project.
They say that Pangaea is substantially more impactful than the intended uses in the Chula Vista Bayfront master plan and that the development could harm sensitive and endangered species in the nearby marsh. They also say that the developers and the port did not do the proper outreach with community members and advocates as they agreed they would in the initial half-year phase of planning.
The Port held one meeting with the Chula Vista Wildlife Advisory Group, a coalition of environmental organizations set up to advise on development in the bayfront.
Participants like Charles Rilli, deputy director of the San Diego chapter of the Sierra Club, said they want deeper community engagement and input.
“It would be great if the Port was to actually work with the community now, work with the environmentalists now, work with residents of Chula Vista now to see what they actually want there, instead of just pushing through a project that just seems random,” Rilli said.
The developer behind Pangaea Development LLC is the Divaris Group. It committed to certain milestones in the first phase of planning, and met some of them by submitting a preliminary project description, a land use plan and a labor agreement.
But advocates say they did not complete a market study, conduct proper outreach, produce environmental planning documentation or present a non-binding letter of intent from a professional tennis player who would back the project, as promised.
Tony Divaris, the COO of Divaris Real Estate, said that six months was too short a time for a project of such scale to achieve those goals but that over the next two years the developers would work alongside stakeholders to make sure the project is carried out responsibly. He also said a market study was conducted.
“We are gung ho for this, but in the same breath, we’re also cautious and we’re also methodical, and we need to make sure we do things properly,” Divaris said.
Divaris said he is “very confident” his team has “ticked the box” when it comes to gaining initial interest with a celebrity tennis player but that he cannot disclose more due to having signed a non-disclosure agreement.
“In the longer period, hopefully, we’ll get some more material involvement,” he said. “You’ll see a lot of us back and forth doing our thing with all the different parties, and I actually really do look forward to it, because everybody has and should have a say and should be heard and taken into account.”
Advocates, however, envision other priorities altogether for the land in San Diego Bay. Leaders from the Sierra Club San Diego chapter, San Diego Coastkeeper, the San Diego Bird Alliance, the Environmental Center of San Diego and the Environmental Health Coalition co-signed a letter last week in opposition to Pangaea.
The letter says that Pangaea “raises significant concerns regarding consistency with the Public Trust Doctrine and the Port’s stewardship responsibilities for state trust lands.”
That doctrine requires trust lands to prioritize projects that depend on the coast.
The letter urges the port to comply with efforts recognized in the bayfront planning document, specifically the need to “preserve opportunities for wetland migration and habitat adaptation in response to sea-level rise.”
One central worry of theirs is that as climate change causes the level of the sea to rise it gradually pushes wetlands further up shore. But when land near the coast is developed, these newer wetlands cannot form, and they are essentially eradicated.
Species in wetland areas are dependent on the many complex layers of ecosystem within them. The Belding’s Savannah sparrow, for one, lives just above the edge of the tide line, an ecosystem particularly under threat of development.
California has also lost 90 percent of its wetlands, and Meyer believes stewards of coastal lands should not only save the remaining portions, but think of expanding wetlands.
“That’s the goal post that we should have if we want to talk about how to manage the Port of San Diego and how to manage the water quality.”
Moore, the Port’s board chair, said she understands the environmental concerns and shares some of them. She said the project is in the early stages and will undergo changes to become more viable.
“There are portions of the plan that I don’t like,” she said. “I would take a red ink pen, and I would say, ‘Nope, nope, nope, nope.’”
One of those elements that gives her pause is the stadium.
“That’s one thing that stands out to me as something that’s not a right fit in this location,” she said.
But, Moore said, commercial uses have a place on the waterfront and in the public trust doctrine.
“Not everybody has a boat, not everybody goes fishing,” she said. “Some people like me would love to go someplace and have a glass of wine and look at the bay and look at the sunset.”
As for expanding wetlands, she said, that is not in the plan.
“I can tell you those things do cost money,” she said, “and that’s something that’s not been before us.”
Moore said that the Port is committed to protecting estuaries and that any project that is officially proposed for the land would be subject to the California Environmental Quality Act, the state’s formal environmental review process.
