After two years of back-and-forth with state regulators, San Diego’s Barrio Logan can finally move forward with its new community plan.
The small portside neighborhood, a vibrant hub of Chicano culture, has long faced some of the worst traffic and industrial pollution in California. The new plan is largely the result of a decades-long fight by residents and environmental advocates for cleaner air and other protections.
For two years, that updated plan has been in limbo, bouncing between city officials and a state agency called the California Coastal Commission. That agency has jurisdiction over Barrio Logan because part of the neighborhood is inside the zone it oversees along the coast.
But earlier this month, regulators and the city finally settled on a complete draft. That means Barrio Logan’s new community plan is now set to shape the coming decades of development in the neighborhood.
“We've worked very hard to get it to this point,” said Julie Corrales, a policy advocate for the Environmental Health Coalition and chair of the Barrio Logan Community Planning Group, at a San Diego City Council forum last month. “We need this urgently.”
The new plan is the first update to Barrio Logan’s blueprint for growth and development in over 40 years.
One of the most significant changes will set aside a swath of land to separate the areas where people live from heavy industry along the waterfront.
Zoning has been at the heart of Barrio Logan’s battles over pollution and public health. As San Diego’s wartime shipyard grew in the mid-1900s, the city decided to rezone the working-class Latino neighborhood and allow heavy industrial businesses to set up shop. Junkyards and welders moved in near houses and apartments.
In the following decades, state transit authorities built Interstate 5 directly across Barrio Logan, tearing it in half. The construction of the Coronado Bridge also cut across the neighborhood, displacing families and, in part, spurring the protest movement that led to the birth of Chicano Park.
Today, residents deal with diesel exhaust, foul odors and some of the highest rates of asthma in the state.
The new community plan, combined with a package of changes to the city’s zoning, will once again separate future industrial businesses from areas where people live. Residents and environmental justice advocates, who have long pushed for these changes, celebrated the city’s approval of the new plan.
“This update is long overdue and will help put an end to the environmental racism residents have faced for generations,” said Diane Takvorian, executive director of the Environmental Health Coalition, in a statement in 2021.
Aside from the buffer zone, the new plan includes a wide range of other measures, including stronger protections for renters, requirements for new affordable housing, and goals for more green space and improved public transportation.
It also adds the specific goal of ensuring that many longtime residents are able to remain in Barrio Logan instead of being forced to move out as the neighborhood develops.
The recent delays to the new plan had stemmed from the fact that the California Coastal Commission, a state agency tasked with overseeing land and water use along the coastline, also oversees part of Barrio Logan.
The City Council voted unanimously to approve the plan back in December 2021 and sent it to the commission for certification.
This past June, the commission sent the plan back to the city with a number of suggested changes.
In mid-November, the City Council held a forum to discuss the commission’s response. Councilmember Vivian Moreno and others said they were disappointed in some of the requested changes, but the City Council voted to move forward with the modified plan and send it back to the commission.
Finally, on Dec. 14, the commission gave the plan the green light.
It’s not the first time that Barrio Logan’s community plan has faced delays. The neighborhood has faced many hurdles to making changes to the plan over the years.
But after a decades-long fight, the new plan is now in effect.
Currently, the new plan only applies to future development and will not affect the industrial businesses and homes that are already there.
In January though, the city is expected to vote on another package of housing laws. If passed, they would set a 15 year-deadline for even existing businesses to obey the new version of the plan and move out if necessary.
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