Measure C was 86’d at the ballot box for a number of reasons, most based in disgust with the way the Chargers have played San Diego in their nearly two-decade quest for a new stadium.

For a small but highly engaged segment of voters, however, C pitted competing visions of how the East Village in general, and Tailgate Park and the Metropolitan Transit System bus yard in particular, should evolve.

Would the city prosper if it spent a billion bucks to subsidize a stadium/convention complex that could be built in a few years? Or would it benefit more by dedicating time (up to 20 years) and a unique palette of public space to an “enterprise zone” that would, in an ideal world, generate urban jobs amid trendy work/living spaces?

For a savvy sliver of the city electorate, that was the yin and yang of C.


Back in April, Chargers front man Fred Maas generated some buzz when he scoffed at those who see Tailgate Park and the bus yard as a rich field of millennial dreamers: “You’ve heard a lot of talk about things that might happen on these blocks. I can tell you as someone who’s spent 10 years on this project, we’ve been listening to that for 10 years. And the possibility of bringing some artistic, airy-fairy consultant-based, planner-based plan to those blocks is impossible.”

Well, the airy-fairy gang picked up some gravitas this week.

UC San Diego, the Union-Tribune’s Roger Showley reported Monday, is planting its Triton flag in East Village, just a few blocks from the asphalt jungle of “those blocks.”

UCSD’s intention to take over a four-story building in Holland Partner Group’s Park & Market project was cheered as a “game-changer” by Kevin Faulconer, a flexible mayor who’s trying to have it both ways, supporting a customized version of C while hailing UCSD’s downtown branch.


The two initiatives, the stadium and the campus, may not be mutually exclusive, but they aren’t inherently compatible, either.

Mary Walshok, the university’s associate vice chancellor and dean of extension, has for some 20 years envisioned a downtown campus linked to east and south counties as well as the La Jolla campus. Call her the fairy, if not airy, godmother of what all large cities consider a no-brainer.

Three years ago, Anthony Monaco’s senior thesis in UCSD’s Urban Studies & Planning Department found that “of the top 35 most populous cities in America, only San Diego, the eighth populous, lacks a major public or private university campus location within, or adjacent to, the central business district boundary.”

Arizona State University, for example, capitalizes on a trolley line to connect its Tempe and Phoenix campuses. UC Davis opened a branch in downtown Sacramento, about the same distance as La Jolla is from East Village. Urban downtowns are naturally inclusive magnets, too strong to ignore.


On a political level, it’s no accident that UCSD waited until C flunked before going public with its downtown plans. Why get in the middle of a divisive political mess? Why put your thumb on one end of the scale?

It doesn’t take a political scientist, however, to deduce how the university’s fingers were crossed on Election Day.

A huge stadium in East Village would have been an oxygen-sucking neighbor.

Frightening enough to scare away the fledgling campus? Maybe, maybe not. Fortunately, we don’t have to find out.


This bold move by UC San Diego, on the City Council’s Tuesday afternoon docket, validates the so-called airy-fairy types like David Malmuth, co-founder of the I.D.E.A. District; Michael Stepner, professor at the New School of Architecture and Design in East Village; Central Library architect Rob Quigley; and many more.

To be sure, a crucial domino has tipped. But many more will have to follow to prove Maas wrong.

The conversion of Tailgate Park and bus yard to higher, better uses will require a huge infusion of money. The Chargers have the resources to pull it off. Could they return for another bite of the poison apple? Remotely possible.

San Diegans are waiting for this star-crossed season to end and for Dean Spanos to put us (and the injury-riddled team) out of our misery. Will he take yes for an answer and settle for Mission Valley, the only last-ditch location that makes any sense? Or rent U-Hauls bound for L.A. and second-string status in L.A., grumbling about America’s Finest City all the way up the 405?


In a Voice of San Diego op-ed before the election, Maas dismissed Quigley (and, by extension, like-minded C opponents) as a NIMBY “undertaker.”

Undertaker. It’s a uniquely San Diegan slur dating back to a 1923 speech by a 70-year-old John D. Spreckels. The tycoon delivered this oft-quoted lament: “Why does San Diego always just miss the train? I will tell you: Lack of cooperation. We have no team play. The moment anybody appears with any proposition of a big constructive nature, the small-town undertakers get busy digging its grave.”

Considering the fact that Spreckels was the baron of San Diego who owned newspapers, the ferry line and just about everything else, the complaint has always struck me as odd.

(The old joke went that a mother and her daughter were walking and every time they came to anything of value in San Diego, the girl would ask her mother who owned it and the answer was always “Mr. Spreckels.” When they came to the ocean, the girl asked the same question and the mother said that God owns the ocean. “So Mr. Spreckels didn’t want it?” the girl replied.)


In the end, the lesson of C is that the vision of a downtown field of dreamers is in fact more ambitious, more nervy, than a publicly funded stadium next to Petco Park. It’s more consistent with a city yearning to go long.

“If the young, red-blooded progressive businessmen of the city will only get together and stick together, nothing will be too big to expect for San Diego,” Spreckels said at the end of his 1923 speech.

Substitute gender-neutral “entrepreneurs” for sexist “businessmen” and you have an East Village action plan for the airy, the fairy and the extraordinary.

Unfortunate Footnote: Around the historic Remmer House, the gritty but quaint Quartyard includes the Meshuggah Shack (“Syrians + Muslims + Mexicans + Immigrants + Everyone Else Are Welcome” but “No Kvetching”), a casual outdoor performance area and a well-used dog park (artificial turf in what resembles a batting cage with Christmas lights). The Quartyard will have to take its movable feast elsewhere when Holland Partner Group breaks ground on the $275 million block project.


logan.jenkins@sduniontribune.com