San Diego Looking to Upgrade Brown Field

By Alison St John / Reporter, KPBS Public Broadcasting

Published January 18, 2007 at 2:15 PM PST

This story was published more than 17 years ago.

The city of San Diego has opened the door to new airport related developments at Brown Field. Brown Field is one of only two international Airports in San Diego -- the other is at Lindbergh. KPBS repo

The city of San Diego has opened the door to new airport related developments at Brown Field . Brown Field is one of only two international Airports in San Diego -- the other is at Lindbergh. KPBS reporter Alison St John has more.

The mayor has put out an invitation to developers with aviation experience to present their ideas on how to upgrade the airport at Brown Field. Five years ago, residents and businesses defeated a plan to turn Brown Field into a cargo airport. The airstrip is in District 8, less than 3 miles from the Otay Mesa Border crossing with Mexico

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Councilman Ben Hueso represents district 8. He says its too soon to get public input.

Hueso: We don’t necessarily know that it’s going to expand the function. Until we have a proposer or a proposal, we really can’t go out to the public and request their support.

Hueso says he’s in favor of finding ways to generate more jobs and revenue from the airstrip. The FAA considers the airstrip a vital link in the nation’s aviation network and wont allow the city to develop it for any other purpose. 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.