It took 15 years to get here, and the road was bumpy at times along the way, but today construction began on the first phase of the North Embarcadero Visionary Plan, or “NEVP.”  Hundreds attended the groundbreaking ceremony;  many had worked for more than a decade to make it happen.

cott Peters addresses NEVP Groundbreaking Event

When construction is complete, San Diego Bay will connect with downtown San Diego in an inviting and spectacular way worthy of our dynamic city and of this beautiful waterfront property.  It will be a unique and dramatic gateway between the city and the water, and a brilliant testament to what can be accomplished when people with different points of view are brought together to find common ground for the common good.

Here’s where it is: NEVP Phase I encompasses the area on North Harbor Drive, near the Navy Pier, north to the B Street Pier, and east up a portion of West Broadway. It will create a 105-foot wide esplanade, or walkway, and a total of about 12 acres of public space complete with formal gardens, plazas, shady pavilions and public art by renowned artists. It will be a place where people can meander along the waterfront, take a jog, or bike ride or just enjoy the view!

Eventually, it will be popular not just as a pretty place to pass through, but also as a destination in itself that will draw residents and visitors to special events such as art exhibits and concerts and festivals.

The hardscape and utilities will have special features that define it and make it exceptional among the other sidewalks and streets downtown with distinct paving and medians, and rows of decorative palm trees and lighting. It will be such an extraordinary place that it will draw nice new developments adjacent to it, creating more public spaces for people to enjoy downtown.

Projects of this scale and grandeur never happen quickly, and they don’t happen without spirited public discussion and debate. That can definitely be said of this project.

Many agencies and people contributed to NEVP Phase 1

First, there were several agencies involved: The Port of San Diego, the City of San Diego, and the Centre City Development Corporation, together formed a Joint Powers Authority. So it required a lot of cooperation and compromise, and ultimately approvals from all of these agencies, and from the California Coastal Commission. It also rightly required input from members of the public, many who had really strong opinions that didn’t always line up with the original plans put forward.

And that made it really hard at times; but I very much believe that it will be a better project because of the changes we made to address concerns raised by the public. That’s the way it’s supposed to work! I extend a big thank you to everyone who paid attention and offered suggestions and stuck with it for so long.

When I first started serving on the City Council in 2000, our priorities for downtown were completing the ballpark, building the library and renovating the waterfront with the NEVP.

Look at what we can accomplish when our public leaders listen, bring people together, and forge consensus. We created for San Diego something that will benefit the public for decades to come.

This weekend I traveled to Port Townsend, Washington, for the annual meeting of the Walkable and Livable Communities Institute. I became interested in neighborhood livability and walkability through my work as a city councilman, representing the La Jolla neighborhood of Bird Rock. In 2000, as I campaigned for office, I heard residents complain about La Jolla Boulevard – it was unattractive, unmaintained and the businesses mostly failed. Worst of all, the street was a four-land highway so wide and the traffic speeds were so high that it was absolutely dangerous to cross from one side to the other, especially if you were pushing a stroller or a walker. At that time, Bird Rock was a place you merely drove through.

Bird Rock Before the Overhaul

After I was elected, I worked hard to find a fix for Bird Rock, but the community was adamant that the solution would not come from City Hall. In the middle of the turmoil, I happened to hear Dan Burden (now the executive director of WALC), a presenter at a seminar on safe and walkable streets. Dan agreed to meet me in Bird Rock on a Sunday morning and we walked the community. Dan had technical expertise – he had been the bicycle coordinator for the state of Florida — and had helped solve traffic problems around the country. He was an empathetic listener and understood the issues, and I became confident that with Dan’s help we could solve our problems.

I hired Dan with funds from my Council office budget and we got to work. First, Dan offered residents a walking audit of the area, followed by a design meeting with residents. Dan returned two weeks later with designs created from the input from the community. Soon, the community had, with Dan’s help, created a Bird Rock Traffic Plan. Since roundabouts were safer and more efficient – and nicer-looking – than traffic lights, the community chose to add five of them on the Boulevard, with more traffic calming measures throughout the neighborhood. The changes would be dramatic, but since the plan had been both created by and within the community, it had strong neighborhood support and the City Council approved it unanimously. Over the following years, we funded the $5.6 million plan from a mix of sources, including development fees, bicycle grants, street repair funds and a federal smart growth grant.

Bird Rock Today with Installed Traffic Slowing Roundabouts

Seven years after we began, the Bird Rock community has been transformed into one of the best walkable communities in San Diego. La Jolla Boulevard went from four lanes to two. The average vehicular speed dropped from 45 mph to 25 mph. We added five, beautifully landscaped roundabouts and installed state-of-the-art pedestrian safety technology at all five crosswalks. New businesses have opened and neighbors have re-emerged from their homes in Bird Rock to find a very cool community right in their midst. It’s been held out as a case study by federal transportation authorities, and was the subject of their workshop last year. And it has won awards from public works associations, engineers, the Urban Lands Institute and Walk San Diego.

There are a lot of reasons to want neighborhoods to be great places for walking, with destinations nearby. It’s great for avoiding traffic congestion, getting exercise, lowering air pollution and building community with your neighbors. And as the work of the Walkable and Livable Communities Institute grows, people will be talking about La Jolla Boulevard and Bird Rock across the country. And maybe you will be inspired, as I have been, by Dan Burden’s vision of community empowerment and neighborhoods for people. Here is his TED presentation:

How do you feel about having a walkable and livable community?

I recently spoke at the groundbreaking ceremony of a new portion of San Diego’s Bayshore Bikeway in Chula Vista. The Bayshore Bikeway is a 24-mile bicycle facility that circles the San Diego Bay.

This new segment will enhance access to San Diego Bay and allow cyclists from all over the county to experience all of the public assets on the Chula Vista waterfront.

As a cyclist myself, and for San Diegans wanting a safe bicycle route for commuting and recreation, this is much anticipated news. Not to mention, for those of us who view biking as transportation as well as recreation, the entire Bayshore Bikeway Plan is a cheap, and environmentally friendly way for San Diegans to get around.

The addition of the 1.8-mile stretch in Chula Vista means that soon 14.3 miles of the 24-mile pathway will be dedicated solely to bikes. And when the entire Bayshore Bikeway is completed, cyclists will be able to hop on their bikes at the Embarcadero in San Diego and travel all the way around the bay to Coronado on a bike path entirely separated from the roadway.

San Diego is leading the way and also expected to be the first of 15 coastal California counties to complete work on their portion of the developing California Coastal Trail, a continuous bicycle thoroughfare stretching from the Oregon border to Border Field State Park in San Ysidro.  I hope our movement will encourage other cities to get moving, and entice more bicyclists to enjoy our beautiful bayfront.

Oregon Public Transit

It’s great news that the San Diego City Council has sent policy direction to the transportation funders at SANDAG to “prioritize mass transit infrastructure and sustainable transportation projects over highway expansion.”  The Council’s majority position was opposed by the three Council Republicans, as well as SANDAG Vice-Chairman Jack Dale, the Regional Chamber of Commerce and the Regional Economic Development Corporation. But the Council’s position is the right one.  We anticipate 1.3 million new people in our county (that’s the current population of the City of San Diego) in the next 40 years.  More highways are not going to keep up.  There is not enough geography to build the acres of pavement new highways will require, and wider highways don’t always mean better mobility anyway.

The hard part is that putting transit first means putting automobiles second. To make transit faster, you have to take lanes and parking spaces away from cars. The City Council has already balked at the Mid City Rapid Bus because of a loss of 9 parking spaces! The neighborhood group is “in favor of increased public transportation, . . . but not at the expense of parking spaces.”  But we can’t have it both ways.  For transit to compete with cars, it has to be fast and efficient.  If we want to provide better access to busses, we may have to sacrifice the convenience of parking and driving cars.

Discouraging driving and parking in the name of better transit is difficult politically, but it’s not impossible.  In Portland, Oregon, where they have an effective light rail system, the building code doesn’t require a minimum number of parking spaces — it enforces a maximum.  If there are fewer spaces for cars in an apartment building, the residents are more likely to use the transit system.  So, if you want an apartment next to a bus or light rail line, you may only get one parking space instead of two. That zoning rule will make you share your car or use transit. And free parking is a disincentive to transit use. Transit smart cities charge money for parking spaces – of course, they can use the money from the parking to support transit.

These measures are understood and accepted in some American cities, and widely in Europe, but will take some getting used to in San Diego.  But when we talk about “hard choices,” this is what we mean.

Redevelopment is a critical urban development strategy for California cities. In most of San Diego, only 17 cents of each of your property tax dollars goes back to the city to fund trash, streets, police, fire, lifeguards, street and sidewalk repair, libraries and parks. That’s a lot of things to care for with not a lot of money.

But in areas that are run down enough to qualify under the law as “blighted,” and are then declared redevelopment areas, most of the property taxes generated from public and private investments there are captured and reinvested into the community. This ability to hold onto the property tax we generate is a huge financial incentive for any city to make investments in under-served neighborhoods. Since 20% of redevelopment tax income has to be spent on affordable housing, redevelopment is also a critical housing tool. Face it — given today’s municipal balance sheet, it’s the only real tool to promote affordable housing that the market doesn’t generate. And, if reducing greenhouse gas emissions depends on locating future housing closer into existing cities — so that we reduce the miles traveled in our vehicles — then we have to densify already developed neighborhoods.

Redevelopment provides a financial tool to make this all happen.

It’s clear that the state is gasping for fiscal air, and redevelopment income has become a target for closing the gap.  From the state’s viewpoint, they can take redevelopment money from cities and use it to meet the state school funding obligations.  But that leaves cities without a tool to fund affordable housing, reclaim broken-window neighborhoods and encourage efficient and transit-friendly, infill development.

To fix this problem, the League of California Cities is supporting SB 286 , which it calls “a responsible alternative to the Governor’s illegal redevelopment elimination proposal. The measure will significantly enhance accountability of redevelopment, limit redevelopment’s footprint, and focus redevelopment on key priorities like job-creation, crime reduction, revitalization of rundown and blighted neighborhoods, and toxics cleanup and affordable housing.”

That sounds like a much better approach than trashing one of our cities’ last best tools to draw investments, no?