October 15, 1999
The juggernaut started by City Manager McGrory, Mayor Susan Golding and the PADRE organization has begun its changing of the city skyline even before the Padre Stadium AKA redevelopment project have passed all the required hurdles such as an EIR, Coastal Commission approval and the financing for the project. But those small details mean nothing to the hirelings of the downtown establishment, the SEDC, CCDC, who have left no stone unturned to please their masters.
The downtown redevelopment agencies (CCDC) began making efforts to close down, remove or destroy the downtown Farmers Market. They knew that very private non-public moves were underway to clear out all impediments to the development of the Padre Stadium complex. The word was out: "the Farmers Market land area is needed for the ballpark. Never mind what businesses get destroyed, how many lives are destroyed, how many citizens will be denied the ability to buy their fresh produces at the Farmers Market.
The SEDC proposed to move the Farmers Market to the corner of Euclid and Market. Of course that just happens to be right next door to the Tubman/Cezar Chavez Center. And the public wasn't cut into the knowledge that the supposed "Farmers Market" would not be of the same genera as the "Farmers Market." In its new formation it would become a distribution center, i.e. a hub for semi- trucks to come day and night to deliver and pickup! This, in the middle of an area which is adorned by such buildings as the MALCOM X LIBRARY, Market Creek Plaza , the Tubman/Chavez Center, and the new Elementary Institute of Science which is scheduled to be built in that area.
The CCDC in a secretive move has asked to City Planning Commission to allow the New configured Farmers Market to be placed in that area even though it is zoned I-1, which would prohibit the Farmers Market to be there and be able to market vegetables, etc. That area is an industrial zone and fits into their plans to make it a high volume trucking center called the "Farmers Market." But this a small problem for the Hirelings; they don't live there.
It appears that the folks "that weren't invited to dinner" on this deal have been the residents and the general public! In their only public meeting that the SSDC went to was a meeting with Southeastern Planning Committee to ask them to give a Performa approval of something they knew nothing about and had not been made part of the process. Therefore, they unanimously voted against it!
In keeping with their role as the systems flack-catchers, the SSDC is going to go forward without approval of those most affected by it. Their community will be destroyed in order to build a baseball stadium in downtown San Diego. Isn't it time you talk to Councilmen George Stevens, Vargas and Kehoe? Isn't it time the community get organized and stop this travesty and let the downtown establishment know that you will not become fodder for their bulldozers?
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