Survey Cites Opposition to Beach Park Development

Leaders of a Mission Beach community group said Monday that a mail survey shows that residents of the area are overwhelmingly opposed to commercial development in Mission Beach Park.

Only six of the nearly 2,000 residents and property owners who have responded so far to a survey about the park said they support a commercial development, according to a spokesman for the Citizens for Mission Beach Park. The park runs along Mission Boulevard between Ventura Place and San Fernando Place.

The responses came on postcards that were mailed Thursday to 12,000 addresses in Mission Beach, Pacific Beach, Bay Park and Bird Rock, according to Brian Wagner, a spokesman for the group. Survey responses will be tabulated in mid-August and forwarded to the San Diego City Council, Wagner said.

The survey is in response to the council’s approval last year of a controversial commercial development on 10 acres that include the Mission Beach Plunge and the abandoned Giant Dipper roller coaster. The enclosed swimming pool and the roller coaster were once part of the Belmont Park amusement park. They are to be incorporated into the development, which will include shops, restaurants and a neighborhood market, according to plans by developers Paul Thoryk and Graham MacHutchin.

Residents have complained that Mission Beach streets and parking lots are already overflowing with cars. “The people are very upset,” Wagner said. “They don’t want a commercial development in Mission Beach Park.”

Wagner’s group decided to survey the community because, he said, the city did not provide adequate public hearings on the Thoryk-MacHutchin proposal. “And at the two hearings that were held,” Wagner said, “the response was overwhelmingly against the development.

Robert Kruger, the city’s project administrator for the park, said the community has known about the proposed development for five years and has had ample opportunity to comment. Additional public meetings will be held as the final project plans are reviewed by the city and the California Coastal Commission, he said.

Wagner maintains that the development amounts to a “giveaway” of public parkland to the developers. The property was given to the state by the John D. Spreckels family under the condition that it remain a park, Wagner said.

But Kruger argued that businesses placed there will be “recreationally oriented,” in accordance with the city’s park plans and the Spreckels family’s wishes.

The survey also asked residents what should be done with the plunge building and with the roller coaster. Most who have responded favor razing both, Wagner said, although he did not have figures.