San Diego Effort to Select Memorial to Dr. King Collapses

An 18-month effort to select a memorial to the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. ended in failure Tuesday when the San Diego Unified Port District commissioners rejected the City Council’s request to rename the city’s bay-front convention center for the slain civil rights leader.

In a 4-3 decision, Commissioners Daniel Larsen, Raymond Burk, Milford Portwood and Robert Penner voted to support Burk’s motion to retain the name San Diego Convention Center, established in a 1985 contract between the city and the port district.

Commissioners Louis Wolfsheimer, William Rick and Delton Reopelle, who supported the council-backed name, San Diego Martin Luther King Convention Center, voted against the proposal.

The decision was the second repudiation of a San Diego tribute to King in less than two years. In a November, 1987, referendum, San Diego voters reversed a council decision to rename Market Street as Martin Luther King Jr. Way and returned the downtown thoroughfare’s original name.

Leaders of the drive to honor King vowed to pursue the racially and politically sensitive tribute effort, which has divided the city and dogged public officials since the council’s April, 1986, decision to rename Market Street.

Wes Pratt, the lone black on the council and a leader of the King tribute effort, said that the city still must find a suitable memorial to King and promised to press for renewed council action.

“San Diego has to come to grips with its ethnic diversity at some point in time,” Pratt said after the commissioners’ decision at a special meeting.

But a weary-sounding Mayor Maureen O’Connor said it was too soon to decide whether to place the issue before the council again.

Lack of Consensus

“At this point, I’m not prepared to say which way we’d go,” O’Connor said in an interview. “I mean, really, we’ve tried this every which way and we seem to be running into a dead end.

“At this point, it appears to be difficult to find a solution that would satisfy a majority,” O’Connor added.

The Rev. George Stevens, who has led an unsuccessful boycott of the Convention Center since the port commissioners dodged the name change issue in February, called a public meeting for Thursday night to plot strategy in the King tribute campaign.

Pratt, however, said that a boycott clearly would not work. The $160-million bay-front facility, scheduled to open in November, has already scheduled conventions through the end of the 1990s. Jim Jacobson, a coordinator of the Martin Luther King Tribute Coalition, said members of the organization also will meet to review options. Lacking the money for an initiative campaign, he called for the council to put the matter on the ballot.

O’Connor virtually ruled out that tactic, saying that a victory in such a referendum would not be binding on the commissioners.