S.D. Council Gives Green Light to Navy Broadway Project

By Alison St John / Reporter, KPBS Public Broadcasting

Published January 10, 2007 at 6:33 AM PST

This story was published more than 17 years ago.

A Navy project that could change the face of San Diego's downtown waterfront will go ahead without a new environmental report. San Diego City Council gave the green light yesterday on a five-to-three

A Navy project that could change the face of San Diego's downtown waterfront will go ahead without a new environmental report. San Diego City Council gave the green light yesterday on a five-to-three vote. The Navy Broadway project is based on a report done 15 years ago. KPBS reporter Alison St John has more.

Critics of the plan to build a new Navy headquarters on the Embarcadero asked the council to consider how much has changed downtown since the project was first proposed. Don Wood of the Broadway Complex Coalition was there in 1990.

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Wood: Sixteen years ago, downtown was in a recession. The parties were focused on jump starting downtowns redevelopment around the project even if it meant giving away the store to the navy.

But the mayor’s head of land use Jim Waring, said the basic agreement with the Navy hasn’t changed.

Waring: Whether this project is good or bad it hasn’t changed at all from what was defined in 1990 and 1992.

The Navy has signed a 99 year lease with developer Doug Manchester to build hotels, shops and office high rises on several blocks of the city’s Embarcardero.

Alison St John KPBS News.

Alison St John

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Alison St John currently serves as a general assignment reporter and occasionally co-hosts KPBS Midday Edition. She fell in love with KPBS Radio when she arrived in San Diego in 1985 and first heard NPR. She has been a voice on KPBS Radio since 1989, and has served as a news reporter for radio, TV and the web, as well as anchoring, hosting, producing and editing. Alison has reported on stories about North County and was based in the KPBS' North County Bureau. Alison covered the metro beat during the critical period of the San Diego City pension crisis, and the education beat while Alan Bersin was the controversial Superintendent of San Diego City School District. She covered health when the industry was converting to managed care and told welfare reform stories in the late 1990s when Clinton was “ending welfare as we know it.” She has covered land use issues extensively, looking at the challenges of meeting a growing population while preserving community character, and developing a better transportation system to meet environmental concerns. She has done many stories on the military in San Diego, and the series she edited on the challenges veterans face returning from active duty to civilian life won “Best of Show” from the San Diego Society of Professional Journalists. She occasionally hosts the KPBS Roundtable and KPBS Midday Edition. Alison has won awards from the San Diego Press Club, the Society of Professional Journalists, the Associated Press TV and Radio Association, and the California Golden Mike Awards. Alison was born in Tanzania, brought up in Scotland, and earned her degree in psychology and sociology from Durham University in England. Her postgraduate diploma is in student counseling. She worked in England, Nigeria, Switzerland, Belgium, India, and Japan before moving to the United States in 1981. She now lives in Oceanside and enjoys how her community is growing and changing.