Wednesday, Jan. 3, 2007 | In response to Rachel Laing:
When NTC was approved, the chamber was undergoing a precipitous drop in membership. At the same time, the lawyer for Corky McMillin and his closest clients took over leadership of the chamber. There is likely a correlation.
The chamber, which should be a voice for the broader interests of the business community, has shown itself instead to have become a tool of those who wish to plunder public land and push through redevelopment schemes.
During early public hearings, the public demanded NTC become a park. Then Mayor Golding changed the plan to maximize developer profit using phony data.
If the chamber had vision, NTC could have been retained as a cutting edge sustainable development research and event center focused on community groups and non-profits from not only our community but around the nation and world. Instead of the heavily government subsidized current plan, this concept would have paid its own way while incubating new ideas that would have enabled San Diego to emerge as the development center for the most vital ideas of our time.
The chamber would not know other ideas existed for they never considered any great possibility. Chamber leadership simply saw NTC, like Navy Broadway, as a slab of raw meat which they could personally profit. As such, the broader business community continues to suffer.