City Council must know it is OK to say no

You know, some people seem to be too early in what they do. Leonardo da Vinci was a bit early (16th Century) in designing an “air screw machine” (helicopter) and his “flying machine” (airplane). Then there are other people who seem to be too late in what they do, or want to do.  I waited until two days after the Belmont Stakes before I tried to place my bet on American Pharoah — couldn’t find a taker.

Well, the city of Chula Vista seems to be the latter.  As we have often pointed out, the Chula Vista Council approves developers’ applications to build more and more residential units, even if they have to re-zone industrial and commercial land to get it done.  We now have a very large and unbalanced “bedroom community.”

When anyone points out this unbalanced situation, the city always responds, ‘Don’t worry, that will be fixed when we build the Millenia project or the Bayfront plan.” Among many other features, the Millenia project is scheduled to include 3,000 multi-family residential units and 2,000,000 square feet of Class A office space.  Well, as you can see they are building the residential units.  But the office buildings — well, they will come in time — won’t they?

Millenia is one of three areas where 15-story buildings will be allowed (the other two being the E Street and H Street Trolley stops).  So the good news is, the Millenia will allow 15-story business buildings to be built, containing up to 2,000,000 square feet of office space.

Unfortunately, a recent article in the Union-Tribune had the bad news:  “Companies are increasingly leaving suburban office parks for city centers to cater to urban-loving millennials. . . Backed by research by the Cushman & Wakefield commercial real estate brokerage, the number of jobs downtown has grown since the recession, while the number elsewhere has shrunk. . . The Downtown San Diego Partnership identified 34 companies that have relocated downtown in the past 18 months. . . . It’s a reflection of the knowledge economy that is driving this economy right now.  This is where the ‘creative class’ wants to be, this is where ideas happen, this is where deals happen — in these walkable urban places, not in isolated business parks.”

Many of you will remember when we found out that SR 125 was going to be a tollway.  SR 125 went from near the border to dump onto highway 54.  Some called it a “freeway to nowhere” — and it was a TOLLway!  Many of us said it would never work.  Somehow investors with millions of dollars said it would work.  Who won that argument?

Think about huge office buildings in isolated Millenia (immediately south of Otay Ranch Town Center):  if someone needed to do business there from downtown, and they wanted to take the freeways, might not they be surprised to find out they had to pay a toll?  Or have to take surface streets quite a way to get there?  Is it too little, too late?
Crossroads II suggests the our City Council should stop automatically saying “yes” to every request by developers to build more residential —take a long deep breath — and think, where are you taking our city?

Watry is a memebr of Crossroads II.