Bayfront Barrio Park OKd; Foes Still Charge Racism

Proponents of a bayfront park in Barrio Logan passed a major hurdle this week in their 16-year campaign when the San Diego Unified Port District gave the green light to construction of a 3.2-acre park.

But the drawn-out battle over land use in the neighborhood is not over yet. Critics say they will press their fight against the Port District’s plan to leave an adjacent tract available for development as a marine industrial site.

The debate dates to 1970, when about 500 Barrio Logan residents and community activists occupied a weedy, rock-strewn lot beneath the eastern end of the Coronado Bridge for nine days. The demonstrators at times put themselves in the path of bulldozers that were to break ground at the site for a California Highway Patrol substation.

After the occupation, the city and state gave in to the demonstrators’ wishes, and Chicano Park was born in the shadows of Interstate 5. Area residents called the park la tierra mia --my land.

But the struggle to acquire recreational space for the barrio didn’t end there.

“We said since the beginning that we wanted to go all the way to the bay,” said Ronnie Trujillo, chairman of the Chicano Park Steering Committee, a group that spearheaded the park effort and has continued to campaign for a bayfront extension.

On Tuesday, 16 years later, the Port District adopted a master plan to build a 3.2-acre park on bayfront land at the foot of Crosby Street. The port commissioners reserved 2.2 acres of adjacent land for future marine industrial purposes.

The park plan now goes before the state Coastal Commission. Though that panel has twice rejected Port District proposals for the land, Coastal Commissioner David Malcolm predicted that the split parkland-industrial site plan will be approved when the commission meets late in February.

Malcolm said he has doubts about the wisdom of wedging a park into an industrial district. “I wouldn’t let my kids go there,” he said.

But he conceded that there are few, if any, alternative sites in the area. The Port District land, he said, is the “best that they’re going to get.”

Trujillo acknowledged the shortcomings of the site.

“We’ve been saying that for years,” he said. “(But) that is the only spot left in the coastal area where a park can be built. If we don’t get the park there, we’re never going to get it. The rest of the land is all developed. There is no other land. It’s the only spot possible, and that’s what makes it so valuable to the port and the community.”

Not all barrio community groups were happy with the Port District’s approval of the park.

Leaders of the Harborview Community Council pledged to continue their opposition to the plan. The group contends that designating the 2.2 acres as a marine-industrial site will ultimately lead to a ship repair facility being built there, posing a toxic threat to park-goers.

Harborview Chairman Al Ducheny called the plan’s approval “pure and simple racism.” He said the Port District gives more consideration to the affluent areas within its jurisdiction and undermines the needs of people in poorer areas.

“They’re going to use our community as a dumping ground,” Ducheny said. His wife, Denise, said the council will sue the Port District to block the plan.

Port Commissioner Louis Wolfsheimer called the allegations “absolutely demagoguery.” Alluding to the Harborview Community Council, he said some Port District critics are “more interested in keeping the pot boiling than in keeping the park.”

In reality, Wolfsheimer said, it is unlikely that a shipyard would ever be built on the site. “It’s just too small,” he said. “I don’t think you can get those big ships down there.”

But Al Ducheny said opponents of the port’s plan wanted a stronger assurance that the land next to the planned park will not be turned into a shipyard.

“What we want is a guarantee that they won’t build it,” Ducheny said.

Meanwhile, Trujillo is hoping that the plan doesn’t get derailed and “prolong the agony” of the barrio’s park proponents.

“We’ve been waiting 16 or so years,” he said.