Long-Range Changes Ahead for Bayfront

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SAN DIEGO—The city's Bayfront is going to look decidedly different in 50 years from the way it looks today, according to local officials and a prominent architect involved in crafting some significant infrastructure and development changes. GlobeSt.com spoke exclusively with Jason Giffen, director of environmental land use and management for the Port of San Diego; Jenny Windle, director of marketing and communications for the Port; and Randy Morton, a principal with architect firm HKS, who is under a $1.3-million contract to prepare a 50-year comprehensive plan for the port, about amendments to the port master plan, what changes are in discussion and how they could affect Downtown San Diego's economy.

GlobeSt.com: What do you consider to be the unifying principal behind the plans for the San Diego Bayfront renewal?

Giffen: The port master plan was originally adopted in the early '80s, and since then there have been more than 35 amendments to that plan. It needs to be modernized, so a year and a half ago we started going to the public and to Randy Morton's team first to develop a vision. What do we want for 50 years in the future? For the first nine months of that effort, we put together a vision document containing an assessment, a vision statement and guiding principles, which are all available on the website portforall.org. For the second nine months, we have been in the “big idea” and concept mode. We're looking at all the different possibilities in a rational and forward-thinking way for the future potential of the Bayfront.

GlobeSt.com: How is the planning progressing?

Giffen: Randy and his team have been working on concept plans and scenarios, we've done two public workshops—one in October and one in November—and came up with all kinds of big ideas. Now we need to prioritize which of the big ideas ranked higher than the others. We still have to go through that pretty public discussion. Depending on what's more favorable to the Board of Port Commissioners, we will identify those for further study. We're in the visioning stage right now—it's a multi-year, multi-phase project, and our discussions are still in the early stages.

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Morton: We divided the workshops into two buckets, if you will: the public realm and private development. The public-realm workshop discussed all of the public benefits and why you do a master plan. Number one was to maximize access to the Bayfront for the public and increase the amount of recreational and park space along the Bayfront. The concept of the Bay necklace—an interconnected, continuous band of streets, parks and public walkways from Point Loma to Coronado—is something the first workshop focused on. We wanted to get the public issues established first and take them as givens. Then second came the developers of hotels, retail, the expanding convention center, etc., that needs a lot of flexibility. But first we fix the public realm part of the master plan, and as the markets change investors and developers can react to what's best at the moment.

Windle: We really want to emphasize that this will be a public process, and the community will be engaged to help shape the changes to the Bayfront. There's a place to sign up for information on the process at portforall.org, and all items about the schedule and board presentations can be found there.

Giffen: Throughout the early part of 2015, we'll be looking at doing more public outreach. We'll be doing the next board workshop in April.

GlobeSt.com: What sort of changes are we looking at, and what is the time frame for them?

Morton: The Bay holds more than 6,000 acres, so we can't take a one-size-fits-all approach. The first thing was to take that big expanse of land and water and break it into three logical pieces: the North Bay, from Coronado to Point Loma, which is highly urbanized and includes Downtown and a lot of freeway infrastructure; the Central Bay, which is generally from Coronado Bridge to Sweetwater River, in which you'll find the industrial pieces and Navy—an entirely different universe with the big ships and the Navy and barges, which is not the same as North Bay; and the highly naturalistic environment from Sweetwater south to Imperial, which is generally called the South Bay.

In the North Bay, the great resource there is Downtown San Diego and the Embarcadero, which is the single most underutilized piece of waterfront in the state of California. The potential there is very high. We want to allow the Embarcadero to meet its full potential as a great waterfront, a place for entertainment, boats, introducing a series of new buildings that would change the skyline along that area. We love the idea of introducing an entertainment harbor on the corner near where the tuna boats dock—that's something the city doesn't have, and it would be a wild success. We also looked at Harbor Island and are thinking about relocating the cruise ships from the foot of Broadway to Harbor Island. As the Embarcadero becomes more popular and more pedestrianized, we would like to couple the cruise ships with the airport and call it a seaport. This would require one big transportation system to get from the airport or seaport to Downtown.

Giffen: This is the long-term vision; the port master plan has a useful life of about 20 to 30 years. It wouldn't happen tomorrow, but these are ideas for the future. Some things could incrementally happen sooner, but the build out of the plan is in terms of decades, broken down into short-term things we could do.

Morton: As Jason was saying, the reason why we're doing this is, if you're an investor and you want to do something like build a Ferris wheel, you need to make amendments to the master plan, which is in effect rewriting the whole master plan. It's a lengthy process because the master plan is outdated to the point of everything requires an amendment. You need to think holistically and build room in so the process can be streamlined. We've been at it a year and a half already so the next four to five years need to be streamlined so we can get projects done faster.

GlobeSt.com: As the changes take place, how will they affect Downtown's economy?

Morton: Like all economies, there is investment and return on investment. For the public real and addition of parks, it's good for the long-term real estate economy. It generally increases the value of land Downtown—not because it's a dollar-driven approach but more for the public benefits. We're really trying to increase visitorship Downtown.

There will be a public-transportation focus as well. Improvements in public transportation are an enormous benefit to all of Downtown, whether it's the city or the port. So we have to look at the port's needs vs. the city's needs and see how they match up. We need the property transit program and future initiatives to help facilitate that. That's key.

In the Industrial area or Central Bay, one key they have there is a haul road, a single piece of roadway infrastructure set aside from all of the industrial trucks that's separate from Harbor Dr. so that is no longer in conflict with the light rail—industrial and community uses will be separated. It's a high and mighty level to achieve. If the port can step up and meet that, it will do well for the economies in those neighborhoods.

Giffen: Also realize that the port is a public-benefit corporation. Our responsibility is to manage the state tidelands on behalf of the state of California, whether it's improving it from a visitor-serving purpose or to facilitate water-dependent businesses or to provide an environmental stewardship role. Unlike cities or counties, we receive revenue from the businesses on the tidelands—we don't receive taxes. So we're planning this port master-plan update with a business focus, as in how developers might look at it. We have the same vested interest.