San Diego Trolley System Growing by Rails and Ties

The newest San Diego Trolley extension was inaugurated Thursday in a ceremony that included a giant red ribbon, a jazz band, lots of pizza and plenty of promises that, with good transit, comes neighborhood revitalization.

The cause for celebration is the half a mile stretch of track along the rail right of way from the Santa Fe Depot to Cedar Street. The segment, funded by the county and the Unified Port District, was built by the Metropolitan Transit Development Board.

For now, the end is marked by the County Center/Little Italy station--the second of a proposed five-station North Line/Old Town segment that will extend to Taylor Street in Old Town by late 1995. Thursday’s ceremony also marked the beginning of construction on the next stretch of track.

A bright red trolley filled with politicians in red hats rolled through an inaugural ribbon to kick off the midday event at the station, which is not yet completed. The county owns the block, and designed the stop to mirror the deco architecture of the County Administration Center, half a block away.

Talk was of revival: a milestone marking the first attempt to resurrect a neighborhood described as blighted. The trolley will also rescue the County Administration Center--its services and workers--from isolation, speakers said.

“What we are dedicating here today is not just a trolley line, but a gateway to a future in this area that has been denied for too long,” said County Supervisor Brian Bilbray, who is also the chairman of San Diego Trolley Inc. “I see this as the starting gun of the revitalization in Little Italy and the concentration of County Administration facilities.”

Officials at the ceremony painted a grim picture of the neighborhood.

“Ten or 20 years from now, we want our children to be entering into a whole different type of community than exists now,” Bilbray said.

“It’s been in a deteriorating mode virtually since I was a child,” MTDB Chairman Jim Mills said of the neighborhood.

Missing from the program, however, were representatives of the very community the public officials were talking about.

“None of us was invited,” said Betty Slater, a Little Italy property owner and member of the Harbor View-Little Italy Coalition and the Center City Planning Committee, which several months ago approved a plan to include Little Italy in the city’s redevelopment area.

Then again, the coalition hasn’t exactly endeared itself to MTDB members. The group fought for more than a year to change MTDB’s planned trolley alignment, which was initially slated to run through Little Italy 52 feet above the ground. That, the coalition said, would have ruined bay views as well as prospects for healthy revitalization.

The contentious battle ended in compromise. Now the tracks will travel along at street level, dipping below ground at Grape and Hawthorn streets and crossing Laurel Street on a bridge.

Slater and other coalition members said they, too, are excited about the neighborhood’s future, and the trolley stop is part of it.

“This is really a celebratory reunion for us. We’re glad it turned out the way it did,” Slater said at an India Street Italian restaurant where the group gathered to hold their own luncheon ceremony.

“It was a real testing ground for MTDB,” said coalition spokeswoman Leslie Wade. “It was the first time they took the surrounding community into consideration.”

It came at a cost: The compromise added $16 million to the trolley line’s price tag, Mills said.

“I think there was a lot of money spent on what I call the roller coaster ride than needed to be spent,” said Bilbray. “Politicians have to be able to stand up and take the heat so that every time a community complains you don’t get tracks that zigzag all over the place.”

Mills said the absence of community representatives on the inaugural run was a practical matter: “There’s a limit to what you can do. Not everyone could fit on the program.”

There may still be some hard feelings, however. “I have Irish Alzheimer’s,” Mills joked during his speech, after he got some dates confused. “Where you forget everything except your grudges.”

The Little Italy coalition includes architects, residents, and business and property owners from the neighborhood, which extends from Interstate 5 to the bay between Beech and Laurel streets.