Amidst an air of animosity, planners from the San Diego County Regional Airport Authority will hold the tenth public meeting on a proposed Airport Land Use Compatibility Plan (ALUCP) for North Island Naval Air Station (NASNI). The meeting will be held in the Coronado Public Library’s Winn Room at 4pm, Monday, June 26.
The City of Coronado claims the ALUCP usurps the city’s right to chart its own future.
In May, Mayor Richard Bailey wrote the airport authority’s board of directors, “The current draft ALUCP does not reflect Coronado’s goals and interests.” He continues, “In its present form [the draft ALUCP] automatically changes the status of a significant number of existing structures and land uses,” something the city had been led to believe would not happen.
At the very first public workshop, Angie Jamison, manager of airport planning, said that “the new rules apply to new development only.”
Airport planners insist that is still the case. “Nothing in the 30-page draft has changed,” said Mark Johnson, a director with Ricondo Corporation and a consultant to Airport Authority. “We’ve always been cognizant that Coronado is a fully developed community and that it is not possible to undo development that surrounds the city.”
Neither does the plan freeze the community in time. Homeowners can add a family room or a granny flat and still be compliant. If your house burns down, you can rebuild. Business can change. A bookshop can be converted into a restaurant. There are certain types of businesses you could not start though. For example, you could not open business that would increase density, i.e. a hotel or a miniature golf course.
These rules are based on concerns outlined in the Air Installations Compatible Use Zones (AICUZ): safety, noise, airspace protection, and overflight. No new uses that involve “concentrations of people, or people with limited mobility or hazardous materials.” The Spreckels mansion could not be turned into a hospital or hotel. A building’s interior must be insulated to attenuate jet or helicopter noise. This only applies to new structures or additions to existing ones. Tall buildings are not allowed, as they would pose a hazard to aircraft. Owners of new or fully rebuilt homes must disclose that at times aircraft will be flying overhead.
Communications appear to have broken down when Airport Authority hired a new attorney. There was a sense in the community that the new general council Amy Gonzalez was interpreting the NASNI AICUZ more stringently. That was not the case according to Kim Sheredy, Senior Airport Planner. “The most recent changes to the ALUCP were to the formatting only, not to the substantive content of the report.”
The ALUCP is based on an Airport Installation Compatible Use Zone (AICUZ) the Navy issued in 2011 for NASNI.
The ALUCP/AICUZ only impacts a small section of Coronado: homes adjacent to the landing strip at NASNI (portions of Coronado Avenue and Country Club Lane) and residents and businesses directly under the flight path that runs from the Hotel Del along Ocean Blvd. The Del and Crown Plaza Shopping Center are the major commercial enterprises in the area. Planners don’t expect either to be impacted. “The Hotel Del has vested rights in its master plan,” Johnson said.
The ALUCP only seeks to determine what types of structures are compliant with the AICUZ. It doesn’t create rules, nor does it have the authority to enforce rules.
“The city has the ultimate say,” Johnson said. Or it will have ultimate say when, or if, it adopts the ALUCP. That may be some years down the road. The planners drafting the ALUCP hope to bring it before the airport authority board of directors by mid-March 2018. Once it’s approved, the city council will decided whether or not to adopt it.
