EDITORIAL

A couple of weeks ago, as we were putting the finishing touches on a story about secret negotiations between Padres owner John Moores' development company and a coalition of labor, housing and environmental advocates, a member of the coalition asked us to delay publication of the story-he thought the resulting scrutiny could endanger the deal. But unless we were offered a better story in return, that would be out of the question. Because our readers would get nothing out of it, we politely denied the request.

The occurrence signals an ironic paradigm shift in San Diego. The same folks who'd normally be at the public podium decrying secret, last-minute development deals this time were the ones behind the closed doors. Now they're the targets of the type of people who typically make secret deals. The worm has turned.

At first, we were taken aback by a comment made at last week's City Council meeting by Donald Cohen, who helms the social-justice, labor-associated think tank Center on Policy Initiatives. Cohen said the process surrounding Ballpark Village, a colossal mixed-use development slated for property just southeast from Petco Park and the subject of the secret negotiations, had been entirely “transparent.”

“Say what?” we hollered. Sure, much of the process had been transparent-everything up until the major eleventh-hour changes. As journalists, our first response to secrecy is to froth like Pavlov's pups. But circumstances here prompt us to reconsider.

The coalition of advocates, calling themselves ACCORD, can make a decent case that they had no choice but to park themselves in chairs across the table from JMI, Moores' real-estate outfit, and close the door behind them. They'll argue that the city agency that should be negotiating with developers for better deals for the public, the Centre City Development Corp. (CCDC), can't be trusted to do so. Under redevelopment law, CCDC has to ensure development of a certain amount of affordable housing downtown-15 percent of the area's total housing stock has to be “affordable”-but advocates charge that the agency has shown no interest in doing anything more than the absolute legal minimum.

In the case of Ballpark Village, CCDC approved a deal that included somewhere between 80 and 100 “affordable” condos in a development that will result in more than 1,000 total for-sale units. CCDC mandated that the “affordable” units had to be developed within the project site. To its minor credit, CCDC didn't have to include that requirement; onsite development of “affordable” units engenders a healthy balance of coexistent income levels. (For their part, coalition members give no credit to CCDC, which they view as an agency that simply rubber-stamps developers' projects without regard for the intent of the part of redevelopment law that encourages neighborhood revitalization that uplifts the service workers who toil within it and the people who live around it. For coalition members, CCDC's irritation over the new deal is a delightful byproduct.)

The problem is-and this is why we put quote marks around “affordable”-the Ballpark Village units were earmarked as affordable for a family of four making as much as $63,000, and advocates see a greater need for housing that families earning much less than that can afford. They didn't like the deal, so they applied some newfound muscle. Over a period of about two weeks in early September, they hammered out a deal with JMI, offering their support for Ballpark Village in exchange for some impressive local-labor and environmentally friendly construction concessions and a whole new affordable-housing scheme.

Sources close to the negotiations tell us that the advocates wanted 390 affordable units out of the deal. They thought the amount of money JMI would have to spend subsidizing the affordable units in the CCDC plan would finance that many. JMI said no deal and came back to the table, arm in arm with Father Joe Carroll, head of the St. Vincent de Paul charity, with a counter offer: at least 209 offsite affordable rental homes on three separate East Village properties owned by Carroll. The housing advocates in the coalition wanted more homes, and they weren't thrilled about Carroll's involvement-he's not seen as a team player-but in their final analysis, this was the best deal they were going to get.

For all the deal's imperfections, the advocates think it's much better than the one CCDC approved. Critics of the secret agreement will say it's flawed because the affordable housing is offsite, perpetuating the separation of the classes. They're right; that's a very serious flaw. But members of the coalition argue that the CCDC plan is worse; it included affordable housing for “moderate” income earners while the coalition's deal includes more than twice as many affordable units priced for “low” income earners-families of four making between $19,000 and $38,000.

CityBeat is not yet ready to urge the City Council to approve the new plan during its Oct. 11 meeting. We still have questions about the level of financing in place for the affordable units, not to mention some “process” concerns.

However, we are ready to make several comments:

* We forgive the secrecy of the negotiations; without it, there would likely be no alternative to the CCDC plan, and it's always better to have alternatives. However, we must again stress the ironies. The advocates find themselves trying to ramrod a development deal through, leaving relatively little time for careful analysis, because JMI put an Oct. 18 deadline on the deal. Coalition members, who say JMI has been convincing in its time-is-money arguments, say there's plenty of time to analyze the relevant issues: the impact on taxpayers, the project financing and how many affordable units there are in each project and to whom they're affordable. Interestingly, if the process drags past the deadline, coalition members will be forced to switch sides and line up two members of the City Council to kill the project.

* The city's inclusionary housing ordinance, which was supposed to facilitate economically balanced neighborhoods, is lame. Its provision allowing developers to pay a fee in lieu of actually building affordable housing has been a disaster.

* We're encouraged by the cooperation between a developer and social-justice advocates, and we hope there's more of it to come. The advocates have decided to infiltrate a system they'd previously been shut out of. That's a sign of progress-or maybe just progressivism. CCDC should take some good notes and learn what sort of public benefit is possible when you apply just a little bit of pressure. Maybe next time CCDC will actually facilitate a community-benefits agreement at the beginning of the development process.

but in their final analysis, this was the best deal they were going to get.

For all the deal's imperfections, the advocates think it's much better than the one CCDC approved. Critics of the secret agreement will say it's flawed because the affordable housing is offsite, perpetuating the separation of the classes. They're right; that's a very serious flaw. But members of the coalition argue that the CCDC plan is worse; it included affordable housing for “moderate” income earners while the coalition's deal includes more than twice as many affordable units priced for “low” income earners-families of four making between $19,000 and $38,000.

CityBeat is not yet ready to urge the City Council to approve the new plan during its Oct. 11 meeting. We still have questions about the level of financing in place for the affordable units, not to mention some “process” concerns.