Posted on 03/17/2006 2:13:31 PM PST by Diligent
Authors start off about how the city has given much to the Navy (MY COMMENT: the city and the Navy do get along well, but...) and it's time for the Navy to give back...note where they complain the Navy didn't pay fair market value for the property in the beginning, how the land at Miramar and North Island is valuable commercially and residentially, and that it could help solve the cities pension crisis.
BEGIN ARTICLE
As the San Diego County Regional Airport Authority works to place a proposition on the November ballot regarding a new airport site in San Diego, the opening salvos of a major skirmish between the city and the Navy have been launched.
Lindbergh Field operates near its capacity limit, and the search for an alternative is now under way in earnest. A vast majority of San Diegans support a new aviation facility that would provide terminal and runway space suitable for more daily flights and for wide-body jetliners providing nonstop intercontinental service.
As the airport authority has floated the prospect of using naval facilities for a new airport, there has been an outcry from the Secretary of the Navy, currently serving and retired naval officers and some members of Congress asserting that the Navy cannot possibly share its installations.
The Navy controls some of the best sites for a new aviation facility – the Marine Corps Air Station Miramar and the Naval Air Station North Island most prominent among them. In response to suggestions that the city and the Navy jointly operate a new airport – presumably sited at either North Island or Miramar – the service and its supporters have turned a deaf ear. In this super-heated political environment it is useful to review the unique historical partnership between San Diego and the Navy.
Navy warships have made San Diego a regular port of call since the mid-1800s, and in 1900 the Navy took its first steps to establish a permanent base in the city, a fuel depot on Point Loma. Then, in 1915-1916, San Diego Congressman William Kettner led efforts to create a permanent base for the Marines in San Diego – the city's first major military installation.
The terms of the real estate transactions making this possible cemented the way San Diego and the Navy dealt with each other for years to come. First, the private sellers of the 238-acre “Dutch Flats” agreed to forgo all profit on the sale. Second, the city offered to deed the adjoining 500 acres of municipal tidelands free of charge to the Navy Department.
In 1917, the city of San Diego allowed the Navy to use Balboa Park as a training station for $1 per year. Shortly thereafter, the city donated the land on and around Inspiration Point as the permanent site of Naval Hospital San Diego.
The decision regarding the hospital propelled other efforts on behalf of the fleet. Between 1919 and 1920, the city donated the sites that became the Naval Training Station at Loma Portal, the naval shipyard at 32nd Street, and the supply depot and pier at the foot of Broadway. Special elections authorizing these gifts yielded near-unanimous ballots in support of the land transfers.
The relationship between the city and the Navy soon evolved into one of mutual support, respect and appreciation. In 1937, retired Admiral Joseph M. Reeves thus characterized the partnership: “I know of no city [other than San Diego] where the people are more intelligently appreciative of the service of the Navy to our country. I know of no city where the Navy in its work has received greater moral and material assistance.”
San Diegans offered enthusiastic support for naval expansion in their midst while the Navy built much of the city's essential infrastructure. For example, in 1927, the Navy committed itself to complete major elements of the Nolen Plan, an ambitious agenda of civic improvements that included the waterfront and Harbor Drive. Dredging out San Diego Bay and filling in the shoreline – with the explicit purpose of creating a harbor for shared naval and commercial use – was another huge cooperative venture begun in 1913 and still under way in the 1990s.
A Naval Electronic Laboratory at Point Loma and massive naval funding for the Scripps Institution of Oceanography solidified San Diego's role in World War II. It also guaranteed that the city would remain a center of technological research and development in areas of major concern to the fleet – meteorology, oceanography, underwater acoustics and sonar. That legacy continues to this day in the work of such state-of-the-art naval facilities as SPAWAR (Space and Naval Warfare Systems Command), located just east of Lindbergh Field itself.
Throughout most of the past century, San Diego has been a major home to the Navy, standing ready to assist the service in the execution of its mission. Today the city seeks the Navy's assistance in an effort to build the kind of airport that could fuel the region's growth for many years to come.
In reaction to this suggestion, however, the Navy Department has offered nothing but a cold shoulder. It insists that joint-use facilities would be neither feasible nor safe despite the fact that such facilities have operated without difficulty in places such as Honolulu, Albuquerque, St. Louis, Riverside (March Field) and Stewart International Airport north of New York City.
In its intransigence, the Navy overlooks the fact that the sites it now refuses to share comprise extraordinarily valuable real estate for which it almost never paid true market value in the past, nor shoulders genuine tax liabilities in the present. Indeed, it boggles the mind to consider the amount of tax revenue that could be generated on residential and commercial projects developed at North Island or Miramar. Talk about solving the city's pension problems!
In its aggressive rejection of suggestions for joint-use aviation facilities in the region, the Navy has disowned over a century of history that speaks to an enduring partnership between the fleet and the city. Of course it is true that the Navy has for many years brought jobs and opportunities for development to the San Diego region. But it is equally true that San Diego has consistently gifted its resources, real estate and political will to the needs of the service.
Today, as San Diego sees its developmental trajectory compromised by an outmoded and inadequate airport, the city turns to its long-standing institutional partner for assistance and support. And all the Navy has had to say to date is the equivalent of “drop dead.” The lessons of the past make plain that the citizens of San Diego have every reason to expect better than that from the United States Navy.
Filthy greedy liberals! The Navy pumps gazillions into the local economy.
For instance an E-6 with dependents in San Diego receives a housing allowance of $2069 a month.
That's right: the military is a welfare program.
Bernstein is professor of history and dean of arts and humanities at the University of California San Diego. Shragge is a lecturer in history and director of the Dimensions of Culture Program at UCSD.
I guess preventing San Diego from becoming another Pearl Harbor doesn't count for much with these libs? This city needs to look to the southeast for their airport problems.
Whoops...thought I did mention that, but my copy and paste missed those last two lines (with the author info) from the web site.
Good point.
I wonder if it would be better to keep Lindbergh and build another modest sized airport (where is the big question) to share the load, rather than junking Lindbergh and createing a new large airport. Might make choosing a site somewhat easier if the footprint isn't too large.
The impetus for abandoning Lindbergh is coming from William Manchester, who will "redevelop" that property and make gazillions from a very small investment.
To clarify my last, I think we need to have two modest airports (Lindbergh being one of them) rather than one large one, or at least have that considered.
If the city can kick the Navy off North Island, the city thinks their pension problem goes away overnight with just the redevelopment and airport revenue earned!!!
For Camp Pendleton, I remember talking to one realtor who could do nothing but complain about the "governemnt taking all that valuable land from the citizens." I kept trying to explain the importance of military training and all I got in return was "sorry, but that land is just too valuable, and the Cold War is over." You just have to wonder sometimes...
Liberals--What doesn't kill them makes them whinier.
Sounds to me like the folks in San Diego need a reminder: Next two paydays on all installations in the San Diego area, everybody gets paid in Suzie B dollars.
Anybody think that THAT message will have to be repeated?
To many folks with time on their hands.
Thank goodness the military is saying NO to any airport on any bases.
S.D. international Air Port is just fine.
New or larger is not better. All the wishful thinkers need to get a life.
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