City Gains Park, Trash Plant Site : Navy Gets Land for Housing in Swap With City

A land swap was announced Wednesday that will give the City of San Diego a valuable park and a trash-conversion site near the Miramar Naval Air Station while the Navy will get land and money for desperately needed housing.

The cashless swap, involving 820 acres, follows three years of negotiations springing from the extension of California 52 south of the Miramar base. The tentative agreement will require the City Council’s final approval.

Under the pact, the Navy would:

- Be permitted to extend the Miramar base boundaries 120 acres west to Interstate 805 between Governor Drive and Mira Mesa Boulevard and 160 acres southeast to proposed Highway 52.

- Get a city-owned, 44-acre tract--called the Chollas site--between College Grove Drive and Redwood Street on which to build about 300 homes for Navy personnel.

In return, the city would receive:

- A 44-acre Hickman sports complex, consisting of 13 modern ball fields run by the Hickman Youth Athletic Assn. for children’s soccer, softball and baseball teams.

- 43 acres south of proposed Highway 52 for its SANDER trash-to-energy project.

The city also would lease back at no cost 75 acres of the 160-acre wedge south of the Miramar base to develop a San Diego police academy, San Diego fire academy and pistol range, and would develop a 46-acre parcel east of the Chollas site into a park.

“What we get out of the deal is a Navy housing site and what they get out of the deal are the parks,” said Cmdr. Gene Talmadge, the Navy’s assistant director of planning and engineering in San Diego.

“The bottom line is it’s a win-win situation.”

“I think the city has a very good deal,” said City Councilman Ed Struiksma, who negotiated for the city and represents the 5th District, where much of the land involved lies.

According to Talmadge, the Navy provides housing for only 15% of the 40,000 Navy families in San Diego, well below the national average of 25%.

About 5,000 youths compete each year at the Hickman site, which is just north of Convoy Court and east of Interstate 805.

The Navy has licensed the fields to the Hickman Youth Athletic Assn. since 1969. The association has upgraded them to Olympic quality with more than $120,000 in donations and volunteer labor.

Although in 1984 the Navy withdrew the license for the fields--last appraised at $7.5 million--the association continued play on them.

“Our feeling was as long as they didn’t come in with bulldozers, we’d keep going,” said Mel Anderson, chairman of the board of San Diego United Soccer Inc., which runs 195 teams of 5- to 19-year-olds. “They didn’t renew it on paper, so our attitude was: Hey, we’ll keep on playing.”

Thousand of parents of the Little Leaguers and junior soccer players got the Navy to allow play to continue and pressured legislators to save the fields.

Under city ownership, the association would continue to run and maintain the fields.

“It worked out just like we hoped it would,” said Dave Ward, Hickman association president. “It was a very complex negotiation.”

Key to the negotiations was legislation introduced by U.S. Rep. Bill Lowery (R-San Diego) to allow the city to bargain directly with the Navy instead of the U.S. General Accounting Office. Under the bill, passed in 1985, the Navy in San Diego was allowed to sell off surplus land and use the proceeds to build local housing units. The Navy will sell 363 acres just south of proposed Highway 52 between I-805 and Santo Road after the city rezones it for commercial and industrial use and aligns it with the growth plans of Kearny Mesa and Tierrasanta.

“The significance of this legislation is we can keep that money in San Diego,” Talmadge said. “We can sell that land that can’t be used for housing and go buy houses elsewhere.”

“Both sides do well in the deal. You could say we traded Hickman for Chollas.”