PANEL TO HEAR PLAN FOR BARRIO LOGAN

Blueprint moves toward Coastal Commission vote

More than a year after the San Diego City Council approved the long-awaited growth blueprint for Barrio Logan, the plan is finally expected to go before the Coastal Commission for adoption in the coming months — but first, it faces another likely delay.

The plan update aims to make Barrio Logan — situated just south of downtown on the San Diego Bay — healthier by separating residents from the neighboring shipping industry, adding several parks and allowing many new projects.

The plan is years in the making, after a furtherreaching version of it was scuttled by voters in a citywide referendum nearly a decade ago.

Although the latest version of the plan was unanimously approved by the council in December 2021, it still needs approval from the California Coastal Commission, which must weigh in on any planning policies and development that affects the state’s coastlines.

The commission had asked the city in October 2021 for additional information and revisions to the plan to ensure its compliance with state law and commission policy.

But many of those requested changes were still missing from the final plan submitted by the city the following June, said Melody Lasiter, a coastal program analyst with the agency. She said the city provided the information this January.

City planners say they’ve been working with the Coastal Commission to address proposed modifications, which are currently being reviewed by the city.

Now, the city has asked the commission to extend the 90-day time limit for action to adopt the plan by up to one year — “to provide additional time for our staffs to coordinate on revised policy language to strengthen the coastal resource protections and ensure the plan’s consistency with the Coastal Act,” Lasiter said.

The commission will vote on that extension when it meets May 10. It would then aim for a hearing on the plan in June. Its next meeting is June 7-9.

Residents have been asking the Barrio Logan Community Planning Group for updates on the plan’s approval, which would ensure no new industrial facilities are permitted in the pollution-weary neighborhood.

Barrio Logan was primarily residential until World War II shipyards expanded and heavy industry took over the waterfront. Pollution in the neighborhood worsened in the late 1960s, when construction of the San Diego-Coronado Bridge tore it in half.

Since then, the primarily Latino community has uneasily coexisted with industrial uses they say have polluted the air and posed health risks.

The new community plan — which guides development in the area over the next 20 to 30 years — creates a 65-acre buffer zone between housing areas and the nearby shipping industry where any new or expanded industrial uses are prohibited.

It also calls for triple the number of homes and building eight new parks and more neighborhoodfriendly projects. If approved, it will be the first update to the community’s growth plan since 1978.

In 2014, local business groups overturned a similar effort with the successful ballot propositions.

That referendum pitted the industrial leaders against community activists and environmental protection advocates — a fight that has continued through the years.

“The city has desperately needed to update Barrio Logan’s land use and zoning for decades because of the incompatible uses that existed right next to each other,” Councilmember Vivian Moreno, who represents the area, said during the plan’s City Council approval in 2021.