Midway community planners in May received an update on the group’s ongoing community plan while discussing alternative energy options, as well as hearing a new proposal to house and provide services to the homeless.
“The (community plan) draft is in a new format allowing people to see Midway in the future with updated land-use maps and refined policies and includes urban green spaces and linear parks, more housing, enhanced sidewalks, urban trails and a future recreation center,” city staffer Vickie White said.
The Midway-Pacific Highway Corridor is a hodgepodge of commercial, industrial, office and warehouse land uses, plus limited residential. Community and city planners are collaborating on reworking the neighborhood’s community plan, viewed as the blueprint for commercial and residential development in the congested corridor near Point Loma and Old Town. The community plan provides land-use designations and policies guiding future development, and hasn’t been updated since 1991.
“Does the (community) plan create some kind of walkway to the river under the (I-5) freeway?,” asked group chair Cathy Kenton.
“That’s still in the plan,” replied White. “We’d like to make that connection.”
White estimated the community plan review as being “about 95 percent complete.” She added, “We’re moving fast into the environmental analysis of the project.” 
The draft Midway Community Plan update can be viewed at www.sandiego.gov.
Nicole Capretz founder/executive director of the nonprofit Climate Action Campaign against global warming, asked for a group letter of support following a presentation on Community Choice Aggregation. Choice is a state program allowing local jurisdictions to purchase and/or generate alternative electricity for residents and businesses other than local, for-profit utilities.
Noting San Diego has an ambitious goal to ultimately get to 100 percent renewable energy, Capretz said the choice program allows local jurisdiction’s to set rates as well as buy energy from alternative sources, like solar.
“The city would take control in deciding what electricity is used, and the rates, to be delivered by utilities,” Capretz said contending similar programs elsewhere in California have resulted in lower energy rates. She added SDG&E has gone on record opposing the choice alternative. 
“They (SDG&E) operate under an entirely different business model,” Capretz added.
After expressing doubt that the city would manage providing energy cheaper and more efficiently than SDG&E, Midway planners opted not to vote in favor of issuing a letter of support for the choice program.
George Mullen and associates gave a presentation on Sunbreak Ranch, a new proposal for providing essential social services to the homeless at a site in Otay Mesa. Mullen said the goal would be to provide one-stop permanent housing and social services for the homeless in a place that could accommodate large numbers of them. In other action
• Kenton asked for, and received, group permission to have both sides on the controversial Soccer City issue, reuse of the former Qualcomm stadium site in Mission Valley, come to the group’s June meeting to give presentations on proposed redevelopment.