Navy Miramar Land Sale Gets House-Senate Committee’s Nod

A House-Senate conference committee Wednesday approved a proposal that would allow the Navy to sell 475 acres at the southern edge of Miramar Naval Air Station and use the more than $50 million in proceeds to construct much-needed Navy housing in other locations in the county.

Dan Greenblat, an aide to Rep. Bill Lowery (R-San Diego), said the amendment approved by the joint Congressional Military Construction Authorization Committee would “greatly reduce the significant shortage of Navy housing units in the San Diego area.” Greenblat said passage of the proposal by both houses of Congress was “a certainty.”

Lowery, in a statement released Wednesday night, said, “The Navy housing shortage in San Diego is critical. Some 6,000 Navy families are waiting for homes. To make matters worse, San Diego has the fifth most-expensive housing market in the nation.”

Lowery estimated the price of the average home in the San Diego area at $133,000, which Greenblat said was “far beyond the means of the typical military family.”

Capt. Ben Montoya, of the Navy’s Western Facilities Engineering Command in San Bruno, Calif., said profits from the sale of the land, south of California 52 on the Miramar base and zoned for commercial, industrial and retail development, could pay for as many as 5,000 units of Navy housing. Some of the land, Lowery said, could sell for more than $200,000 per acre.

Construction on the long-awaited state highway began last month. When California 52 is completed, it will sever the land proposed for sale from the rest of the military base.

Housing could not be built on the Miramar land, Lowery told the conference committee when urging passage of the amendment authored by himself and Sen. Pete Wilson (R-Calif.), because the property is adjacent to the base’s flight paths and is not suitable for residential development. “That’s why we’re looking for land elsewhere,” Greenblat said. “But there is a stipulation that the proceeds from the sale of the land could be used only in the San Diego area.”

Greenblat said the Navy will begin marketing the land early next year and he predicted that construction on new military housing could begin within one year.

“Everybody wins--the community, the Navy and the families,” Lowery said. “Without this proposal, the severed acreage is of no use to the Navy. With it, unused land is traded for badly needed family housing.”