San Diego is a piece of crap city - a suburban wasteland

[destroycreate]

Originally Posted by ozone

Well, you are only looking at the positive side of the airport location. The negatives in my opinion outweigh the positives. The airport takes up a huge and very choice piece of property. It hinders urban development around it. It sucks living in it's flight path and keeps those neighborhoods from reaching their full potential. Plus it keeps the skyline lower than it needs to be. BTW it's not exactly the same as Logan or LaGuardia since neither of those airports are so close to the core and do not affect the heights of downtown buildings. Yes it's convenient for the tourist industry. And that's probably a major reason it's not been moved. Lets see would I rather have a convenient airport or a taller skyline and cool urban bayside neighborhood?

I agree...it's quite an eyesore to have such a huge slab of concrete right next t downtown.

[Leo the Dog]

Originally Posted by ozone

Well, you are only looking at the positive side of the airport location. The negatives in my opinion outweigh the positives. The airport takes up a huge and very choice piece of property. It hinders urban development around it. It sucks living in it's flight path and keeps those neighborhoods from reaching their full potential. Plus it keeps the skyline lower than it needs to be. BTW it's not exactly the same as Logan or LaGuardia since neither of those airports are so close to the core and do not affect the heights of downtown buildings. Yes it's convenient for the tourist industry. And that's probably a major reason it's not been moved. Lets see would I rather have a convenient airport or a taller skyline and cool urban bayside neighborhood?

We will have to agree to disagree. I doubt SD is capable of building a "cool bayside neighborhood" on toxic land, next to MCRD. Look how long it's taken to build mediocrity is Mission Valley's Civita?

SD doesn't need supertalls. Boston has building height restrictions in DT and all along their "final frontier" in South Boston waterfront, yet remains a very vibrant city with one of the nation's most beautiful skylines. Most people I know in NY prefer the convience of LGA over JFK or Newark unless of course it's international travel.

DTSD would suffer if the airport moved. It would be much harder for hoteliers and conventions to gather DT. This is a convention and tourism town. Move the airport to Miramar (if the base ever closes, probably not) and who's to stop a rival community from building a massive CC to direct and steal $ from the core?

[mhays]

Conventions go where the hotels are, and where attendees want to be. You could build a few thousand rooms at a new surburban/airport location, but there would never be a downtown-like hotel inventory. You can't build 10,000 hotel rooms just to serve a convention center and an airport...they need a mix of tourism, business travel, etc., to stay busy on the 250 non-event days of the year too.

It sounds like the biggest airport issue is that congestion keeps all but the O&D traffic away. So SD won't ever be a hub. Therefore it won't get many direct flights. Therefore it's diminished as a base for residents who like to travel, as an easy destination for tourists, and as a potential business hub.

I'm impressed with all three of the big CA cities in terms of their efficient use of land. Even the suburban stuff is usually on small lots, and urban neighborhoods tend to sqeeze things in, relative to most of the country aside from the top cores. That's my top impresson of SD along with its revitalizing downtown.

[ozone]

Originally Posted by Leo the Dog

We will have to agree to disagree. I doubt SD is capable of building a "cool bayside neighborhood" on toxic land, next to MCRD. Look how long it's taken to build mediocrity is Mission Valley's Civita?

SD doesn't need supertalls. Boston has building height restrictions in DT and all along their "final frontier" in South Boston waterfront, yet remains a very vibrant city with one of the nation's most beautiful skylines. Most people I know in NY prefer the convience of LGA over JFK or Newark unless of course it's international travel.

DTSD would suffer if the airport moved. It would be much harder for hoteliers and conventions to gather DT. This is a convention and tourism town. Move the airport to Miramar (if the base ever closes, probably not) and who's to stop a rival community from building a massive CC to direct and steal $ from the core?

Well I don't want to get into a debate with you because others will just find in tedious and besides it's not going to change anything. So I'll just respond once. First, other cities have managed to remediate former airports and turn them into neighborhoods, most notably Denver's Stapleton Airport. And San Francisco is turning equally toxic (if not more) former Naval base and shipyards into a new neighborhoods. So its not like my suggestion is that far out.

Second, in my opinion it is a pretty weak argument to suggest that some suburban community might steal the convention and tourist business from downtown if the airport were to relocate to Miramar or elsewhere. I mean people do not visit or stay in downtown San Diego just because the airport is so damn close. They are there because of all the amenities and attractions that downtown offers, which would only increase if they turned the airport into something other than a huge "flying bus" station. Honestly, you'd think your livelihood was dependent on Lindberg or something. And bringing up Logan and LaGuardia is (again) irrelevant since I don't see how those airports (in relation to their city's core) in any way resembles San Diego's situation. I'm not even going to bother addressing your height argument since I never said anything about supertalls. But I did mention how the airport's flight patterns negatively affect some residential neighborhoods and I see you didn't address that at all. But like you said we will just have to disagree on this.

[Leo the Dog]

Last post on the topic.

Convention business is highly competitive. We compete against OC, Vegas, Phoenix, Denver and others...many conventions would look elsewhere if it were a 30-45+ minute taxi ride to the CC. This is a selling point. Convenience. We are more convenient than Denver. The stakes are too big. The city wouldnt risk this and the DT hoteliers would persuade politicians from doing this.

Regarding noise over neighborhoods, where exactly would be the best place for a much larger airport? No matter where a giant hub airport is placed it'll effect neighborhoods in SD County.

787s flying over N. Cnty hoods/La Jolla 24/7 as they depart from Miramar just won't ever happen. Let's just be realistic. Lindbergh will always be there. We don't have a huge population to serve. The entire county is only 3.5 million. People in North County use John Wayne as an option. The only hope is for a reliever/expansion on the SD side of TJ International making it easy to cross from the American side.

Logan is relevant because it occupies water front real estate adjacent to DT and surrounded by inner neighborhoods, time restrictions with rail connections to the city, similar to SAN (trolley access planned on north side of airport.)

[Wheelingman04]

Thanks for sharing those wonderful photos. I love San Diego!

[kcexpress69]

Sweet!!