RIP new city hall

In September 2008, in this space, I dreamed a little dream. I imagined a grand public place on the Downtown San Diego waterfront. I saw a spectacular crash-and-burn of Doug Manchester’s big hotel project on Navy Broadway Complex land, and in its place, I spied a new city hall and a new main library as majestic bookends on either side of a beautiful public park.

A lot has happened since then. Ground has been broken for the (partially funded) library in East Village. And the City Council entered into exclusive negotiations with a developer for a new city hall to be built on C Street and passed an ordinance placing the project on the November ballot for public consideration. (Full disclosure: As I’ve stated before, I also began a relationship with someone involved with the developer’s team after I wrote that column. Do with that what you will—the facts are the facts.)

Well, last week, Mayor Jerry Sanders, who’s led the charge for the new city hall, vetoed the ordinance, resigned to the reality that the project doesn’t stand a chance at the ballot box, especially with voters being asked to approve a sales-tax increase at the same time.

For now, the new city hall proposed by developer Gerding Edlen is dead. And that’s too bad, because of the four large-scale Downtown capital projects under consideration this year—the library, a new football stadium and an expanded convention center are the others—the city hall project was the one that promised to save taxpayers money in the long run, based on current assumptions. On that, the mayor and the City Council’s Independent Budget Analyst agree. And it was the only one of the four that’s desperately needed—did you happen to catch the facilities consultant a few weeks ago telling the City Council that a fire on the upper floors of the current city hall would surely result in a “catastrophic loss of life”?

The new city hall should never have been put to a public vote in the first place. It takes a lot more than 30 seconds and a couple of pithy sentences on a campaign mailer to explain how the current city hall is falling apart and how, even though the new one would cost hundreds of millions of dollars, taxpayers would save money through the termination of officelease payments. Add to that an energetic faux-populist opposition campaign and what you end up with is a sure-fire failure to communicate a little common sense.

The seeds of the project’s demise were sewn in February, when four City Council members—Republicans Carl DeMaio and Kevin Faulconer and Democrats Donna Frye and Sherri Lightner—signed a memo insisted on a public vote. That left Marti Emerald, Todd Gloria, Ben Hueso and Tony Young one vote short of avoiding an election.

When Sanders, Gerding Edlen and the Downtown business interests backing the project threw up the white flag last week, there was no incentive for any of the factions on the council to put up a fight. Ironically, it was the guy who hated the proposal the most, DeMaio, who wanted to consider an override of Sanders’ veto—he wants the matter put to the voters because he knows the project would get murdered in November, and he possibly saw some conspiracy afoot to sneak through a legislative approval.

So, what does the future hold? Uncertainty. Frye and Hueso are termed out of office in December, one from each side of the city hall debate. Barring an unlikely change of heart from Faulconer or Lightner, the trio of Emerald, Gloria and Young would need Hueso’s replacement (his brother Felipe or David Alvarez) and Frye’s replacement (Lorie Zapf or Howard Wayne) to say yes to Gerding Edlen’s proposal in 2011 (Wayne says he’d want a public vote, Alvarez would approve it without one and Hueso and Zapf didn’t respond to e-mails). Failing that, the council could send the matter to the voters in 2012, and who knows what the public’s mood will be then. And would Gerding Edlen still be interested?

For now, dear taxpayer, you’ll be pouring money into a black hole—the current building requires $37 million in fixes just to keep it chugging and sputtering for the next decade. Then, in any case, it’ll be time once again for a solution. Maybe Downtown office space will be dirt-cheap and we can spread thousands of municipal workers across the urban landscape. Or maybe it won’t, and we’ll have to start from scratch on a big new building, and maybe the terms won’t be as good as they are now. Or maybe they’ll be better. No one knows.

Me? Even though I think the City Council should have approved the new building without a public vote, I’m looking on the bright side: New city hall on the waterfront, anyone?

Update: It would actually take six votes for the City Council to approve the city hall project outright, not five, so Gloria, Emerald and Young would need both Hueso's and Frye's replacements, as well as a change of heart from Lightner or Faulconer. Don't see it happening.