San Diego Twilight Zone

The San Diego City Council this week will consider a proposal to impose special zoning on hundreds of institutions ranging from churches to golf courses. Known as an “institutional overlay zone,” the plan seeks to protect city neighborhoods from losing treasured community assets to development.

The motivation is hard to quarrel with--but the implementation of it is not. The ordinance is critically flawed by parochialism and by a tunnel vision that could turn out to be damaging to the very institutions it intends to protect.

The idea for the institutional zone grew from the anger of Pacific Beach and Point Loma residents over the city school board’s decision to lease two closed school sites for development and of La Jollans panicked by talk of the La Jolla Museum of Contemporary Art moving from its prime oceanfront location.

Eventually, lawsuits halted the development of the school sites, and the La Jolla controversy led to the creation of a cultural zone that effectively locks the museum, the Bishop’s School, two churches, a recreation center and the La Jolla Woman’s Club into their current or similar uses. The institutional overlay zone would take the idea behind the cultural zone, expand its definition and impose it citywide.

If adopted, it would work like this: Every neighborhood’s community plan would contain a list of institutions that the local planning group views as significant. Included would be schools, churches, government offices, museums, cultural and community centers, hospitals and golf courses.

Before a listed institution could be sold or converted to a different use, a hearing before the Planning Commission could be sought. If the commission determined that the institution was needed for the public good, then a delay in the sale could be ordered for 180 days to give the community a chance to find an alternative buyer. If a potential buyer materialized, the City Council could impose another 180-day delay before finally releasing the property for redevelopment.

For institutions such as churches and museums, the zoning would immediately reduce the value of their property. In the case of the public schools, it would make it much more difficult to use unneeded assets in one part of town to raise money to pay for new schools desperately needed in another part of town.

The proponents of the institutional zone fail to see that the targeted institutions must live and compete in the real world, not in some Utopian community. They are subject to social forces that can reduce, expand or simply change the need for their services. It is unfair to subject them to different zoning than other property owners, in effect, penalizing them for the contributions they have made.

Furthermore, there is no trend of institutions bailing out of their communities to justify this sweeping, clumsy legislation. The school district, which unquestionably handled the Point Loma and Pacific Beach leases badly, has agreed to have its property rezoned on a site-by-site basis. That is a much more practical solution to bringing the zoning of school property into conformity with the surrounding neighborhoods.

No one could reasonably dispute the contribution these institutions make to their neighborhoods. But holding them hostage--as already has been done to those in the La Jolla cultural zone--is not the way to show them they’re wanted. Each one exists to meet a need. The way to keep them where they are is to use them, support them financially and make them want to be part of the community.