An Arena for Argument : SDSU and Homeowners Head Back to Court Over Proposed Facility

Thomas B. Day, the president of San Diego State University, said Tuesday that a dispute between the school and area homeowners over a 12,000-seat on-campus arena is “really about control” and that he is “not about to give in.”

SDSU officials have a court date Friday with Friends of the College Area, the homeowners group, over the proposed construction of the Student Activity Center, which is designated for varsity basketball and as many as 31 rock concerts a year.

The homeowners say they don’t object to varsity basketball, but rather to the noise and traffic emanating from rock events.

Day sees it differently.

“This is all about control,” he said in an interview. “It’s about whether the university has control over its own facilities, as opposed to neighbors telling us what to do and how to do it.”

The dispute surrounding the $41-million indoor arena was born almost immediately after the passage of a student referendum in March, 1988. The measure authorized an increase of per-semester student fees from $16 to $63 to finance construction.

At this point, some university officials say actual ground-breaking seems like a far-off dream. Unless Superior Court Judge Ron Johnson awards an unequivocal victory to SDSU on Friday, university spokesman Rick Moore said, students’ fees will continue to pay lawyers.

On Friday in his Vista courtroom, Johnson will assess the validity of the school’s supplemental environmental impact report. The second EIR was recently approved by trustees of the California State University system, of which SDSU is a member.

The first EIR was successfully challenged in court by the Alvarado Homeowners Assn., which forced the supplemental measure. That one was challenged in Superior Court by a separate homeowners group, Friends of the College Area, the plaintiff in Friday’s action.

Gary DeBusschere, president of Friends of the College Area, said the homeowners group--which is paying its legal costs through community donations--had hoped to settle the issue through an impartial mediator. DeBusschere said the university has consistently resisted mediation.

“There’s this lingering impasse between the two groups,” he said. “It appears the only alternative . . . is litigation, which is costing a lot of money.”

DeBusschere reiterated that homeowners are not concerned about varsity basketball returning to campus. For years now, the men’s basketball team has played its games in the 13,500-seat San Diego Sports Arena.

He said the homeowners’ concern is with the school’s 15-year, $4-million contract with Avalon Attractions, a Los Angeles-based promotions company that hopes to schedule as many as 31 rock concerts a year at the Student Activity Center.

DeBusschere said traffic and noise emanating from the 3,500-seat Open Air Theatre at SDSU--a frequent setting for Avalon’s concerts--are already a problem. His fear is that traffic and noise from the crowds flocking to an arena almost four times that size will be intolerable.

“In the center of a desert, it’s a great scheme,” DeBusschere said. “But unfortunately, SDSU is a community of canyons. You can shut off traffic at one intersection (during an arena event) and close off a whole area.

“I guess the university’s position is they want to play more hardball. The community feels a threshold has been exceeded. The university is now veering beyond its traditional role of education and, due to a lack of funding, is courting the entertainment business.”

President Day said Tuesday that, as far as he’s concerned, mediation is not an option. As to the “entertainment question,” he said the student body has been in the business of “providing entertainment to itself” for years through Associated Students.

“What we rejected outright was the proposal by neighbors that we submit to mediation,” Day said. “I’m sorry, but I reject the concept of a university president submitting his decisions on the use of university facilities to an outside mediator. It’s not his decision, it’s mine.

“The president of San Diego State University is held responsible by the board of trustees for the appropriate use of facilities by this institution, and no mediator is going to tell me how to do it,” Day said.

City Councilwoman Judy McCarty, whose district includes the college area, had advocated mediation from the start. She said she was “disappointed” that Day had rejected it.

“I suggested mediation at the recent trustees meeting,” McCarty said. “I do believe we get a lot farther talking with each other than at each other. That’s always been my position.

“I believe we’ve made tremendous strides in the college area. And I’m particularly sorry to see it all fall apart over the Student Activity Center,” she said.

“Day apparently doesn’t want anyone helping him run his university, and it’s . . . just sad. I’d always like to be hopeful. Once they break ground, etc., maybe we can all work together and work out the problems, or maybe Day will be correct and there won’t be any problems. All we can do is hope.”

Day said he was surprised to learn the two sides would be back in court Friday. He believed the matter had been settled March 1, when the two sides and their attorneys attempted to reach a settlement during an eight-hour conference.

“I was told at the end of the day that we had an agreement,” Day said. “I was told the terms--that there were significant concessions on our part and some concessions on the neighbors’ part. I was told it was a done deal.

“Well, then, our attorneys wrote it up and sent it to their attorneys, and we didn’t hear, didn’t hear, didn’t hear. . . . Then, after two weeks, the agreement is repudiated. Instead of an agreement, they had gone back and added more conditions.

“I’ve never heard of a situation where lawyers for both sides agree and walk away and then it’s repudiated,” Day said. “I’ve just never heard of it. But we didn’t do it. They did.”

DeBusschere said that among the chief concerns of his group is the number of on-campus rock shows. Friends of the College Area hopes to see the number of “commercial events” limited to 15 a year. And they want more on-campus parking.

In essence, they want more control.

“But it’s an ego thing with Day,” DeBusschere said. “He doesn’t want controls. And he sees it as a personal battle. It’s become us versus him. There was never any need for that.”

“I don’t intend to get into the gutter and argue with Gary DeBusschere,” Day said. “This is not a memorial to me. This is a project that converts a 14,000-seat, open, obsolete football stadium (the Aztec Bowl, which will be demolished) into a 12,000-seat basketball arena.

“We’re taking a facility that we’ve had for 50 years and making it usable for students. Their current posture before the court is that maybe we should do it for 8,000 seats, or 6,000 seats, or 4,000 seats, but I need the biggest facility possible--if, for no other reason, than to stage commencement.”

Day said the building consists of three parts--a 2,000-car parking garage, a 76,000-square-foot intramural facility and the arena, shared by varsity basketball and rock ‘n’ roll. The homeowners group objects primarily to the 12,000 seats and to rock ‘n’ roll.

“I have continual complaints that we don’t have a first-class facility in which sports teams can practice,” Day said. “A woman volleyball player recently made a Title IX complaint to the government, saying we don’t have a suitable place to practice, and she was right!”

As for the homeowners, “they don’t want a lot of people on a college campus at night,” Day said. “They’re especially fearful of those events that will attract a lot of people. I can understand it . . . I just disagree with it.”

Day said that, if his side loses, an appeal is likely. Friends of the College Area say the same.