“Murray Galinson, an influential force in San Diego’s business, political and philanthropic worlds for decades, died Thursday. He was 75,” reported U-T San Diego. The family said that he had died unexpectedly.
Galinson was adored by many San Diegans involved in the community, even though he often worked on tough political issues. “You may not have known him, but you should know we have lost one of our finest — ever,” said George Mitrovich, president of The City Club of San Diego.
“His philanthropic and civic pursuits are almost too many to count,” wrote the U-T. “He has served in leadership roles with groups such as the Galinson Family Foundation, Price Legacy Corp., Price Charities, the Leichtag Foundation, the Weingart Foundation and San Diego Grantmakers, among others.”
“A wonderful man who committed his talents and resources to making life better for the citizens of the city he loved. We also loved him and will greatly miss him,” said Mayor Bob Filner.
Ocean Views — at What Price?
Forty years ago, San Diegans passed an initiative limiting the height of buildings constructed in coastal areas. Passed with the goal of protecting the city’s sweeping ocean views, some say the law is having unintended consequences as San Diego grows. But it would be a hard law to change, reports our Andrew Keatts.
“Because the coastal height limit was passed by citizen initiative, the City Council or relevant planning groups in the coastal zone can’t easily tweak the law,”Keatts notes. “Allowing taller buildings would facilitate units and therefore push down housing costs.”
But not everyone is in a rush to change the rules. Joe LaCava, chairman of the city of San Diego Community Planners Committee, thinks the current law is working as intended. “The height limit hasn’t harmed anything near as much as people would like to believe, and the advantages it created were worthwhile,” he said.
Binationals Compared
San Diego. Detroit. El Paso. These American cities, separated by hundreds of miles, all share something in common: They are massive border towns, and each has a symbiotic relationship with another large city across the border. They are some of the world’s biggest “binational regions,” reports our Lisa Halverstadt.
“Urban planners say a binational region consists of cities in two different countries whose government and business operations are somehow integrated,” she writes. The San Diego/Tijuana region is among the largest in the world. But there’s still a lot of room for improvement.
“The leaders have completely different sets of priorities,” said Oscar Romo, a UCSD lecturer. “While the integration could be great, while the economic power of the two cities could jointly do a lot, it’s not happening.”
Voice Is On The Air
In the latest edition of VOSD Radio, Scott Lewis and Will Carless give insights into all the most recent happenings in San Diego, including the state’s veto of redevelopment projects in San Diego, a look at powerful hotelier Bill Evans, and a check-up on how UT-TV has done since its launch.
District 4 Fallout
Our Liam Dillon reported on Wednesday about the situation developing in San Diego’s 4th council district. Residents of Redwood Village and Rolando Park, both neighborhoods recently shifted into the 4th, won’t be able to vote for their new city council member due to legal technicalities.
KPBS interviewed Councilman Todd Gloria, as well as one of the residents who was planning on running for the council seat vacated by Tony Young. “I intended to run in 2014 when Tony Young stepped down,” said Anna Orzel-Arnita, president of the Redwood Village Community Council. “Of course his resignation changed the timeline.”
Take Your Stadium and Renovate It
Former port commissioner and “ultimate San Diego insider” Steve Cushman says he’d “love” to partner with Doug Manchester on developing a new stadium for the Chargers. Where would this stadium go? Right where it already sits: at Qualcomm.
We wrote about this topic back in October when we heard Doug Manchester claim that he could successfully renovate Qualcomm Stadium “if you give [him] $200 million.” That statement was a sharp departure from his front-page plan to develop a new stadium at the current site of the 10th Avenue Marine Terminal near downtown. In 2011, even talking about renovating Qualcomm was referred to by then-mayor Jerry Sanders as “spinning our wheels.”
“If we don’t come up with a solution, I am very concerned they (the Chargers) are going to leave San Diego, so I think Qualcomm should be on the table,” Cushman told KPBS Wednesday.
Quick News Hits
• The state of New York has filed a lawsuit against Qualcomm seeking to discover whether the company has contributed to tax-exempt groups and trade associations that are not required to disclose their donors. The state argues that it has the right to inspect Qualcomm’s books since New York is a major shareholder in Qualcomm, reports The New York Times.
• NBC San Diego reports on how researchers from Scripps Institute of Oceanography are using high-tech lasers on loan from the Army to track where sand goes as waves wash it off the beach.
• LA Weekly took a hard look at why efforts to reform Los Angeles’ pension system failed during the same period that San Diego and San Jose both successfully pushed ballot measures through the voting process.
• San Diego 6 reports that a program is set to launch this year that will provide eligible homeless people in California with free cell phones and free service.
Superman Sighting
Was the Man of Steel spotted buzzing the beaches of Carlsbad? A video that has garnered hundreds of thousands of views on the internet shows what appears to be the caped super hero flying over the crashing waves of a beach.
It turns out that it was just a life-size radio-controlled model of Superman. The video shows the model’s owner, Otto Dieffenbach III, launching the model and sending it soaring off into the distance, just like the Man of Tomorrow does in the movies. “He said Thursday he’s made several versions of Superman and has been flying them for a year and a half — usually at soccer fields in Rancho Santa Fe — without causing much of a ripple,” wrote UT San Diego.
Seth Hall is a local writer and technologist. You can reach him at voice@s3th.com or follow him on Twitter: @loteck.