San Diego voters will decide Tuesday what the future of development in Barrio Logan will look like.
The city last fall passed a growth plan for the area that would separate homes from the industrial shipyard on the community’s waterfront by restricting what types of businesses could open in a strip just north of Harbor Drive.
But when the city approved the plan, it had to do so in two steps. One was simply approving a new community plan that outlined a vision for future growth. The other step was passing ordinances that would implement the vision by changing how properties are zoned in the area, and making changes to citywide zoning regulations.
Since those approving the plan required two actions, overturning it at the ballot box requires two propositions.
That raises the unlikely but possible dilemma: What happens if voters approve one of the measures, but not the other?
According to the city attorney’s office, the answer is not too hard to decipher.
The two measures aren’t contingent on each other, a spokesman for the city attorney’s office said.
“Although the measures are related, they can be given legal effect independently and are not strictly contingent upon one another,” Mike Giorgino wrote in an email. “It is not true that both measures need to pass in order to adopt the plan. If only the plan measure passes, the plan could be adopted, but its associated code amendments and rezoning actions could not be implemented.”
That means that if only Prop. B, which addresses the new community plan, passes, things like the increased fees for developers who build homes in the area, guidelines for urban design in the area and a new priority list of public projects like parks and libraries, will stay in place.
If only Prop. C, which includes the changes to the city and community’s zoning restrictions, passes, the buffer area between the shipyard and residential area will go into effect, as will changes to the amount of housing that can be built in the part of the neighborhood closest to downtown.
The California Coastal Commission still needs to approve the plan as well. In the fall, after the Council approved the plan, a Coastal Commission staffer said that approval could come as early as this month, but the state body held off until the referendum vote.