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San Diego Panel Avoids Decision on Honor to King

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Times Staff Writer

In a surprise move, the San Diego Board of Port Commissioners sidestepped a vote to rename the new $160-million bay-side convention center after the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and instead chose to make the slain civil rights leader the first inductee of an “Avenue of Honors” on the center’s terrace.

The board’s refusal to vote on the controversial name change sends the question back to the San Diego City Council, which has already voted in favor of the renaming.

In a similar dispute two years ago, the City Council voted to rename a major thoroughfare Martin Luther King Jr. Way. That decision was overturned in a referendum.

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It appeared before the meeting that a majority of the seven-member Board of Port Commissioners--political appointees of the city councils of the five cities ringing San Diego Bay--would vote for renaming the San Diego Convention Center after King.

San Diego’s three appointees, as well as the representative from National City, had said they would follow the wishes of their city councils and vote to place King’s name on the center, which is to open later this year.

But the political balance changed when one of San Diego’s commissioners, Dan Larsen, bolted. He was the key swing vote on the Avenue of Honors proposal made by Chula Vista’s representative, Robert Penner.

Afterward, Larsen maintained that he had not changed his mind. But he said the proposal was something new and the City Council “deserved the opportunity to take a look” at it. “I like Dr. Penner’s idea . . . it’s an excellent way to do it. Perhaps if they had this opportunity they would have gone this way,” Larsen said just before the vote.

Joining Larsen and Penner in support of the the new proposal were commissioners from Coronado and Imperial Beach. Voting in opposition were two San Diego commissioners and the National City representative.

The proposal, which Penner said he drafted during the day, took the audience by surprise. Some people who had testified against the renaming yelled at the commissioners, saying they had “copped out” by not taking a direct stand on the renaming, and most of the blacks who had turned out for the four-hour-long meeting left quickly.

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But Robert Pruett, the key organizer behind the main opposition group, Citizens to Keep the Name San Diego Convention Center, said his group would abandon its plan to launch a referendum against the renaming if the Avenue of Honors is created.

“I think this shows courage and wisdom on their part,” he said. “The proposed alternative is admirable.”

San Diego Councilman Wes Pratt, who made the city’s formal presentation to the commissioners, was unavailable for comment, as was Mayor Maureen O’Connor.

Emotions ran high many times during the marathon meeting, which attracted about 350 people to the 460-seat ballroom at the Embarcadero Holiday Inn. At times some of the rhetoric rose to eloquence, at other times, it included racial slurs and references to stereotypes.

Pruett, the leader of the main opposition group, presented the commissioners with petitions bearing the signatures of 4,769 people against the renaming.

He said if the commissioners voted for the name change, “there will be a referendum. . . . That isn’t a threat, that’s a promise.”

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The Rev. George Stevens, one of the leaders supporting the renaming, warned the commissioners that if the center is not named after King, he will launch a “Tell a Friend” campaign, a grass-roots, word-of-mouth effort telling people not to visit or bring conventions to the city.

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