The City Council yesterday approved suing California State University for its trustees’ approval of a growth plan for San Diego State University that didn’t properly measure the impacts the increased population and development would have on the surrounding neighborhoods.
Christine Fitzgerald, chief of land use litigation for the city of San Diego, said the council voted to authorize the lawsuit in closed session on Tuesday. Fitzgerald said that the substance of the complaint, which will be lodged on behalf of the city and the Redevelopment Agency, remains confidential until it is filed in court. But she said the basis of the lawsuit closely mirrors the comments city officials sent to the university during its review of SDSU’s general plan this year.
The city’s criticisms in those letters include allegations that the plan’s environmental report doesn’t address the impacts of the school’s growth on the local population, housing and traffic. The report doesn’t seriously provide alternative suggestions for relocating some of the growth and providing mass transit to the area, the city claimed.