The next chapter in San Diego’s pursuit of Midway Rising will play out in Sacramento.
State Senator Akilah Weber Pierson introduced a bill last week to exempt the project from review under the state’s landmark environmental law and make way for the plan to redevelop the roughly 50-acre area around Pechanga Arena into an urban district with 4,000 homes, acres of parks, and a new arena.
Weber Pierson’s proposal follows a California Supreme Court decision not to review a previous court ruling that threw out a 2022 voter-approved initiative to raise the height limit in the Midway area. The lower court ruled that the city failed to consider the environmental impacts of allowing taller buildings there.
Midway Rising’s developers quickly said the court’s ruling would not halt their project, because other state housing laws allowed them to exceed the height limit regardless.
But project opponents sent the city a letter last month that laid the groundwork for another legal challenge, as the Union-Tribune reported, casting doubt on a path forward for the project even after Mayor Todd Gloria emphasized in his State of the City address and again on “The San Diego Politics Show” this month that the city would approve Midway Rising this year.
Weber Pierson’s bill could make way for a city approval without forcing the developers to test their legal theory, and any challenges it could encounter. Gloria’s office is sponsoring the bill; Weber Pierson’s district includes the Midway area.
“Senate Bill 958 is a project-specific solution to move the Midway Rising project forward after years of rigorous planning and extensive environmental analysis,” a spokesperson from Weber Pierson’s office said.
This wouldn’t be the first time California exempted a large project from the California Environmental Quality Act based on a proposal for a new stadium or arena.
In 2011, the legislature passed a bill to shorten CEQA litigation against a proposed arena for the Golden State Warriors, ultimately speeding up the process. Sofi Stadium in Los Angeles dodged all potential CEQA lawsuits through a voter initiative to bypass environmental laws.
The Kroenke Group, one of the partners involved in Midway Rising, was also behind the Rams stadium development.
“I am sponsoring Senate Bill 958 because it is a decisive, project-specific solution designed to move the transformational Midway Rising project forward after years of rigorous planning, extensive environmental analysis, and clear voter support through two separate ballot measures,” Gloria said in a statement to Times of San Diego.
John McNab, president and chief executive officer of Save Our Access, the group that sued over Measure C, which would have exempted Midway District from the 30-foot coastal height limit, said his group is going to take action.
He said his main concerns for the project were the use of public land for commercial development to be owned by the United States’ largest private landowner. He also cited what he calls the “time tax” that would arise due to increased traffic in the area.
Last month, another opponent sent a legal letter to the city of San Diego, relying on an independent traffic study of the area to contend that Midway Rising’s state-mandated environmental report is incomplete.
The letter says the project fails to mitigate a substantial traffic increase in the area, citing a Navy estimate that the project — combined with the nearby redevelopment of the NAVWAR facility in Point Loma — would create nearly 90-minute delays to certain nearby on-ramps.
“You’re going to be sitting on the freeway for likely an extra hour every day, a half-hour in the morning, and that’s our contention is the City of San Diego is doing this and ignoring CEQA because when somebody came out and did a traffic study, it basically said it has catastrophic impacts,” McNab said.
