Education of the Modern Doctor: Marcus Welby vs. House 
Anything would be better than the current state of Lane Field
- Photo by David Rolland
Quietly during the past few months, the developers of an approved hotel project on what’s currently a vast concrete sea of parking spaces near the waterfront have been meeting with officials from the Port of San Diego, discussing the possibility of altering the project’s design to include more public park space. The talks come amid the Port’s embattled attempts to satisfy activists who insist that a large public park be the centerpiece of efforts to beautify the Downtown embarcadero.
The property, commonly known as Lane Field, where the San Diego Padres played from 1936 to 1957, is a 5.7-acre parcel on the north side of Broadway, east of Harbor Drive and west of Pacific Highway. Since its baseball life ended, it’s been used primarily as parking for cruise-ship passengers, but it’s a prime piece of real estate that sits, generally speaking, between the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego and the U.S.S. Midway Museum.
The behind-the-scenes conversations started with an impromptu chat between Port Commissioner Michael Bixler and Jerry Trammer, project executive for Lane Field San Diego Developers LLC, the consortium behind the hotel complex, during a break at Port Commission meeting in early April.
That day, Bixler asked Trammer to tell Charles Wurster, the Port’s CEO, what might happen if the California Coastal Commission were to require the Port to increase park space on the site during its April 14 meeting, when the commission was scheduled to vote on the Port’s plan to spruce up the waterfront—the so-called North Embarcadero Visionary Plan.
Trammer did so in an April 12 letter to Wurster, and meetings over a potential redesign of Lane Field began in the wake of the Coastal Commission’s narrow vote to reject the Port’s plan, largely on the basis of the Port’s elimination of a large public park at the foot of Broadway Pier.
The Coastal Commission vote was a big blow to the Port’s waterfront-development agenda and a huge victory for activists angry at the Port’s removal of the park from the plan. The activists, the Navy Broadway Complex Coalition, have sued the Port over the cruise-ship terminal currently being constructed on Broadway Pier. The Port eliminated the park from the plan because it needed the space for trucks servicing the cruise-ship terminal.
Trammer told CityBeat that Port Commissioner Steve Cushman jumpstarted the meetings after the Coastal Commission vote.
“The Port verbally asked if we were amenable to providing additional open space at our project site,” Trammer said in an e-mail late last month. “We responded that we would look into the matter and then advise them if that type of modification was possible. We are currently doing exactly that and have not yet come to a conclusion yea or nay.”
Port spokesperson Ron Powell confirmed that talks are ongoing but declined to provide details, citing their “sensitive” nature. He said that perhaps Cory Briggs, the attorney representing the Navy Broadway Complex Coalition, would talk.
But Briggs also declined to comment on the meetings.
“I’m glad to know they’re working on it,” said Diana Lilly, a San Diego district planner for the Coastal Commission. “The good thing is that it’s right there in the same location near the foot of Broadway…. On the other hand, it’s not on the waterfront; it’s on the inland side of Harbor Drive, and I don’t know how much space they have to work with. There was no clear, obvious place for that replacement park to go to; if there had been, we would have said, ‘Do it there.’ So, it’s going to take some creativity.”
Prior to the April 14 Coastal Commission hearing, the commission staff had recommended approval of the Port’s beautification plan, but with the condition that the Port identify a location for a park to replace the one envisioned for the foot of Broadway Pier. Staff wanted the park to be at least 2.5 acres. That acreage could be split up, but at least half of it would have to be west of Harbor Drive.
Approved by the Port and the Coastal Commission, the Lane Field project would include two hotels— a 13-story Vivara with about 275 rooms and a 22-story InterContinental with about 525 rooms. The site would also hold restaurants and stores, as well as a 1,276-space underground parking garage.
The project is on hold because the developers are having a hard time finding financing. In his letter to Wurster, Trammer blamed the financing problems on Unite-Here Local 30—the union that represents hotel workers, which sued the Port over the project, alleging that the California Environmental Quality Act wasn’t properly followed—as well as the economic recession.
“We believe, however, that over the next eighteen months, viable opportunities to finance our project will emerge and that we will be able to move the Lane Field project forward,” Trammer wrote.
Write to davidr@sdcitybeat.com.
