The future of the former Qualcomm Stadium site is taking up a lot of bandwidth these days, but there could be another big sports arena proposal on the table soon.
Earlier this week, Voice of San Diego’s Scott Lewis got a polling call filled with questions about the coastal height limit and other zoning issues. The big question on the poll, though, was a potential proposal to build a new, privately funded arena in place of the Valley View Casino Center, which most people still refer to as the San Diego Sports Arena.
The lease is up in 2020, and it’s on public land, so San Diego voters could be looking at a vote in coming years to change height requirements and do other things that would clear the way for a new development project there.
On this week’s podcast, Lewis, Andrew Keatts and Sara Libby speculate about who’s behind the potential project and the various ways in which it could move forward.
Also on the podcast, Keatts sits down with Colin Parent, a member of the La Mesa City Council and interim director of Circulate San Diego, to talk about the future of autonomous vehicles and what it means for city planning, public transportation and infrastructure.
“If we keep things status quo and you add autonomous vehicles, yeah, you’re going to see more vehicle miles travel,” he said. “That’s all the more reason to be thinking critically about whether or not we should be spending as much money on, say, roads, or instead dedicating more funds to non-car infrastructure for public transit.”
Hero of the Week
Our hero this week goes to the hospitals in the region that are providing nurses to give out hepatitis A vaccinations amid the deadly outbreak.
Goat of the Week
The San Diego Water Authority gets goated this week. The water agency lost a major legal battle against the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, which it says charges too much to deliver water to San Diego. The state Supreme Court declined to take up the case, leaving a lower court ruling siding with Metropolitan in place.