Near Convair Lagoon : East Basin Called Prime Site for Cup Nerve Center

While a final decision is still some time away and several obstacles must be overcome, it’s now apparent that America’s Cup officials are focusing on the East Basin of San Diego Bay as the prime location for most of the sailing syndicates expected to compete in the 1991 races.

It is here--in an area along Harbor Drive used by the Convair Division of General Dynamics--that officials envision housing as many as 19 syndicates and a possible America’s Cup village, which would attract spectators and become a setting for much of the hoopla and pageantry associated with the world’s most famous regatta.

The East Basin is attractive to Cup officials for several reasons:

- It is close to the B Street Pier, which is now the leading candidate as the site for the America’s Cup media center--from which more than a thousand reporters, photographers, camera crews and technicians will cover the event.

- It is near the geographic center of a North Bay crescent that roughly begins with Shelter Island and ends at the Embarcadero. This is the place--which also includes Commercial Basin, Spanish Landing and Harbor Island--where the bulk of Cup activities are expected to occur.

- It offers the regatta a stage from which to perform, as the 12-meter racing yachts promenade in front of what officials hope will be crowds of people perched on the rocky banks of Shelter and Harbor islands.

“You’ll have things happening from the Star of India” to Shelter Island, “where you can walk around and see all that’s happening,” said Fred Frye, commodore of the San Diego Yacht Club, which is in charge of putting on the regatta and defending the Cup.

“I think (the East Basin) offers the best potential,” said Gerry Driscoll, head of the America’s Cup Committee, which last week announced the selection of San Diego as the site for the 1991 races. “The site offers the opportunity to spread things out a little . . . it’s not far from everything, like the media center and the yacht club.”

And, said Dan Larsen, president of the San Diego Unified Port District board, which has ultimate jurisdiction over the property, “That seems to be the area that everyone is zeroing in on now. Once the judge makes her decision, then we’ll go full-bore on this.”

Legal Challenge

The last reference is to a legal challenge filed by New Zealander Michael Fay in a New York Supreme Court that seeks to compel the yacht club to hold a Cup race next year. The challenge has been taken under submission by a judge, who has promised a decision within about two weeks.

Even if Fay’s challenge is rejected, there are other obstacles that must be overcome before East Basin is transformed into the regatta’s focal point. The first is reaching an agreement with General Dynamics officials for use of the property, which they lease from the port. Secondly, there is the question of what to do about the polychlorinated biphenyls, known as PCBs, that have been found in Convair Lagoon, a section of East Basin that dips eastward toward Harbor Drive.

PCBs are man-made chlorinated hydrocarbons that were used for many years as fluids in electrical transformers and capacitors. Production was banned by the federal government in 1978, following evidence that the chemicals cause cancer in laboratory animals and have other health effects on humans.

There is also the potential problem of too many cars and people descending on an area already heavily congested and adjacent to Lindbergh Field.

H. Cushman Dow, general counsel for General Dynamics, said that the company was approached by Cup officials several weeks ago and asked about possible vacant space but that no meetings have taken place and that he hasn’t talked to any Cup or Port District officials since then.

‘Glad to Talk’

“We’d be glad to talk . . . but on the other hand, we have a number of programs going on down there and we can’t just drop our government contracts,” Dow said.

Jack Isabel, a General Dynamics spokesman, said that, while “we’ll certainly listen to whatever proposals are made regarding the facility . . . at the same time, any decision will have to take into account our business interest.”

One of the main activities at the site involves the transporting of fuselages from the lagoon, Isabel said. Fuselages for DC-10s and MD-11s built in a Convair facility east of Lindbergh Field are driven across the airport late at night and loaded onto barges in the lagoon. The barges then take the fuselages to a McDonnell Douglas plant in Long Beach.

“We need that access,” Isabel said.

As for the presence of PCBs in the lagoon, a plan conceived by architect Chuck Hope, a member of the Cup Committee, would essentially deal with the toxic chemicals locked in the sediment by sealing off the lagoon with a concrete bulkhead, pumping out the water and covering the hole with as much as 20 feet of dirt.

The dirt would come from the approximately 100-foot widening of the basin, which, along with shutting off the lagoon, would provide about 2,700 feet of straight shoreline for the syndicates.

The state Regional Water Quality Control Board, which is in the midst of a Convair Lagoon PCB investigation, finds the idea of covering the sediment with dirt intriguing.

‘Proposal Interesting’

“We have some concerns in that area, obviously, but I think the proposal is interesting,” said David Barker, a senior engineer for the water board. So far, the water board has identified Teledyne Ryan Aeronautical as a source of some of the PCBs and is still investigating whether other companies might also have dumped PCBs into the lagoon.

The water board is also trying to find out both the depth of the contamination in the sediment and how far it has spread, according to Barker. Should the water board find that a cleanup is necessary, then it’s possible that one alternative could involve “capping” the sediment with dirt.

“A cap is sometimes used,” Barker said. “It would certainly be one alternative . . . we certainly wouldn’t rule it out out of hand. We’d have to make sure that the contaminated sediment wouldn’t cause a problem in the future by seeping out.”

Hope, together with Sail America President Malin Burnham, made the first preliminary East Basin proposal about six weeks ago.

“It’s a large area of land (about 33 acres) that is fairly underutilized,” Hope said. “It’s an excellent spot, well-sheltered and centrally located . . . offering ample room for all the pageantry of the Cup.” Hope is also the developer of the new, 532-berth Sunroad Resort Marina, located on Harbor Island, directly across from the proposed syndicate center.

Fred Trull, the Port District’s top planning official, who traveled to Fremantle last winter to see how the Australians put on the Cup regatta, says his office has done preliminary work on East Basin.

“Yes, we can provide for a number of syndicates at that location . . . and depth of water is not a problem there,” he said, noting that the Port District has exchanged preliminary drawings with Convair officials.

Trull said the Port District is ready to launch a definitive engineering study of the East Basin shoreline but is awaiting more direction from Cup officials and the Board of Port Commissioners.

Cup officials, including Driscoll and Supervisor Brian Bilbray, who is also the head of the San Diego America’s Cup Task Force, emphasize that while East Basin could house most of the sailing syndicates, others will choose to be in other places, such as Commercial Basin, contiguous to Shelter Island, where a handful of syndicates could be accommodated at existing private boat yards.

“Some syndicates don’t want to be in the heart of it (all),” said Driscoll, explaining that foreign syndicates sometimes want to maintain secrecy and get away from the hoopla. “But then they have to deal with private boat yards . . . and that’s not the same as” being in a place like East Basin. Driscoll said he hopes to have a final decision on East Basin within two months.

“East Basin has so much potential because it’s underutilized,” said Bilbray. “Basically this is going to be a three-way discussion between the port, the task force and the company.”