Some broad and ambitious visions are emerging for 120 newly available prime acres on Mission Bay where city officials say they hope to create an iconic recreation destination.

Some combination of restored marshland, aquatics activity areas and sports fields appears to be the leading option for the land, which includes the soon-to-close De Anza Cove mobile home park, Mission Bay golf course and some nearby areas.

Community leaders and residents, however, suggested everything from pickle ball courts to areas for tented camping during a public forum last week where city officials kicked off what’s expected to be three years of planning and public debate about the area.

Meanwhile, some environmental groups want the entire area restored to the wetlands that were there before an aggressive dredging campaign that created the land and adjacent Mission Bay Park half a century ago. They contend restoring the marshes will help prevent rising sea levels caused by climate change from threatening the coastline there.


And others have said a key goal should be creating opportunities for the public to engage and explore wildlife in the area, something absent from Mission Bay Park.

City officials called the 120 acres a “blank slate” during Wednesday night’s forum at Mission Bay High School, saying just about any suggestion will be considered.

Not up for debate, however, is the possibility of allowing residential development of the site or reviving previous plans to build a resort hotel and botanical garden there, they said.

One key decision recently made by city officials is adding the 18-hole executive golf course and some other land to the 76-acre mobile home park to create a larger area for developing whatever proposal ends up winning favor.


The impetus for the planning process is the closure of the 500-slip mobile home park, where residents are scheduled to move out by February after nearly 11 years of litigation ended last winter. The $29 million settlement with the city yielded each slip owner thousands in relocation fees.

In anticipation of the land becoming available, the city recently hired consultants PlaceWorks and communications firm Katz & Associates to conduct a series of forums.

They will also work with a 10-member ad hoc committee of community leaders the city recently assembled to create multiple proposals for the area during 2016 and then select a preferred plan by the end of 2017.

A comprehensive environmental impact report would be completed during 2018, followed by potential approvals from the San Diego Planning Commission, the City Council and the California Coastal Commission.


Land-use attorney Paul Robinson, chairman of the new ad hoc committee, told his colleagues last week that they were at the very beginning of what promises to be a long and hopefully fruitful process.

Committee member Karen Zirk, a member of the Rose Creek Watershed Alliance, encouraged an ambitious approach.

“We need to incorporate a sense of place that only exists in Mission Bay Park in Southern California so that when you’re here you know you’re not in Los Angeles, San Francisco or Miami,” she said. “How do we make this a unique place that’s a destination for people all over the world?”

But Vicki Granowitz, another committee member who represents the city’s Park and Recreation Board, said it’s also crucial for the plan to be realistic.


“My greatest fear is we come up with a terrific plan with all the input and nothing ends up happening,” she said, noting that a plan to redevelop nearby Fiesta Island was never implemented. “It’s an amazing piece of land that could be something for the next 100 years. Let’s not screw it up.”

Resident Alex Chipman said it will be crucial to create a compromise plan that will simultaneously please those focused on sports, aquatics and the environment.

“They all have to intermingle together and be a balanced plan that can be accessed by all and enjoyed by all,” he said.

One such proposal is the resident-generated “Mission Bay Gateway” plan, which would improve water quality in the bay by making roughly 50 acres of the park marshland, while also building an aquatics center, a skateboard park and an amphitheater.


The plan, which has previously been endorsed as a good starting point by Mayor Kevin Faulconer and Councilwoman Lorie Zapf, would also include building a nature interpretive center, creating a bird sanctuary and connecting bicycle and pedestrian paths now interrupted by the mobile home park.

That plan, first unveiled a few years ago, wasn’t specifically mentioned at the forum.

Other residents, including Pacific Beach Planning Group chairman Brian Curry, said the 120 acres should be studied in context of surrounding features such as Rose Canyon and a new La Jolla line trolley station planned at Balboa Avenue and Morena Boulevard.

Brooke Peterson, project manager for the PlaceWorks consulting group hired by the city, said the process would take into account the trolley station planning, which began recently, and the ReWild Mission Bay Project, where the city and the Audubon Society plan to restore wetlands along Pacific Beach Drive and both sides of Rose Creek.


“We have three significant efforts just getting under way,” she said.

The Mission Bay Park Master Plan doesn’t provide detailed guidance for the De Anza site, creating the need for the ad hoc committee to fill in that blank, Peterson said.

Curry said another key consideration is the future of Campland on the Bay, a nearby RV park that has only one year left on its lease.

Private development of the 120 acres won’t be considered for a variety of reasons, city officials said, including that the state gave the land to the city in 1945 for recreational purposes. That was a key factor in the lawsuit involving the mobile home park, which was an illegal residential use of the land.


Despite the state designation, a developer proposed a plan in 1989 that would have brought 1,400 hotel rooms and a botanical garden to the site.

The site is large enough for roughly 1,000 single-family homes or an even larger number of condominiums, but no residential projects have been proposed there.

A community workshop focused on the 120 acres is scheduled for Jan. 28, but a time and place haven’t been set.