Space 4 Art is in a brick and wood warehouse at the corner of 15th and K streets. The nonprofit runs arts and education programs and houses art galleries, classrooms, an outdoor stage and studio spaces for artists to live and work.
It’s the last significant arts center in the East Village, a neighborhood once home to an active arts district thanks to all its old, cheap warehouses. But our Kinsee Morlan reports that Space 4 Art can’t make it work there much longer.
A commercial real estate company has purchased the building the group is in and it looks like development is coming.
Meet the Rivals for Poway School Board
The Poway Unified School District covers a big swath of inland North County including parts of the city of San Diego like Rancho Bernardo and Rancho Peñasquitos. The district is known for high standards, high test scores and — over the last few years — more political drama than a dozen high school productions of “Our Town.”
The district’s trustees have been in the middle of it all, as our Ashly McGlone explains: “The five-person board grappled with investigating, firing and suing ex-superintendent John Collins, claiming he took $345,000 in excess pay. The board also selected and quickly lost Collins’ temporary replacement, lost several other top administrators to retirement and recently began a new school year.”
McGlone reached out to all nine candidates who are running for two open board spots, including incumbent Kimberley Beatty. The other seat is that of longtime trustee Andy Patapow, who’s leaving the board.
Click here for answers from the candidates to these questions: Why are you running for school board? What do you hope to achieve? What are the largest obstacles facing the district? What would you look for in a new superintendent?
Still More About the Mum Mayor
Add another voice to the long list of folks who have had just about enough of Mayor Faulconer’s silence on this fall’s football stadium initiatives. CityBeat provocateur John R. Lamb begins his latest column with this zinger: “Welcome to the 1,114th installment of ‘How Immobilized Is This Mayor?’” (I’ve read every one of the 1,113 installments before now!)
More Mosquito Spraying on Tap
A portion of Normal Heights that’s north of Adams Avenue and west of I-15 will be the latest neighborhood to get sprayed for mosquitos in an effort to keep the Zika virus out of San Diego, City News Service reports. Why there? Because a resident contracted the virus while away, and mosquitos are near his home.
The Mount Hope and South Park neighborhoods have already been visited by sprayers.
Plea: We’re Not an L.A. Burb, People!
The New York Times is out with a new Morning Report-style daily email newsletter called California Today. Yesterday’s edition linked to a Voice of San Diego ballot roundup (wow, this newsletter is very discerning about quality content!) and included this note from an Encinitas reader: “Please do not treat San Diego as a suburb of L.A. We are so much more than a border town. I would love to see California being more than San Francisco and L.A.”
North County Report: Grow or Not to Grow?
VOSD’s weekly North County Report focuses on ballot measures that will affect growth in the region. Here’s one you may not know about: Measure T in Encinitas, which “asks voters to approve an update to the city’s housing element, known as At Home Encinitas, which adds several areas of higher-density housing — an indicator of affordability in the state’s eyes — to the city.” We’ve been following this issue closely.
Also in the North County Report: Angry Del Martians and a fight over a tattoo parlor on Coast Highway in Oceanside (a city that once seemed to have virtually invented them), and more.
• The folks who helped bring about the demise of that Carlsbad shopping center ballot measure are now targeting the countywide initiative that seeks approval of the 1,700-home Lilac Hills Ranch project in Valley Center. (KPBS)
Quick News Hits: As You Were, Dude!
• VOSD contributor H.G. Reza has a cover story in the Reader: “The 9/11 attacks could have been derailed in San Diego, had the CIA not spiked a memo alerting the FBI about an Al Qaeda terrorist who was coming to the United States and ended up living here in 2000.”
• Here’s an unusual way to prevent drug-selling and drug-using in parks: Ban drug sellers and drug users from parks. That’s what the city of Denver is trying to do through a new rule that will forbid people accused of drug offenses in parks from visiting city parks for 90 days, Slate reports.
The ACLU says the rule is a no-go, and it sounds like they may have a case.
• The city’s first wheelchair-friendly hiking trail is now open in the Black Mountain Ranch Open Space Park. (U-T)
• Attorney General Kamala Harris is sitting pretty in the race for U.S. Senate, a new poll finds, while the recreational marijuana initiative has plenty of support. But there’s a catch: This poll doesn’t look at voters or even likely voters but instead surveys a wider group of Californians for reasons that aren’t mentioned. (Capital Public Radio)
• “Uber drivers who have banded together to take the ride-hailing company to court now may have to shift strategies and settle for smaller payouts than they had sought,” the L.A. Times reports. This is thanks to a federal appeals court decision that says “drivers who signed up with Uber in 2013 and 2014 must go to arbitration, not the courts, to resolve disputes with the company.”
• The politics/sports site 538.com predicts the Chargers will stink this year, giving them just a 17 percent chance of making the playoffs.
• “A Mexican subsidiary of San Diego-based Sempra Energy has agreed to buy a 252-megawatt wind farm in the northern state of Nuevo Leon for $375 million, not including its assumption of debt totaling $477 million.” (NBC 7)
• In the N.Y. Times, author David J. Morris writes about “Surfing in Nixonland” — San Clemente and environs. He includes memories about points south: “Growing up in San Diego in the ’80s, I heard stories of Marines confiscating (and even destroying) the boards of surfers sneaking onto the beaches of Camp Pendleton… A famous Ron Stoner photograph from the ’60s shows a Marine M.P. wearing a sidearm, storming off the beach with a single-fin shortboard.”
Now, he writes, the Marines are actually heroes to some ocean lovers because Camp Pendleton has kept development at bay: “As one of my San Diego surfer neighbors said to me not long ago, after he learned I had served in the Marines: ‘Dude, are you kidding? I love jarheads!’”
Surfer fi!
Randy Dotinga is a freelance contributor to Voice of San Diego. He is also immediate past president of the 1,200-member American Society of Journalists and Authors (asja.org). Please contact him directly at randydotinga@gmail.com and follow him on Twitter: twitter.com/rdotinga.