BARRIO LOGAN

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Tuesday, June 26, 2007. People in Barrio Logan lack the voice on development matters afforded to 42 other sectors of the cities. Now they're ready to change that. Interested community members will meet Friday to solidify the parameters of forming a community planning group. They plan to nail down geographic boundaries and create a set of bylaws. City Attorney Mike Aguirre pledged his support to the nascent planning group earlier this month, though other city officials in the planning department said they would prefer to appoint a stakeholders group that includes residents and business and land owners to advise them as they update the sector's community plan. -- NINA PETERSEN-PERLMAN

Friday, June 15, 2007 | Throughout its existence, Barrio Logan has experienced all the negatives of city planning. Past city leaders divided the neighborhood with controversial construction projects and promised redevelopment plans that never came to fruition. Now, with the development of a new blueprint for growth underway, they want the same voice in the planning process afforded to 42 other sectors of the city: the representation of a community planning group. Tommie Camarillo, chairwoman of the Chicano Park Steering Committee, said the effort is about giving the community the chance to participate in discussions about its future. "That's all," she said. "It's no big thing, we don't have tricks up our sleeve or anything. We just want the community to have their say, just like everybody else." The City Council approved the transfer of $1.5 million from the Centre City Development Corp. on April 24 to update the Barrio Logan community plan, which hasn't been updated since 1978. Redevelopment Agency spokesman Eric Symons said that the ordinance in effect has led to incompatible land uses, such as heavy-polluting factories and homes being in close proximity to each other. A community planning group is made up of volunteers with vested interests in the community they represent because it is where they live or own a business. It advises the City Council on proposed developments in their area. Camarillo voiced concern about the city proceeding with developments without such input. "As with many communities across this City and our nation, the members of the Barrio Logan community are historically skeptical of any plan or process that is developed by those outside of the community and without full and collaborative participation and leadership," Camarillo wrote in a May 3 letter to Mayor Jerry Sanders and 8th District Councilman Ben Hueso. The Mayor's Office responded about a week later with a letter saying it would be happy to form such a group, but only after the community planning process was completed, not before. "Instead, we will be working with a Stakeholders Group during the planning process formed by the Council office to ensure representation from the various groups in the community," it said. Director for Economic Planning Bill Anderson said the purpose of having a stakeholders group instead of a community planning group at this time would be to ensure that voices from everyone affected are involved, with seats reserved for renters, homeowners, businesses, nonprofit organizations and non-resident property owners. There would also be non-voting seats for port, school and community college districts. "Community planning groups are elected, so they aren't necessarily representative of all interest groups that would be affected by a community plan update," he said. "I think they deserve one, it's just, as far as timing, we think it should be at end of the community plan update process and we would work with the stakeholders group," Anderson. City Attorney Mike Aguirre has championed Barrio Logan's cause, saying the city has lost sight of the grassroots nature of community planning groups. "The community planning process is a disaster right now," he said. "The attitude on the part of the Planning Department is that power and the right to participate in the planning process comes from top down, and I want to help build support for the idea that it comes from the neighborhoods and the communities." Aguirre met with 20 members of the Barrio Logan community Thursday at the Cesar Chavez Educational Center. He assured them he is prepared to have his lawyers do whatever is needed to ensure a planning group's creation. In front of the audience, Aguirre placed a phone call to Deputy Attorney Alex Sachs to schedule a meeting time between Sachs and interested parties for Friday afternoon to create a set of bylaws. As soon as they organized, Aguirre said, he would have members of his office supervise their elections so they could start petitioning the council. "If a councilmember says no, say 'screw you!' If the mayor says no, say 'screw you!'" Aguirre said. The community's apprehension for city plans has historical roots. Mexican Americans began settling what was then Logan Heights as early as the 1890s, with the population eventually swelling to as many as 20,000, making it the second-largest Latino community on the West Coast. Zoning laws in the 1950s changed from favoring residential to industrial, inviting an influx of pollution that has been blamed for residents' health problems. In 1996, the Scripps Research Institute found that 28 percent of Latino children in the Logan area had probable or possible asthma, versus a national prevalence of 7 percent in children. In 1963, construction of Interstate 5 bisected the barrio, with the area to the north of the freeway becoming Logan Heights and the area to the south becoming today's Barrio Logan. The Coronado Bay Bridge opened in 1969, its onramps and supports erected in the heart of the barrio. These two construction projects, which dislocated a host of families and businesses, are credited with reducing the area's population to 5,000 in 10 years. But in what was viewed as a triumph for the community, it successfully petitioned in the late '60s for a neighborhood park underneath the bridge pylons. Artists began painting colorful, nationally-recognized murals in the bridge's shadow, evoking images of Latino heritage. The city had to take notice of the area recently, when it was the subject of a lawsuit filed by the Mercado Alliance. Developers had received funding to create a shopping center called Mercado del Barrio in 1989, but the land sits vacant to this day. After years of inaction, the City Council voted last year to take back the land, and in August, the Mercado Alliance unsuccessfully sued. The alliance is planning to appeal the decision. Ron Baza, who has acted as a pro bono consultant to the steering committee, said the city's unwillingness to agree to the formation of a planning group at this time might be out of a fear that the community is "a little too vocal." "I think this community has a right to be frustrated, has a right to be angry and to make a lot of noise and be vocal about what's going on in our community," he said. Aguirre said the city has "ignored and abused" the area. "The trucks have been routed through there. They've had problems with all of the pollution and hazardous discharges. You've had the wrecking companies in there ," he said. "It's really been used as the dumping ground for our city." Baza said he doesn't want to alienate people at City Hall, but he wants them to understand there's a lot at stake. "In terms of civic leadership, I think that the mayor, and specifically the councilman for the district, have a wonderful opportunity to help the Barrio Logan community realize its dreams and aspirations, taking into account the cultural aspects of the community but not ignoring the needs of development," Baza said.
Power to Plan. The Issue: Barrio Logan is attempting to form a community planning group, but City Hall wants to wait until after the area's community plan is revised.

What It Means: Residents, who feel like the city has ignored their welfare in the past, fear history will repeat itself. The Bigger Picture: The push comes at a time that the city of San Diego is discussing the role community groups play in local planning.

I find it ironic that Bill Anderson, Director for Economic Planning, is spinning a "stakeholders group" instead of a community planning group. He is defining exactly what a community planning group (CPG) is and does. I would suggest that Mr. Anderson meet with the Barrio Logan residents and business owners (a.k.a. stakeholders) so they can educate him about Barrio Logan's past, present and future. He is in dreamland if he thinks that a stakeholders group of his (and city halls) choosing are going to be in charge of planning in Barrio Logan or any other San Diego community. Most of us know that Mr. Anderson, redevelopment czar Jim Waring, Councilman Ben Hueso and Mayor Jerry Sanders would love to not have a CPG in Barrio Logan, as well as dissolve all of San Diego's CPG's. Well that is not going to happen! With more than 40 CPG's all over San Diego, these developer-lovin' city servants will have to learn the hard way that residents and business owners want a say and active roll in the planning and development of their respective communities, not the other way around. I hope all San Diego CPG's are mindful of what is going on in the city redevelopment office, planning department, Mayor's Office and council offices. Your communities' best interest is at stake.

Reader Comments Frances O'Neill Zimmerman wrote on June 15, 2007 11:24 AM:
"Poor Barrio Logan -- arriving late to the runaway development party. On May 22 affable Mayor Sanders' man Bill Anderson told leaders of 44 existing community planning groups (CPGs) that the City will no longer provide assistance from its professional planners to staff and advise these organizations -- a bald attempt to cripple the effectiveness of CPGs and prelude to killing them off. Now we hear about proposed changes in descriptive "language" for such volunteer groups. Well, at this point, we San Diegans know the difference between "stakeholders" and "community:" one means profiteers with vested business interests, while the latter means something more general and benign -- like citizens working toward common goals. As Barrio Logan landlord friends of Councilman Ben Hueso continue to snap up bargains there, I wish the embattled residents well."

Thursday, June 21, 2007 | Two of San Diego’s highest crime areas will lose the valued services of neighborhood prosecutors next month as City Attorney Mike Aguirre trims his staff. The neighborhood prosecutors are tasked with tackling quality of life crimes at a local level. Essentially, they work as a local arm of the City Attorney’s Office, liaising directly with community groups, local business leaders and police officers to tackle issues like graffiti, drug abuse and city code violations. Aguirre said the job losses were spelled out to the City Council when it voted on his budget earlier this month. But in a press conference Wednesday morning, Councilman Ben Hueso accused Aguirre of political retaliation for the council-imposed limits on his budget and called Aguirre’s choice of personnel to cut "political leveraging." Aguirre fired back at Hueso, saying the councilman knew what was coming and was trying to find someone other than himself to blame. Meanwhile, representatives of community groups in the two neighborhoods losing prosecutors said they are being caught in the middle of a political game. They said the prosecutors provide an essential service to the community and lamented the internecine wrangling at City Hall. "We’re taking steps backwards," said Richard Gomez, a member of the San Ysidro Border Transportation Council, a group that works regularly with one of the neighborhood prosecutors being dropped. "I think that position is one of the greatest things that they’ve accomplished." The loss of prosecutors has been the latest focal point of an ongoing feud between Hueso and Aguirre. That quarrel was elevated in March when the councilman proposed barring Aguirre from filing lawsuits on the city's behalf without the council's consent. More recently, Hueso and five other council members voted June 11 to cut 14 of the 17 staff members in the City Attorney's Office that were identified as "supplemental positions." Those positions represent lawyers in his office that had not been included in the office's roster, but were paid for with excess funds within the City Attorney's Office. Mayor Jerry Sanders recommended that only the three of the 17 positions -- those relating to the city's financial disclosures -- be allowed to remain because Aguirre failed to phase out the archaic budgeting practice last year when other departments did. Aguirre identified neighborhood prosecutors in City Council District 4 and District 8 as part of the supplemental positions being cut. Aguirre relayed news of the cuts to key community leaders in District 8, which Hueso represents, but not District 4. "It is with much regret, that I write to inform you that the City Attorney's Office must discontinue the work of your neighborhood prosecutor, Gabriela Brennan, in Council District 8 in South San Diego," the June 12 letter from Assistant City Attorney Chris Morris stated. The letter also named all the council members -- including Hueso -- who voted for the cuts. Deputy City Attorney Margaret Jacobo said the letter was sent to community groups that work with her office regularly. But Hueso's office contends the letter was sent to influential groups in order to hurt him politically. "It was target marketing, sent to select leaders and constituents in District 8," Hueso spokeswoman Elizabeth Armendariz said. "They are more organized than sending it to a regular person in the public. They have more of a voice to cause a ruckus in the city." Councilman Tony Young, who represents District 4, voted against the cuts to Aguirre’s budget. His district will be losing a prosecutor, but letters notifying his constituents of the cutback were not sent. Young said he knew the cuts were coming down the pipeline before he voted on the city attorney’s budget. He said Aguirre was clear about which positions would be cut if the budget restrictions were imposed. Unfortunately, he said, the positions Aguirre dropped provide a vital community service. "This is not a community friendly budget," Young said. "A lot of services are being cut and I’ve said that all along." Rachael Ortiz, executive director of Barrio Station, a community organization in the Barrio Logan neighborhood, said she works with her local neighborhood prosecutor frequently. Ortiz said neighborhood prosecutors are essential in aiding community groups in their fight against businesses that fail to comply with city code. Code compliance failures might include anything from use of inappropriate signage to operating a business out of a residence. Without a neighborhood prosecutor as an ally, Ortiz said, many community groups have no recourse against their foes. "You can’t go to the police because they don’t do code enforcement," she said. "You can spin your wheels at the city and county environmental services department and they’ll come in and they’ll write a report, but it stays shelved -- there’s no legal enforcement." Barrio Logan’s neighborhood prosecutor will survive this round of cuts, and Aguirre said he’s hoping the council will resurrect budget negotiations for the two neighborhood prosecutors who, as things stand, will be cut on July 1. But Hueso argued that it was Aguirre who decided which lawyers to layoff. "It’s a very simple formula: He wanted more positions, he didn’t get them, so he retaliated by cutting very, very important core services to our district," Hueso said. "That’s unfair and it’s not what the public deserves." Aguirre said shifting the attorneys around the roster was not an option because the council decided to cut the lawyers pegged as supplemental positions in budgets past. "While I am very close to the eighth district, when I make decisions for the City Attorney's Office, I can't determine anything with anything but citywide eyes," said Aguirre, who has run for public office in District 8. The police department, which works alongside neighborhood prosecutors, would not provide officers to comment on the cuts. Political Punches. The Issue: Two neighborhood prosecutors will be dropped from the city attorney’s staff on July 1. They are among 14 staff positions cut from the city attorney’s budget by the City Council earlier this month. What It Means: Neighborhood prosecutors work at a grassroots level with community groups and business owners to prosecute crimes that affect the quality of life in their neighborhoods. Community groups said the prosecutors provide a vital service and that they won’t let them go without a fight. The Bigger Picture: The debate over who is to blame for the loss of the neighborhood prosecutors is the latest stage in an ongoing feud between the city attorney and the City Council. Please contact Will Carless and Evan McLaughlin directly with your thoughts, ideas, personal stories or tips. Or send a letter to the editor.

The CCDC Board recommended that the Redevelopment Agency provide funding in the amount not to exceed $1.5 million to support the update of the Barrio Logan/ Harbor 101 Community Plan, its Redevelopment Plan, and to replace the existing Barrio Logan Planned District Ordinance. The new plan will be developed by the City Planning and Community Investment staff in conjunction with the community as a whole. This must be approved by the San Diego City Council sitting as the Redevelopment Agency

The Barrio Logan Community Plan is one of the oldest and most outdated in the City of San Diego, but residents now have good reason to hope for change. On February 1, 2007 the Centre City Development Corporation (CCDC) Board of Directors approved up to $1.5 million in funding for the long-awaited and long-delayed Barrio Logan community plan update.

This allocation of funds is unprecedented and acknowledges the gentrifying effect on the Barrio Logan neighborhood that is caused by downtown San Diego’s upscale development. Rents in Barrio Logan have skyrocketed, forcing many families to share apartments, live in crowded and cramped conditions, or move out of the neighborhood. CCDC originally pledged ﬁnancial support for the Barrio Logan plan at the urging of EHC and city leaders when the Downtown community plan update passed in 2006. Their contribution is part of CCDC’s “good neighbor” commitment to help address the impacts of downtown development in surrounding communities. “I’m very happy that CCDC has ﬁnally given the funds for a new plan so that we can have a clean, toxic-free neighborhood with more affordable housing,” said Maria Martinez, an EHC leader and resident of the Mercado Apartments in Barrio Logan. Martinez and other EHC leaders who live in Barrio Logan and the surrounding neighborhoods took their concerns to District 8 Councilmember Ben Hueso in May 2006. Hueso listened and responded to residents by pledging to secure the funds and start the community planning process. Evidence of Hueso’s commitment and echoes of community concerns were clear in Mayor Sanders’ State of the City address on January 11. The mayor announced that the Barrio Logan Plan would be initiated in 2007. Lack of political will and ﬁnancial resources had been the stumbling blocks to a plan update for many years, but in recent months both blocks have largely been removed. It is a victory that EHC leaders can celebrate, and EHC will advocate that the community plan update be consistent with the Barrio Logan Vision. “EHC looks forward to working with the City but we want to see the Vision put into action,” said Maria Moya, EHC Community Organizer. “Residents have participated in many meetings and made many recommendations – now it’s time to act.” Why is a Community Plan Update Needed? In Barrio Logan, ‘mixed-use’ zoning that allows polluting industries to be located right next door to homes and schools is an environmental justice nightmare that can be resolved through a community plan. Barrio Logan’s community plan has not been updated since 1978, and the community plan process is a key opportunity for residents to decide the future of their neighborhood. Plans impact zoning, housing, public services such as parks and community centers, and much more. Barrio Logan Vision After years of promises and delays, EHC worked with residents who decided to take planning into their own hands. The result was the Barrio Logan Vision, now endorsed by over 1000 area residents, 28 community organizations and 16 local businesses. “With funding ﬁnally secured, EHC will work with residents to ensure that the new community plan will carry out the Barrio Logan Vision.” said Laura Benson, EHC Campaign Director. Challenges

The community planning process doesn’t guarantee that affordable housing will be built, zoning changed to ensure separation of polluters and homes, or preservation of community character. Barrio Logan’s proximity to downtown has some eyeing it for upscale high-rise condominiums, sports stadiums, tourist attractions and other development that doesn’t serve the current residents. Some may view the planning process as the opportunity to radically change the community. EHC will serve as a watchdog throughout the process to ensure that Barrio Logan residents are in the lead and the ﬁnal plan serves community needs.

Councilman Ben Hueso signs a community pledge in support of Barrio Logan Vision, May 2006.

Ronald L. Baza & Jacqueline Ayala, 3731 Wildwood Road, San Diego 92107. Ron Baza and Associates (Diversity Consultants). – Leadership Skills and Potential.

March 23, 2007 Restoration is ahead for historic collection of murals By Raymond R. Beltran
It’s been thirty four years today, March 23, 1973, since the first mural was resurrected along Logan Avenue in Barrio Logan, introducing a park that is today nationally registered as a historical piece of land. With a vibrant array of colors that shocked a community at the time, images of revolutionary figures like Emiliano Zapata, Frida Khalo, Cesar Chavez, and The Brown Berets were painted on the off-ramp wall at the foot of the Coronado Bay Bridge by a band of self-proclaimed Chicano artists, who ultimately initiated a 1970s mural renaissance in Chicano Park. But today, the paint that was applied to the bridge columns is submitting to age, weather, sun exposure, and passing automobiles, and there are now twenty murals out of the forty that are fading into dilapidation. “Not only was it poor technology, but people painted them without regard for doing it in a professional manner,” says Salvador Barajas, one of the original artists who is involved in the efforts to restore the murals this summer. “So, the question is, ‘how much have we learned since then?’” Barajas and three multifaceted artists (Victor Ochoa, Jose Ramirez and Manuel “Memo” Cavada) answered that question in creating the Chicano Park Mural Restoration Technical Manual, a recently published text book for restoration artists that was funded $25,000 by Caltrans. Many techniques went ignored because artists at the time had neither the resources or know how, they say. Cleaning the cement pillars with muratic acid, killing micro-organisms inside the concrete pigments, sealing cracks in the cement and waterproofing the surface before applying primer were steps not taken and it shows. Large pieces of murals are flaking off the wall because of poor adhesion to the concrete, paint is blistering and peeling and “sun exposure and the elements have caused excessive discoloration” reads the manual. As an original Chicano Park muralists, Salvador Barajas (above) stood in this spot 34 years ago to introduce, with eleven other artists, The Historic Mural (behind) that, today, is included in a restoration project to begin this summer. “The artists’ needed to express their emotions that day, so they weren’t thinking of how it was going to look twenty years from then,” says Memo Cavada, an international photographer who took photos for the manual. “They said, ‘I have to make a statement and I want to see it today.’” The technique of artists in the 70s only guaranteed their work a ten year life span, so, many murals are far beyond their life expectancy already. Original artists Victor Ochoa and Barajas say that they mainly need to be cleaned, repainted and sealed, and in some more unique instances, parts of murals need to be coated with an acrylic resin called Acryloid B 72, a solution that restores murals to their originality by eighty percent and increasing their life span by thirty more years. Restoration has been a question for some fifteen years now, since CalTrans was doing a statewide bridge-retrofitting project in the early 90s that included covering the park’s murals with cement to reinforce the bridge. The community expressed outrage at the loss of murals, an issue that earned itself a mural along Cesar Chavez Boulevard reading, “Save Our Murals, No Retrofitting.” Ultimately, the politically charged images were saved by methods of strengthening the bridge at its bases, but artists began to notice their work deteriorating, and in 2001, the Chicano Park Steering Committee, a volunteer group who facilitates activities at the park, was granted an unbelievable $1.6 million Transportation Economic Assistance Grant (TEA Grant) through Caltrans to begin the two year project. The first endeavor is complete, the technical manual that was a mandatory step by Caltrans before restoration could start. They decided to grant the CPSC the project after seeing the prototype by Barajas, who also owns his own designing company, Motivational Designs. People who’ve seen the manual are disappointed that it isn’t for public consumers, but unless one is an artist, it would be merely a collection piece. In essence, it’s an instruction manual with 106 pages of brightly colored photos by international photographer Manuel Cavada. “I think it shows that CalTrans didn’t know that there are some very qualified people here,” says Barajas. “You can tell by the (manual’s) quality, they’re going to look at us differently, with more respect.” Caltrans and the Barrio Logan community have often found themselves in a ‘lumpy’ relationship, according to anthropologist Martin Rosen, who works in the Cultural Resources Studies Oversight Department of Caltrans. The construction of Freeway 5 and the Coronado Bay Bridge, which ultimately became mural canvases for artists, cost the homes of 1,500 families when they were resurrected, according to a 1997 Historic Resource Evaluation Report by Caltrans. An influx of industrial businesses followed, but it was the city’s plan to build a police station under the bridge that led to the 1971 stand-off between developers and the community over the land that is now Chicano Park. “The building of the Coronado Bridge and the Freeway 5 in the middle of Logan Heights is the most racist efforts against this neighborhood,” says Ochoa. The disappearance of those residents is an issue that artists now want to raise in a second edition of the restoration project’s technical manual. Barajas is hoping to create an academic piece with more history about the barrio with interviews with long time residents, but he says it won’t be complete until the murals are restored. “Nobody is doing anything like this,” says Rosen, who wrote the original TEA Grant proposal. “All I can say is that the murals mean a lot to me and I want to help preserve them.” He also sees himself as somewhat of a watchdog between Caltrans and the community and some artists agree. He’s currently writing the second grant to see the academic manual come to fruition as well. “Let’s just say that when we came in initially, it was very lumpy,” he says about Caltrans and the community. “But back then, that stuff was being done all over the country.” And throughout, the murals have recorded the issues. “Varrio Si, Yonkes No!” is a mural that reflects a time when junkyards and auto shops were swallowing up residential land. “All the Way to the Bay” is a banner of a mural that reminds residents that Chicano Park was originally supposed to extend out to the bay front. And throughout the park, there are painted images of heroes like the family health center advocate Laura Rodriguez and most recently the late Chicano activist, Corky Gonzalez. The restoration project is supposed to begin in July this year and will take two years. Caltrans is currently tasked with finding a project manager to oversee the artists and their work. No names have come to mind just yet, but the project calls for all original artists to restore their own work. Finding the artists, Barajas says, is a task for the project manager.

Barrio Logan Maps Released for Suggestions By Raymond R. Beltrán
Tuesday night, May 11, Barrio Logan residents were given an hour to evaluate three maps, produced by the City of San Diego, that will act as future references if investors ever begin the redevelopment process of their neighborhood. The target “redevelopment area,” stretches along the 32nd Street Naval Base and the port community to the I-5 freeway, from the boundary of National City to 16th Street, Sigsbee Street and Beardsley Street. City planners met with Barrio Logan residents Tuesday to discuss visionary maps about redevelopment issues. Photo by Raymond R. Beltran. The alternative maps were constructed by Estrada Land Planning and were supposed to have reflected numerous concerns that Barrio Logan residents addressed in two previous community development workshops titled El Futuro del Barrio. The primary issues dealt with diesel truck trafficking, the mixed use of industrial and residential neighborhoods and affordable housing. The three maps, Options A, B and C, differed somewhat in the arrangement of parks, mixed use of land and the commercial and residential zoning, although, they equally reflect a character similar to the Gaslamp District and suggest a connection between Logan and Downtown San Diego, the crux of the connection being, of course, Petco Park. With the vision of commercial zoning and condominiums placed in the northern region of the development area, all of the options exhibited industrial businesses being pushed further south, encroaching on National City limits. After a planning development presentation by Steve Estrada, from Estrada Land Planning, residents were broken up into Groups 1 through 6 to discuss the alternatives, and three out of six favored Option B, which reflected more housing developments closer to Downtown San Diego, mainly on Imperial Avenue. The map suggested an extension of the Mercado Apartments and parking facilities along César E. Chávez Parkway. Group 3 favored Option C, which introduced somewhat of a character change in the barrio with taller structures and multiple usages of buildings that would provide housing and commercial offices all in one, but what was supposed to be an hour of choosing one of three alternative visions turned into an hour and a half of trying to understand the economic dynamics involved in redevelopment, something San Diego’s Planning Department and Steve Estrada circumvented with promising photos of luxurious condominiums. In Group 3, issues that weren’t formally addressed, were how many housing units were going to provide affordable housing for the barrio residents today. Paul Morris of Parsons Brinkerhoff, a Portland based development consultant agency, projected to residents that the standard low income family of four makes $54,800 a year and that under these conditions could afford a three bedroom apartment for $1,231 per month. The figures were alarming to many who attended the meeting because the majority of families in the Barrio Logan area fall under the “extremely low income” family bracket, with annual incomes of $24,000 a year and below, according to SANDAG and U.S. Census Bureau estimations from December 2003. Under the extremely low income bracket, families are estimated to be able to afford rents at $717 per month. This, developers and consultants say, would cause a gap in cost of up to $1,039 per unit, which they would in turn have to subsidize $100,000 to $135,000 to fill the gap.

Residents from Group 1 relayed that they knew of some households juggling $5,000 a year. “We want to make this area affordable for people in the community, not people outside of the community,” said Stephanie Romero, an Environmental Health Coalition advocate who recently moved with her family out of the Sherman Heights community, where she grew up, due to rent raises. “We can say we’re going to do this, but is it going to make sense?” asked Steve Estrada. “A builder has to make some profit … some maps don’t make as much sense as others.”

Estrada stressed in his presentation that it would be the revenue in tax dollars from standard housing that would subsidize affordable housing units, so, residents were only offered the options of having either ten, fifteen or twenty-five percent of affordable housing in all three optional maps. Hence, the present low income community may be outnumbered by the influx of affluent San Diego home owners, who today know that the land value is increasing exponentially around the Petco Park area. This has stricken the fear of gentrification and displacement in the Barrio Logan community. But what does this mean, ultimately? For instance, the favored Option B, among residents, placed housing units in the northern region of the redevelopment area, like the others, but the option of where standard and affordable homes will go was never discussed. Option B would provide a total of 1,670 new homes, totaling 2,620 homes in the community. In the event that, at best, 25% of these units were “affordable,” that would only make up 1,368 units of affordable housing, under the City of San Diego’s standard of what low income families make. Although, standard homes, for all the community, members know right now, could still be placed in that northern region surrounding Petco Park while the majority of destitute residents could still be placed within undesirable living conditions, i.e. next to toxic, industrial businesses. Group workshops began to close while local business owners in Group 3 began to question whether or not they may be displaced if the area surrounding Petco Park becomes redeveloped. They were assured by various city planners and developers present that if developing condominiums becomes an issue, any present home or business owner would receive a letter in the mail and would have the right to propose an alternative, competing plan for the property. There would be thirty days of negotiations between the city, developers and land owners, but ultimately owners could be forced out due to the market value. Nonetheless, as Steve Estrada and Associate Planner Theresa Millette of San Diego’s Planning Department were pressed for time, they hastened the decision making process, which may have left many questions unanswered relating to the possible relocation of affordable housing units and the displacement of current Barrio Logan residents. In the event that developers remove affordable housing units, they would be obligated, by the City of San Diego, to replace them elsewhere. One last meeting will be held at Perkins Elementary on June 8, and it will provide one last map, by Estrada Land Planning, reflecting Tuesday meeting’s community concerns.

http://www.sdcitybeat.com/article.php?id=247 October 2002.

Cover Story

TOXIC TOWN: Can Barrio Logan rebound?

by David Rolland

Stephanie Molina hasn’t had much of a childhood so far. Lots of visits to the doctor. Lots of school time missed. She can engage in virtually no physical activity lest her asthma and her allergies become debilitating. “She’s exposed to dust and she starts coughing,” her mom said in Spanish, through an interpreter. “I don’t let my daughter even move a cushion in here. She just goes to her room and does her homework.” Restrictions on her young life have forced Stephanie into battle against the sort of depression no child should even know about, let alone deal with personally. “I really encourage her,” Molina said. “I tell her she can be somebody in this world. Just because she has all these respiratory problems shouldn’t stop her. She’s strong—that’s what I tell her. But she gets really depressed.” Stephanie was once sent to a therapist, Molina said, because she had told her pediatrician that she would rather die than live the way she was living. She was 5 years old. Molina moved to Barrio Logan from Chula Vista in 1990 when she got married. Her husband works as a chef-manager of a local restaurant. Stephanie was born in 1991 and brought illness with her from the womb. A blood infection caused her to spend her first week and a half in the hospital. High fever brought her back to the hospital a month after she was allowed to go home. Her respiratory troubles began at 6 months old. “She was always very sick,” Molina said. “We would take her, basically, weekly to the hospital. One year old, same situation. When she was about a year and a half old, she was diagnosed with asthma.” At 5 years old came surgery for various complications with her sinuses. And just last April, Stephanie had reconstructive ear surgery. “She’s pretty unhappy,” Molina said. “She doesn’t want to be sick.” Molina herself never got sick when she lived in Chula Vista. The move to Barrio Logan, she said, brought her first real sinus problems—lots of congestion and sore throat. No one knows for sure, but her doctors say it’s possible that Molina could have become ill from environmental pollution and passed it on to her daughter during pregnancy, lowering Stephanie’s immune system. Although Stephanie’s younger sister Elizabeth has exhibited minor respiratory illness, it looks like it’s under control. “I feel like if I passed something on to my daughter,” Molina said, “it’s because I was already living here and I had already been affected. It affected me during my pregnancy, and now my daughter has these problems. They couldn’t explain why she had been born sick. I think it’s because of so much pollution that we’re exposed to here.” Barrio Logan has for decades been San Diego’s low-income dumping ground. It’s not unlike counterparts in other urban areas in California—Los Angeles, San Francisco, Oakland—where poor Latino and African American families have had to live side-by-side with heavy industry and have received little help from the government because they lack political clout. The tide for Barrio Logan may have started to turn in the past year. The neighborhood made headlines in January when state air-quality officials announced they had detected very high levels of hexavalent chromium near two Newton Avenue chrome-plating shops, Master Plating and Carlson & Beauloye Machine Shop. Hexavalent chromium is the nasty, cancer-causing heavy metal that made a feisty legal investigator named Erin Brockovich a worldwide celebrity. Eight months later, after having been sued by San Diego County, Master Plating agreed to shut down not only its chrome operation but also its nickel- and copper-plating work and close its doors forever. Under the settlement, Master Plating’s owner must decontaminate the property by Nov. 15. But if you ask community activists, Master Plating’s just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the environmental dangers in Barrio Logan, and they’re irritated that it took so long to get anyone to do much of anything about problems that have been obvious to the residents for decades. Quality of life in the neighborhood has been under assault since before it was even called “Barrio Logan.” Built as a residential community for Anglo-Americans in the late 19th century, Logan, which also included what’s now Logan Heights, Sherman Heights, Grant Hill and Memorial, became largely an African American enclave in the 1910s and ’20s when the white residents moved into newer San Diego developments. Devoid of political power, Logan was designated as San Diego’s new home of heavy industry about that same time. In came the fishing and shipping industries, which, to be fair, brought lots of good jobs, but they also brought foul odors and dangerous pollutants, which rode the prevailing winds directly into Logan. By the 1940s, Logan was San Diego’s largest Mexican neighborhood. In came the junkyards and auto repair, chrome plating and painting businesses. “There’s been studies that have looked at what makes communities more vulnerable to the location of heavy industries…. [Those studies] have found that race is the No. 1 determining factor,” said Paula Forbis of the Environmental Health Coalition (EHC), a nonprofit environmental justice organization that is assisting Barrio Logan residents. Studies show that what makes a minority community even more vulnerable is a turnover between two different races, as was the case in Barrio Logan during the first half of the last century, Forbis added. The 1960s brought freeway construction to Logan, and Interstate 5 cut straight through the middle. The area north of the 5 became Logan Heights; south of the freeway, where most of the industrial businesses were located, was called Barrio Logan. The Coronado Bridge, with its support structures standing tall over Barrio Logan, was finished in 1969. One of the cruel ironies of Barrio Logan is Chicano Park—the community’s only real park space sits directly beneath the Coronado Bridge. The community made the best of it though, evident by the colorful murals splashed across the many concrete supports, depicting the neighborhood’s rich culture and its battles against racism and environmental injustice. In the 1970s, residents began to mount challenges to the mixed industrial-residential patchwork zoning, but other than some victories over junkyards, they enjoyed little success. In the 1980s, the Environmental Health Coalition joined the fray. EHC activists documented health impacts of the mixed-zoning and advocated for policy changes. There were successes on paper, but nothing ever really improved in the neighborhood. The city envisioned moving the residents west of Interstate 5 out of the area and making it exclusively an industrial zone, said Forbis, who’s co-director of EHC’s Toxic Free Neighborhoods campaign. “[But] there was never an affirmative effort on the part of the city to relocate the residents. So industries moved in, taking over what were previously residential-sized lots, so what you have now on the ground is a patchwork quilt of heavy industries and residences. And it’s really an unhealthy mix because of the emissions of these facilities [and] because of the accident risks.” Buoyed by a 1996 study conducted by Scripps Research Institute, which found that 28 percent of Latino children in Southeast San Diego had probable or possible asthma—compared to 7 percent overall—EHC conducted its own health survey and found that children in an area encompassing Barrio Logan, Logan Heights, Sherman Heights and National City were twice as likely to be asthmatic than their counterparts in a control group. “One of the other very disturbing facts that came out in this survey,” Forbis said, “was that a full third of the population only had access to emergency health care, so that if a person didn’t have regular access to health care, it’s less likely they’re going to be diagnosed with asthma.” But studies don’t necessarily translate into policy changes, and city and county officials didn’t exactly spring into action. “This has been a very long fight,” Forbis said. “The community residents have been complaining about [Master Plating] for many years. Their noses were telling them there was a problem many years before the monitors ever were put out there.” The monitors Forbis mentioned belonged to the state Air Resources Board (ARB), which eventually decided to make Barrio Logan the first of six sites chosen statewide for its Children’s Environmental Health Protection program. The ARB installed ambient air-quality monitors at Barrio Logan’s Memorial Academy charter school and at sites in Chula Vista and El Cajon, and state officials collected data for 17 months, from October 1999 to March 2001. “I think what has really turned the tide in this instance,” Forbis said, “was that the state was willing to commit the resources to get to the bottom of this issue, and since that data has come out, the local county health agencies like the county Air Pollution Control District and the Department of Environmental Health have taken a very aggressive stance in getting the problem resolved. But it took many years to get them to that point.” At first, however, the results were unremarkable. A year and a half’s worth of testing showed little more than that Barrio Logan’s air was sometimes not terribly healthy—less healthy than Chula Vista, about the same as El Cajon and statewide, and much healthier than urban L.A. But the ARB monitors weren’t telling the whole story. The data on hexavalent chromium were insufficient, and the monitors didn’t check at all for particulate matter from diesel exhaust, which residents have been up in arms about for years. At the time, the state’s methods for studying particulate matter were inadequate. The ARB’s next study targeted chromium, and last December state officials found alarmingly high levels of the toxic metal. A double-check revealed the same. “These were extremely high levels—very high levels—higher than any levels than had ever been recorded, as far as I remember,” said ARB spokesman Jerry Martin. “We immediately knew this was a problem. Chromium is a very toxic compound. It doesn’t take a lot of it to make you sick.” Martin compared the results to what the state saw at Suva Schools in Bell Gardens in Southeast Los Angeles, where, in 1988, the community protested against nearby chrome-plating shops that had been emitting hexavalent chromium for the previous 30 years. Two teachers at the schools had miscarried deformed fetuses in 1988 and another teacher had to abort one. “Comparing the levels of chromium from Suva School to the levels we found in Barrio Logan,” Martin said, “some of the levels in Barrio Logan were much higher, and that immediately set off alarms with us.” The results didn’t surprise anyone in Barrio Logan. “At some point we have to say we have enough data, based on what we know about chrome plating, and to say that chrome platers don’t belong next to people’s houses,” Forbis said. “Something that almost every environmental regulator I’ve ever met will tell you is that chrome platers don’t belong next to houses, and yet the land-use folks haven’t quite caught up to that fact yet.” Forbis noted that the high cost of the work in Barrio Logan will prohibit the state from monitoring any more sites near potential polluters locally. “One of the challenges here is that the state has spent over a million dollars on the monitoring that was conducted around Master Plating,” she said. “Certainly, that’s not a model that can replicated. So what we’re really hoping is that this prompts more proactive action from the city.” For his part, Martin believes there’s more pollution in Barrio Logan than meets the state’s detectors. “You have to understand, this is the first time we’ve ever done this,” he said, “and as a science, quite frankly, not a lot is known about the cumulative effects of toxins. If you ask me my personal opinion, there probably are a lot of other problems there that we didn’t find, that we have not been able to put our finger on.” He noted the high level of diesel-fueled truck traffic in Barrio Logan—trucks headed for the Port of San Diego’s 10th Avenue Terminal mainly—and explained that 70 percent of all airborne toxins we breath come from diesel exhaust. Add to that emissions from ships at port, construction of the ballpark in East Village and industrial companies such as the Nassco and Southwest Marine shipyards and the Kelco seaweed processing plant and you have yourself a real swirling soup of air pollution. “Unfortunately, this is a new area for us,” Martin said, “and so we don’t have all the answers.” However, he added, “I don’t think it’s that much different than other low-income areas around the state and, quite frankly, may be better off than some.” For many residents and activists, the most galling ingredient is the truck traffic, and although alternate routes might lessen the impact slightly, the neighborhood’s proximity to freeways and the destinations themselves guarantees a certain level of permanence. “Anything we build in Barrio Logan is going to be impacted by a bridge, by a freeway or by port industry, so we’re kind of in a tough spot,” said Ben Hueso, manager of the city’s Barrio Logan Redevelopment Project. “The community wants us to focus on residential uses and a mixture of commercial and business-type uses. If we do anything industrial, it’s got to be light industry, something that provides livable-wage jobs. But you can’t ignore the fact that anything that you touch in Barrio Logan is going to be next to massive transportation infrastructure and massive port-front industry. “If you look at the 10th Avenue Terminal, it creates massive amounts of truck traffic,” Hueso added. “We have the railroad yards [and] the Chevron Oil tanker facility next to the 10th Avenue Terminal. We have Nassco, Kelco, Southwest Marine, SDG&E. If you look at all those uses from the port, they call contribute to the air quality of the community, not to mention 70,000 cars per day [on] Coronado Bridge and the 200,000 cars per day on the Freeway 5. That’s massive amounts of vehicle emissions. And if you compound that by the grandfathered industry in Barrio Logan—we have welding shops, refinishers, chrome platers, port-related industry—all that contributes to the poor air quality.” Hueso has the unenviable task of leading a redevelopment project that is too small to be of much use. A redevelopment area is a tool local governments use to fix up blighted neighborhoods. It allows them to hang on to increases in property tax revenue that would otherwise go directly to Sacramento to be divvied up statewide. Under redevelopment, the revenue stays in the project area and helps finance new development such as affordable housing and shopping centers, which, in turn, increase the funding for future projects. In San Diego, the most lucrative redevelopment project is Horton Plaza, an engine that powers the city’s Downtown Redevelopment Area. Barrio Logan’s redevelopment area has no such engine. “The problem is we do not have the financial resources to even carry out a very small percentage of what Barrio Logan needs,” Hueso said. “We don’t have anything remotely close to the Downtown Redevelopment Area. We have a very, very small redevelopment project area that mostly has land on it that does not contribute to the tax base. A lot of it is a bridge or a park or a school or a property that has been taken off the tax rolls.” So far, in the 11-year life of the Barrio Logan Redevelopment Project, the only significant project to be completed was the Mercado Apartments. That’s where Elena Molina’s family rents a partially subsidized unit. The complex sits on formally contaminated San Diego Gas & Electric property—almost directly beneath the Coronado Bridge, where particulate matter from vehicle exhaust falls like rain. Molinas said she had hoped for a unit further away from the bridge. “When they were distributing the apartments,” she said, “I didn’t want to be right under the bridge, but this is the one I got.” The small redevelopment area—which is roughly bordered by 16th and 26th Streets on the west and east, and by Main Street and Interstate 5 to the south and north—was established mainly to create a mercado, a Mexican-style market place on land southeast of Cesar Chavez Parkway (formerly Crosby Street). Numerous businesses were removed to make way for the project, which promises to be the center of Barrio Logan’s community life, but to this day the land sits vacant, the Redevelopment Agency unable to secure financing for the deal. A contract with a developer, Land Grant Development, was severed by the city in September. Mateo Camarillo and Luis Garcia, owners of Chuey’s bar and eatery, sat in their restaurant last Friday and talked about their frustration. Camarillo repeatedly interrupted himself to point out an almost constant chain of 18-wheelers rumbling just outside the door on Cesar Chavez—reportedly 500 per day—and Garcia griped about the Redevelopment Agency’s inability to move the mercado project forward. “The city could do a lot more for this area. Look at our next-door neighbor, Centre City Development [Corporation, the agency the drives downtown redevelopment]. Why is it positive there and it just started recently? They had a lot of [contamination] cleanup over there. What about Horton Plaza? They did what they wanted to do in those neighborhoods, but they have not accomplished what they intended to do here.” The conundrum, Garcia said, is that it will likely take gentrification of Barrio Logan to get the city to genuinely interested in it, and gentrification, with its attendant rising housing costs, is exactly what activist don’t want.”

Garcia himself recently struck a real estate deal that’s, in one sense, part of the problem and, in another, part of the solution. He sold two houses next to Chuey’s for far more than they should be worth. While that contribute to rising overall housing costs, he believes the people who bought them—Latinos—will help provide better access to City Hall. For his part, Hueso would like the city to expand the redevelopment area. He said there are owners of property that hold small industrial business who would like to sell to the agency, but they’re outside the project area. “The [City] Council has been hesitant to move forward on expansion because they don’t feel the entire community’s on board,” he said. “Then you have a percentage of the people in the community who fear redevelopment and fear displacement, so they don’t support expansion. So we have a lot of politics and a lot of opposing views that really don’t give us all the tools that we need to come in and undertake a comprehensive redevelopment program.” The continuing pressures on the community, however, will force change, Hueso predicts. “I see a growing frustration that I think will ultimately lead to the expansion of the area,” he said. “I think we will be able to undertake some projects successfully that will create a synergy or a catalyst to undertake new projects. “As we get more people interested in the area and investing in the area and bringing resources to the area… I think it’s really going to contribute to creating an exciting waterfront community.” Such talk frustrates Garcia. “It needs to be expanded, yes,” he said. But “how can you expand and make more promises when you haven’t fulfilled the promises of the past. When do we get the retail center here? When do we get additional affordable housing.” Added Camarillo, “There’s potential to solve problems if there’s a will. If we all put our heads together, we can solve them together, whether it’s access to money, whether it’s getting housing.” He said there’s an expression in his native Tijuana: “So close to the United States, and so far from God.” Barrio Logan, Camarillo said, is so close to the decision-makers in Downtown San Diego, but so far from their minds.” Camarillo and Garcia said they can put together an investment team for the mercado project if the city would simply level with them about the red tape that is still tangling up the contract with Land Grant Development. “That’s all doable, however, we don’t want to be sued for interfering with the business interests of somebody else,” Camarillo said. “We just need a straight answer.”

Building new projects is one thing; maintaining control over the old ones is another. The residents and health activists say that more polluting businesses are out there. Not only do they want them stopped, they also want new regulations put permanently in place that would keep “dirty” industrial businesses from coming in and taking their places. To that end, they want the Barrio Logan Community Plan, which hasn’t been updated since being approved in 1979, and its accompanying zoning laws altered so that it outlaws the existing mixed industrial-residential framework. That’s the only way residents are really going assume control over their neighborhood, said Sonia Rodriguez, another resident of the Mercado Apartments and a community organizer for the Environmental Health Coalition. Her daughter also has asthma. “It’s too hard to fight each site one at a time,” she said, “so I think what we need to work on right now is the community plan. They’ve got to find the money to redo the community plan.” Supported by City Councilmember Ralph Inzunza, who represents Barrio Logan, the city’s Land Use and House Committee on Sept. 18 recommended passage of an emergency ordinance banning new chrome plating businesses in Barrio Logan and an update of the Barrio Logan Community P