Council Delays Lease Plan for Massacre Site

The City Council on Tuesday postponed discussion of a plan to put a Southwestern College satellite campus on the vacant site of the 1984 San Ysidro McDonald’s massacre amid doubts that the deal is still viable.

Council members postponed the issue until Monday but then heard the plan’s originator, 8th District Councilwoman Celia Ballesteros, say that the deal may be dead because of the political controversy it has caused.

Ballesteros said in an interview that community college trustees want to avoid the turmoil that has surrounded the fate of the site, where gunman James Huberty shot and killed 21 people and wounded 19 others before a police marksman killed him.

“They told me, ‘We don’t want to involve our community college in any political controversy. We just don’t want to do that,’ ” Ballesteros said. The trustees are also considering sites in National City and Coronado, where they would be free of the emotional debate, she said.

Will Press for Plan

Nevertheless, Ballesteros said she will press for adoption of the Southwestern plan Monday and has the votes to win it.

The college approached Ballesteros two weeks ago with a plan to lease the site from the city and to build a two-story, 5,000-square-foot satellite campus. Plans also call for a memorial to victims of the massacre.

The city, however, has been trying to sell the site and use the proceeds to build a nearby park. A first request for bids yielded no one interested in buying for $425,000 the .75-acre site on West San Ysidro Boulevard.

The site is up for bid again at $300,000. Though there have been no offers, Deputy City Manager Jack McGrory said Tuesday that he expects some by the Dec. 4 deadline. At the council meeting, San Ysidro resident Marvin Carpenter said he intends to make “a low-ball offer” for the property.

The controversy that Ballesteros feared surfaced at a hearing Tuesday on the site, when Andrea Skorepa, a community leader and member of an ad hoc committee appointed to review plans for the site, accused Ballesteros of pressuring the committee to accept the Southwestern plan and swearing them to secrecy. Ballesteros denied both charges.

Another speaker, Sandy Lopez, accused Ballesteros of trying to win approval of the Southwestern plan for political glory before she leaves office Dec. 7. “Ballesteros is trying to run a very sensitive issue through before she leaves office, for her own political gain,” Lopez said in an interview.

Ballesteros also denied that charge, accusing Skorepa of criticizing the plan to preserve her power in San Ysidro.