NEWSY BITS

Navy Broadway Lite

The Department of Motor Vehicles knows a great idea when it sees one. In this case, the DMV wants to build a new office in Hillcrest the same way the Navy is getting a new HQ downtown-by making someone else build it for them.

Here's how the scheme goes down:

* Government agency owns prime piece of public land that has become much more valuable since it first built there.

* Building owned by government agency is decrepit and obsolete.

* Government has no funds to build new building.

* Government offers development rights to anyone willing to build government a new office.

* Government gets new office, developer builds condo complex and the public-well, no one knows how the public wins.

The plot of land in question is the site of the Normal Street DMV. San Diegans know it as the Land of Endless Wait, but the local Hillcrestocracy thinks of it as a Sunday farmers market. The DMV thinks of it as run-down.

The agency made an announcement offering a developer a 45-year lease and the right to build a mid- to high-rise building in exchange for a spiffy new DMV office on the site.

“What I've heard from the development community is not many people are interested. The terms are not very good,” said Leo Wilson, chairman of the Uptown Planners, the outfit that advises city officials on land-use issues in Hillcrest.

The request for proposals hasn't been released, and several local politicians, notably Assemblymember Lori Saldaña and state Sen. Christine Kehoe, are having conversations with the DMV to keep the public involved. Wilson fears the 2.68-acre plot may not be big enough for something like the Uptown Center, the large mixed-use complex adjacent to Trader Joe's on University Avenue, but may just end up “as an eyesore.”

“I think you might get a huge tenement in the middle of Hillcrest,” Wilson said. “And I'm not against affordable housing, but it should be spread throughout the community.”

Tom Mullaney, the head of the nonprofit Friends of San Diego, would rather see a park on the site. A spokesman for Saldaña, Joe Kocurek, said the idea had not yet been considered.

-Eric Wolff

Stop the fence

The plaintiffs involved in a lawsuit aimed at stopping a proposed border-fence extension hope that by the time the case gets to court in 2008, there will be a broad umbrella of environmental and cultural groups involved.

The case, filed last week and first reported on CityBeat's blog (sdcitybeat.wordpress.com), was brought by the citizens groups Save Our Heritage Organisation and Friends of the U.S.-Mexico Border Environment (FUMBE).

“I've been in conversation with the Audubon Society, the Environmental Health Coalition, Proyectivo Fronterizo and the Border Angels,” said Dan Watman, director of FUMBE.

Watman hopes that by presenting a united front, the coalition could force the government to halt construction.

In particular, Watman worries that fence construction could permanently destroy the Tijuana Estuary, the largest such habitat in Southern California and Baja.

“It's the most important stopover site for migratory water fowl,” said Suzanne Michel, a professor of geography at Cuyamaca College. “You're ripping out all the plants up there, shrubs with 20-foot root systems, which leaves no capability to manage the erosion or the speed of the storm-water runoff. Tijuana is eroding into the estuary.”