6 San Diego Reader February 23, 2017


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NEIGHBORHOOD NEWS By Reader stringers IMPERIAL BEACH


Hostel situation a no-go Bayshore Village gets brewery instead The California Coastal Commission voted last week to let Imperial Beach scrap its plans for a hostel at Bikeway Village. Not being able to run a hostel in I.B.


On the Bayshore Bikeway with nowhere nearby to stay


wasn’t for lack of trying, coastal commis- sioners agreed. “After years of recruiting and several meetings with potential operators, it is clear that this specific location is not conducive to the operation of a successful hostel,” Imperial Beach mayor Serge Dedina wrote in a letter to the coastal commission. Instead of the hostel, the owner has found


a local beer brewer who wants to use the space for a restaurant, brewery, and distillery, the letter says. Bikeway Village is at the south end of San


Diego Bay — front-row seats for great bird- watching, views of the South Bay Salt Works and the wildlife in the bay. The 24-mile Bay- shore Bikeway runs right up to and past it. The developer broke ground on the proj-


ect in January 2016 with the goal of using one of the two old warehouses for a 50-bed hostel with a large community room. The second repurposed warehouse will be home to a bike shop and a cold-brew coffee shop, tentatively expected to open in April. The project also includes bike parking, a fire ring, and plenty of parking for cars. Bikeway Village tried to bring in a com-


pany to operate the hostel, according to Joseph Sheehan of Studio E Architects, which designed the repurposed warehouses. The city and the developer courted a number of groups but couldn’t persuade them to take on the day-to-day operation of a hostel. “The typical hostel visitor is someone


traveling on the cheap and using public transportation,” Sheehan said. “It didn’t fit the intended group.”


By the time the reporter contacted


the Starbucks, the person who answered had no knowledge of the sign.


was not okay for them to post it.” Tyler, a manager at Pizza Port, was totally surprised. “I was not aware that they did that,” he


said. “Especially in this area, you know, we’re not okay with this. But with that said, I haven’t noticed an influx of people coming in to use our restroom; but then again, we get really busy, but I will go talk to them today and see what’s up.” When I called Starbucks, Kelly, the


employee who answered the phone, said they don’t have any such sign. “It says, ‘For customers only.’” I explained that the sign with other bathroom suggestions had since been taken down and she said she didn’t know anything about it. The manager was unavailable for comment, as was anyone from Starbucks’ corporate office.


DELINDA LOMBARDO


The coastal commission verified the city’s


efforts with a letter from Hostelling Interna- tional and a summary of conversations with ten other regional hostel operators. “The hostel operators interviewed did not


believe that the subject site would provide a suitable location for a hostel because it is too far removed from public transit, airports, shopping and other attractions,” coastal com- mission staff wrote. Meanwhile, tenants in the first Bikeway


Village building are polishing up their shops at the soon-to-open stop next to the Bayshore Bikeway, Sheehan said. “Everyone did their best: they worked with the coastal commis- sion and tried to bring in a partner to operate the hostel. It just didn’t pencil out for the hostel companies.”


MARTY GRAHAM


OCEAN BEACH Coffee’s king rankles Sign sends people to other businesses for bathrooms The Starbucks on Newport Avenue in Ocean Beach recently posted a sign that directed non-customers to use restrooms at nearby businesses. When the sign was posted on the restroom


door earlier this week, someone asked them to remove it; after they refused, someone took it down for them. “I didn’t even know about it,” Sal, the


owner of OB Kabob, told me. “A customer told me about it and I said, ‘No, it’s not okay.’ I think he went and took it down, but that


LA JOLLA Airport authority challenged “You are retrofitting homes so people can stay inside.” A woman from Loma Portal turned to the 40 or so La Jolla residents who came to a Febru- ary 16 meeting on Harbor Drive to complain about low-flying and late air traffic from Lindbergh Field. “Welcome to our world,” she said. “Sorry that you’ve joined us.” Late last year, the Federal Aviation Administration changed flight paths out of San Diego to reduce fuel and make the airport more efficient. About 275 flights arrive at Lindbergh Field every day, according to FAA statistics. The FAA decided that the impact of the changes is “of no significant impact.” La Jolla residents don’t see it that way.


Their concerns are with noise that is being attributed to so-called early turns, when air- craft flying out of San Diego International Airport turn off the course set by the FAA to try to contain the noise of jet engines pushing hard to gain altitude. But they say they count far more loud aircraft every day than match the relatively low number of early turns. “The noise we hear is not isolated inci-


dents,” said Maria Jenness, who lives in La Jolla. “It’s one after another after another.” More planes violated curfew by taking


off or landing after 11:30 p.m. and before 6:30 a.m. in 2016 than ever before: 86. If the numbers from January 2017 — when 8 missed curfew — are an indicator, 2017 may break that record. Fines for curfew violations also set a new record, with airlines fined $564,000 for those violations. That’s almost four times the previous year’s fines. But the curfew violations seem to be a small part of the problem in La Jolla. “About 100 flights leave the airport every


day and fly over Bird Rock and a hundred go over La Jolla Shores,” La Jolla resident Leonard Gross said. “This may require a rethink of what it means when we talk about airport noise.” La Jollans say that more aircraft are flying


over La Jolla on the way out — they don’t believe it’s just curfew violators and early turns. The airport recorded 1566 complaints from Bird Rock in December and January, though 1086 came from a single household. Part of the problem, they say, is that La Jolla’s topography forms a natural amphitheater where the noise rebounds and echoes, causing “cascading noise.” The San Diego County Regional Airport


Authority can’t tell the airlines and the FAA how to run their business, facilitator Heidi Gantwerk cautioned. She encouraged resi- dents to continue to thoroughly document the flights that are roaring over their homes using an app called Webtrak. Although La Jolla residents may now be


eligible for the airport authority’s Quieter Home program, which provides sound- muffling doors and windows, Beatriz Pardo


was not impressed. “You are retrofitting homes so people


can stay inside,” she said. “But this is a beach community, an outdoors community. Telling us to stay inside where you can make it quiet destroys our quality of life.”


MARTY GRAHAM


TIJUANA Tip of the garbage iceberg Mayor takes hit for uneven trash pick-up, violence spike, gas jump “It’s been since January that the trash hasn’t been picked up,” says Geovanni Zamudio, a 35-year-old high school teacher in Tijuana. “Garbage collectors usually come on Wednes- days where I live in Porticos de la Mesa, on


Some residential garbage hasn’t been picked up since January.


the outskirts of Cerro Colorado.” The word “dirty” doesn’t adequately


describe how filthy Tijuana can get. Garbage collection has been a problem in the city for decades. Downtown, Zona Rió (the business district) and some of the main roads are the only places where garbage gets collected every day. Despite this, it is a common sight to see rats scurrying through streets and alleys. “Garbage collection has been a very old


problem in this city,” Carlos Férnandez, another high school teacher, comments. “It especially hurts the low-income neighbor- hoods. The nicer neighborhoods that can afford it hire a private service [for garbage collection]. They have taken up to three weeks to pick up the garbage by where I live in El Lago, but it normally should be at least once a week.” Both Geovanni and Carlos live near


el Cerro Colorado, neighborhoods with low- to middle-income housing southeast of downtown. “Sometimes they take all of the garbage, then they just dump it on a hill nearby.” “It was 15 days or more, but finally they


picked up the garbage yesterday [February 15th],” says Germán Alcázar, a 28-year-old brewer. “Garbage pick-up is usually on Tues- days, but it is rarely consistent. Sometimes it’s on Wednesdays, or maybe on Thursdays. Sometimes in the mornings or sometimes at night. You never know.” Tijuanenses have said inconsistent gar-


bage pick-up coincided with the new mayor coming into office on November 30th of last year.


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