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VOSD Podcast host Scott Lewis has called it: The Sports Arena and its surrounding land is officially a San Diego Special. (That is an intractable, San Diego-specific problem brought on by maladministration and/or crummy leadership.)
This week, Lewis, along with co-hosts Andrew Keatts and Andrea Lopez-Villfaña discussed the state of the current bidding process to remake the area and prioritize a new arena — while the housing crisis looms over us all.
The 411 on 101 Ash
In August 2020, the San Diego’s former real estate chief Cybele Thompson resigned her post right as the city’s problems with the 101 Ash St. highrise got real bad.
Thompson, who’s largely been silent since leaving City Hall, testified under oath earlier this month. And our reporter Lisa Halverstadt mined through it.
Thompson said she was proud of her work on the 101 Ash lease. But she’s convinced the city “cut corners” on renovations. On the pod, Lewis, Keatts and Lopez-Villafaña discussed these revelations and the political genius of it all.
Shell Game
Affordable Senior Housing Foundation, a nonprofit, owns Oak Hill Residential Care. And it used to own an unremarkable single-family house, which it sold to a friend of one of the charity’s leaders.
That was the start of a curious pattern.
Voice reporter Will Huntsberry followed that pattern to conclude a big story about how the charity’s leader’s friends got rich off that house. Huntsberry joined the show to explain how it all went down.
A redo of the Midway District without a new state-of-the-art sports arena would be like a bird without wings. Dan Smiechowski for D2 SDCC —NBA and NHL advocate for San Diego 858 405 5118
https://youtu.be/wR3EZwqJtqY