Sandag to Lobby Capitals for Otay Airport

The San Diego Assn. of Governments board of directors on Friday authorized the creation of a high-powered committee that will travel to Washington and Mexico City to learn whether federal officials will let San Diego solve its growing airport crisis by expanding Tijuana’s airport or building a new airport on Otay Mesa.

With Chula Vista Mayor Greg Cox and county Supervisor Brian Bilbray in the lead, board members voted 10 to 8 to ask the San Diego City Council and county Board of Supervisors to approve the international airport proposal--as well as to officially state whether an airport fits in with development plans for Otay Mesa.

The regional planning board also expanded the options proposed a week earlier when a Sandag staff report suggested that San Diego, the county and the San Diego Unified Port District seek international approval to build an airport at Brown Field that would use Mexican air space.

Cox successfully argued to have the committee first seek permission to expand Tijuana International Airport through the addition of a runway.

Sandag board members agreed, but they also decided “not to exclude any reasonable option on either side of the border,” said San Diego City Councilwoman Judy McCarty, the city’s representative on Sandag’s board.

The staff report, which took two years and $385,000 to complete, recommends construction of an airport at Brown Field that would include north-south runways using Mexican airspace. Such an alignment would be needed because, unlike Tijuana’s airport, Brown Field is situated to the west of hills that would interfere with flight patterns.

But Cox successfully argued that merely seeking approval to use Mexican airspace for an airport in the United States “makes a mockery out of having an international airport. . . . It has to be a mutually beneficial relationship.”

Cox argued that the committee should seek approval for the addition of a new runway at Tijuana International and construction of a terminal facility on U.S. land.

Friday’s actions shifted attention to the City Council and the Board of Supervisors, both of which are expected to act quickly on Sandag’s request. Supervisors on Friday made tentative plans to place Sandag’s action on their June 5 agenda. The council could take up the question as early as Tuesday.

Landowners are increasingly worried about the eventual uses that will be allowed on Otay Mesa, an area that is extremely important to developers. For the past 1 1/2 years, a building moratorium has been in effect on hundreds of acres near Brown Field. Developers have submitted plans for nearly half the industrially zoned land near the airport, and as many as 10,000 new homes planned for the area are on hold.

Cox and Bilbray are asking the city, which controls most of the area in question, “to put up or shut up on the question of zoning,” according to one source familiar with the land-use questions. “They want to know what the city’s going to do.”

Sandag on Friday cleared the way for the creation of a committee that would include the chairman of Sandag, the mayor of San Diego, the Board of Supervisors’ chairman and the chairman of the Port District board.

“We’re saying, can we sit down, have a cup of tea and talk this over?” said Coronado Mayor Lois Ewen. But Ewen cautioned that creating the committee is only a “first modest step” to find out if the proposed airport is possible.

“I think this proposal will leave us 10 to 20 years down the line without any solution again,” said San Diego Councilman Bob Filner, whose district incorporates much of Otay Mesa. “It took 14 years to negotiate a border crossing. Imagine the much more complicated relationship of an airport.”