Affordable homes in Midway District

Good Morning, I’m Debbie Cruz….it’s Tuesday, December nineteenth.

The legal path is now clear for thousands of affordable homes to be built in the Midway District.More on that next. But first... let’s do the headlines….######

Democratic Senator Dick Durbin reported to the White House that steep levels of migration at the Mexico border had become, quote, unsustainable.

Durbin said the White House signaled they felt the same way and stressed finding middle ground with Republicans around border policy.

San Diego is seeing this arrival boom first-hand.

According to county officials, U.S. border authorities dropped off more than forty-two thousand people on San Diego County streets from September through November.

Immigrant-rights advocates are concerned that President Biden will adopt more restrictive asylum policies, in order to negotiate more aid for Ukraine.

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California released annual performance ratings for school districts.

San Diego County showed little change in test scores and high school graduation.

But it did budge the needle on attendance.

About 23 percent of county public school students were chronically absent last school year.

That’s down from the previous year.

But it’s still more than double what it was before the COVID pandemic.

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Cool weather and rain are expected this week.

Highs are expected to be in the mid to upper sixties.

Rain is likely to hit between today and Wednesday night and continue through the week.

The National Weather Service said the coast and inland valleys could receive one to three inches of rain.

And they warned the sudden change in weather, could cause widespread flash flooding in both urban and rural areas.

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From KPBS, you’re listening to San Diego News Now.Stay with me for more of the local news you need.

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A judge's ruling has cleared the way for redevelopment in San Diego’s Midway-area.

Reporter Matt Hoffman says this means a major project near the sports arena is closer to reality.

Last year city voters approved Measure C, which repealed the midway district’s 30-foot coastal height limit.. But legal challenges made its future uncertain.. Now San Diego Mayor Todd Gloria and his team are celebrating after a Superior Court judge rejected the final challenge.. “The removal of the 30 ft height limit is a big success.” Christina Bibler is the city of San Diego’s director of economic development.. She says the ruling clears the way for the Midway-Rising redevelopment to move forward.. A proposed project that includes  a new arena and some 2-thousand affordable homes. “From a private development standpoint that’s on city owned land, we have not had a project of this magnitude in decades, but to that point this is the largest affordable housing project in the state.” The group ‘Save Our Access” filed the legal challenge claiming city officials did not comply with the California Environmental Quality Act.“Save Our Access” has not said whether it will appeal the ruling. Matt Hoffman, KPBS News.

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After 36 years serving San Diegans with HIV and AIDS, Auntie Helen's will close at the end of the month. Reporter Katie Hyson looked into why, and found good news.

“I used to go in there to shop and then I got addicted to it. So then I started volunteering down there.” Carole Parker has been with Auntie Helen’s in North Park almost since 1988, when it started as a laundry service for people with HIV/AIDS. It soon added a thrift store. “I took care of three or four different guys that passed away. Young people. It was very sad. Very sad.” Those were the early years of the HIV/AIDS crisis. There was so much misunderstanding and stigma. People were afraid to even touch patients’ clothes. Rod Legg is the current director. He says that’s why he admires founder Gary Cheatham so much. “At a time when everybody ran away from the fire, in a sense, he ran towards it.” But after almost four decades, Legg says Auntie Helen’s isn’t needed in the same way. Powerful new HIV/AIDS medications mean patients can live much more normal lives. They can do their own laundry. “Now the meds are so much better. So much better. They don't need us to do that for them. They are physically able to do it themselves.” He plans to close the store on December thirty-first. And start a new nonprofit that would continue certain services, like grocery deliveries. And a scholarship fund in Cheatham’s name. Katie Hyson, KPBS News

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Oceanside’s beaches are iconic … but year after year the sandy shores continue to shrink … and solutions are needed.

Reporter Jacob Aere says Oceanside’s city council will soon consider a final design for a sand retention project that aims to restore the city’s beaches.

RE:BEACH is the City of Oceanside’s Coastal Resilience Competition. It brought together three international design teams to develop sand retention pilot projects. A jury deliberated … and chose a winning concept to be announced in the coming month. Oceanside’s Coastal Zone Administrator Jayme Timberlake says it's a decades-long problem that needs urgent action. Many of Oceanside’s beaches are being swept out to sea. “It’s a 30 year design life. We are asking the teams to design a solution that will accommodate two to three feet of sea level rise.”The Oceanside City Council is expected to consider the jury recommendation at the end of January. The California Coastal Commission would have to approve any decision passed by the City Council. Jacob Aere, KPBS News.

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Coming up.... A massive mosaic allows San Diegans to explore the ocean without getting wet.

We’ll have that story just after the break.

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It’s that time when we revisit some of our favorite stories of the year.

In this story, producer Brenden Tuccinardi takes us to a giant mosaic. It brings the underwater world to life in concrete and tile.

It’s just steps away from a swing set, slide and jungle gym. In the background, you hear laughter of children and the sound of crashing waves. It’s another playground of sorts made out of concrete and tile. “The Map,” as it’s affectionately called, is a 2,500-square foot mosaic. It sits At the Walter Munk Educational Plaza at La Jolla Shores. This massive piece of public art depicts the Grand Canyons of La Jolla as well as over 100 species indigenous to California’s coast. All  in hundreds of thousands of pieces of hand-cut tile. Making a mosaic of this size is not easy, and it’s only possible thanks to the technique called LithoMosaic. It was invented by artists Robin Brailsford and Wick Alexander along with concrete specialists. “Well, I tend to be a person who thinks big. And this is a technique that really only works for big. So that kind of that, you know, fit right in for me.” The patented process is a remix of the classic mosaic technique of securing tile to a surface with mortar and grout. Instead, LithoMosaic uses monolithic concrete pours. “So LithoMosaic did two things: It allows us to work super large, one just went in this week in Tempe, Arizona that’s 750 square feet. And it also has figured out a way through the chemical balance of the concrete and with the techniques that we put into it to allow it to go in in a freestyle environments. So we have it in Alaska and Nevada, New Mexico places where you wouldn't normally be able to have mosaics. Brailsford also works with the artists Kelsy Hartley and Mariah Armstrong Conners. She says a new mosaic begins with research. When I have a project or when I have identified a site that I want to do for my own without a public art commission, I think of a… I study it really hard. I am there. I watch the sunrise, the moon set whatever. I talk to the people. I research a lot in the libraries. I read a lot of books. All my project proposals have extensive bibliographies for the research I've done. Brailsford and Alexander's home studio is nestled in the hills of East San Diego County. There, The shelves of books are evidence of that scholarly approach to public art. “We're at a funny point now where the house doesn't have very many walls and all the walls it can have either paintings or bookshelves. So, you know how many more books do we buy is the current problem?” Once the research is done, the next step is design conception. “I do all my LithoMosaic layouts. I paint them on clear plastic. Because I'm basically a glass artist and so most comfortable working in glass. That's why you know things that you're seeing that are older are glass. So anyway, I paint on both sides of a piece of clear plastic like this. And I can really get the effect that I want. And what the LithoMosaics are gonna be like.” Then the labor intensive work of hand-cutting and placing each piece of tile begins. In the LithoMosaic process, tiles are secured upside down to mesh with water based glue. After the layout is complete it’s time to install the mosaic. This is done by concrete professionals. “So they take it and they lay it upside down and the monolithic concrete pour. Pull off the plastic. And then they trowel it, trowel it, trowel it, and then when the concrete has begun to settle a little bit enough to hold the tiles in place, then they peel the mesh back and the tiles are actually there in place and no mesh and no grouting and no buckets and no back braking work on our part.” Back at the map we’re able to get a better idea of how the skilled craftsman install the mosaic. “Imagine putting this much tile in your kitchen. So what they were doing was on one end, they were troweling this one in and over here, they had the pumper truck and they were up to their ankles, you know, pumping in the concrete and leveling it and then bringing over the next one at the same time. And it's the ballet of the highest order of how they put it together.” All of this wouldn’t be possible without the Walter Munk Foundation for the Oceans. It worked with the city and community stakeholders to bring the mosaic to life. Munk is widely considered to be the father of modern oceanography. He was one of the first scientists to bring statistical methods to the analysis of oceanographic data. He died in 2019 before The Map was finished. But the mosaic continues his legacy of teaching the next generation about the oceans and the animals that call it home. And the beauty of public art is that it’s for everyone. “Well I was just talking about one of my collaborators, Kelsey Hartley on the phone, and she was pointing out that in this time right now, mortgages are expensive, COVID has left people without jobs. There's a lot of uncertainty in the world. And what's great about public art and something like this is you can really sort of interact and own it, you know, on your own. I love the fact that my things don't belong to anybody and they belong to everybody and you can be here at midnight, you can be here at 3 o’clock in the morning, you can be homeless, you can have the biggest house in La Jolla and you all get to experience it at the same in the same way.” From a 31-foot gray whale to a life-size human diver, The Map offers visitors a chance to explore the ocean without having to get wet. “You know, there you go. That's it . What more could I ask for.” Brenden Tuccinardi, KPBS News

To see more public art stories and to tell us what art pieces we should cover, go to KPBS dot org slash public art.

That’s it for the podcast today. As always you can find more San Diego news online at KPBS dot org. Join us again tomorrow for the day’s top stories. I’m Debbie Cruz. Thanks for listening and have a great Tuesday.