Bid for Special Mail Election Rejected : O’Connor Loses Bitter Council Fight on Plunge

The San Diego City Council on Monday rebuffed Mayor Maureen O’Connor’s attempt to halt commercial development of the Mission Beach Plunge, rejecting her plea for a special mail election to designate the dilapidated landmark as a park.

Instead, the council voted to wait and place the issue on the November ballot--timing that O’Connor and opponents of the development claim will be too late to prevent the builder, which has a signed lease in hand, from forever altering the Plunge.

Public debate over what to do with the historic building has often been emotional, but Monday’s session in an overflowing council chambers had a special edge of urgency. The developer began demolition on the site early in the morning, razing an adjacent roller rink before city inspectors stopped the work over a question of whether the contractor had erected a proper temporary fence around the construction site.

O’Connor’s 11th-hour public campaign to pressure her colleagues into changing their votes may have shattered the collegiality she has worked to establish on the council.

“The harmony she has sought to achieve during her time as mayor has been seriously eroded by her effort to pit herself and the community against the council,” said Councilman Mike Gotch, who led the drive for the development.

Those new dynamics caused emotions to boil during the two-hour public hearing on the issue. Plunge preservationists in particular accused the developer, Belmont Park Associates, of mounting a “Pearl Harbor sneak attack” by starting demolition early in the morning.

Within the last week, O’Connor has thrown her full support behind an initiative that qualified for the ballot with more than 56,000 signatures. The measure would block the Plunge development by designating the indoor swimming pool and adjacent property as park land.

But the measure also has an exemption for projects that are under construction before the public vote, a loophole that has favored the Plunge developer, which wants to tear down most of the Plunge building and build 70,000 square feet of commercial space around the pool.

Belmont Park Associates obtained its building permits Thursday and said it would begin construction in earnest next month.

In closed session last week, the council voted to issue the building permits before the Monday hearing--also against O’Connor’s wishes. She responded by writing letters to newspaper editors attacking that decision because it “subverted the initiative process.”

On Monday, before a packed house of Plunge preservationists at City Hall, the mayor asked her colleagues to table the discussion so the city clerk could complete plans for a special mail-ballot election on the initiative within 45 days. The election would cost the city $200,000 to $300,000.

“In the interest of preserving the democratic process and protecting the taxpayers’ money, I support bringing this to a vote of the people as soon as possible,” O’Connor said.

But City Atty. John Witt, under questioning from Councilwoman Judy McCarty, said that the developer could successfully sue the city if the development is halted now, even by a quickie initiative by mail. City Manager John Lockwood said the city might have to pay “millions” to the developer if the contract approved by the council last year was broken.

Council members voted, 7-2, to defeat O’Connor’s call to study the mail ballot, with O’Connor and Councilwoman Abbe Wolfsheimer in the minority. The council then voted unanimously to place the measure on the November ballot.

O’Connor warned her colleagues that their action would leave a bitter “aftertaste” in the mouths of voters, and she told the crowd she wanted them to vote in November anyway to “send a message” to the council.

After the meeting, Gotch, who has taken considerable political heat in the beach communities for his support of the project, said: “The mayor failed the first litmus test of politics, and that is loyalty.” He said O’Connor should be able to “disagree in a dignified way without lecturing or belittling” fellow council members.

“It saddens me that Mr. Gotch would say those words,” the mayor responded after the meeting. “I strongly disagree with the philosophy that the community doesn’t have any rights. I did not attack my colleagues personally. I did attack the fact that the lease was, in my opinion, a sweetheart deal.”

Plunge developer Steve Davis said after the meeting that O’Connor’s criticism did not take into account the tax and revenue that the shops and stores would bring to the city.

Meanwhile, Plunge preservationists said they would continue to fight the development in court. A hearing on a request for a temporary restraining order against the project, filed on behalf of the Mission Beach Town Council, is scheduled later this month in Superior Court.