{"id":244028,"date":"1970-01-01T00:00:00","date_gmt":"1970-01-01T08:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sdnews.com\/five-points-business-owners-grapple-with-pot-clubs-proposed-bike-lane\/"},"modified":"1970-01-01T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"1970-01-01T08:00:00","slug":"five-points-business-owners-grapple-with-pot-clubs-proposed-bike-lane","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/five-points-business-owners-grapple-with-pot-clubs-proposed-bike-lane\/","title":{"rendered":"Five Points business owners grapple with pot clubs, proposed bike lane"},"content":{"rendered":"

QU\u00c9: <\/strong>Results of feasibility study on bike lanes proposed for India St. and Kettner Blvd.
\nCUANDO:<\/strong> Dec. 7 at 6 p.m.
\nDONDE: <\/strong>Uptown Planners meeting, Alice Birney Elementary School auditorium, 4345 Campus Ave. in University Heights
\nINFORMACI\u00d3N:<\/strong> 835-9501 or uptownplanners.org<\/p>\n

Business owners grapple with pot clubs and proposed bike lane<\/strong><\/p>\n

As Uptown Partnership disbands, Middletown moves to form independent CDC<\/p>\n

By Pat Sherman\/<\/strong>Asistente de edici\u00f3n SDUN<\/p>\n

A newly-formed group of business owners in the Middletown-Five Points area met this month to discuss a variety of issues, from a proposed bike lane on India Street to the feared proliferation of medical marijuana dispensaries in their community.\u00a0<\/p>\n

San Diego City Council President Pro Tem Kevin Faulconer, who represents Council District 2, attended the meeting in El Indio Restaurant\u2019s board room to address their concerns. Faulconer\u2019s district includes the Middletown-Five Points area, located near the nexus of Washington Street and Interstate 5.<\/p>\n

Middletown business owner and attorney Jim Mellos circulated a city map with large dots covering areas in which pot dispensaries would be prohibited. On the map, Middletown\u2019s industrial-commercial zone on the west side of the I-5 is free of dots and thus open to new dispensaries, he said. \u00a0<\/p>\n

Mary Gluck, co-owner of the Wine Vault & Bistro on India Street, said that while the dispensaries would be located on the opposite side of the freeway from her restaurant, she feels they would still lead to an increase in crime on the east side of I-5.<\/p>\n

Faulconer said his office has fielded numerous complaints about dispensaries in Mission Beach from neighbors and businesses about clients \u201ccoming in at all times of the night and some folks raising hell.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cLike any business, it might have a good operator, it might have a bad operator,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Existing pot dispensaries in San Diego are technically illegal, because current zoning does not allow them. In January, the city council is scheduled to vote on an ordinance that would allow dispensaries to open in specific commercial and industrial zones that include no residential uses. The clubs would have to operate as nonprofits and not be located within 1,000 feet of another marijuana dispensary, school, youth center, day care center or religious institution.<\/p>\n

Faulconer said he believes the ordinance \u201cwill give the police department the (ability) to make sure that they are good neighbors.\u201d<\/p>\n

Also addressing the group, San Diego Police Community Relations Officer David Surwilo suggested that business owners recruit someone to \u201cput in a school of some kind\u201d on the west side of I-5.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn regard to the dispensaries, I\u2019m not a fan of any of them,\u201d Surwilo said. \u201cThe problem that we\u2019re running into is with 18-, 19-, 21-and 22-year-old that seem to have chronic headaches and all these other issues\u2014and now they have dispensaries.<\/p>\n

\u201cUp in North Park we\u2019ve had people going in and sticking up these dispensaries,\u201d Surwilo said, adding that he believes much of the product is coming from cartels across the border, rather than local growing cooperatives, as was the intent of state\u2019s Compassionate Use Act law.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf that\u2019s the way these nonprofits are supposed to be run, then why are we finding tunnels with thousands of pounds being snuck over here?\u201d Surwilo said. \u201cThere\u2019s no way, as Mr. Faulconer said, that these are not for-profit (ventures). These people are making money.\u201d<\/p>\n

The group also expressed concern about the addition of a proposed bike lane along India Street, between Laurel and Washington streets. Another bike lane is proposed for Kettner Boulevard, on the opposite side of I-5.<\/p>\n

The owner of transmission shop on India Street said cars traveling North on India, especially those en route from the airport or coming off I-5, tend to travel \u201cat the same pace as on the freeway, so a bike lane would kill people.\u201d<\/p>\n

John Keating of Linscott, Law & Greenspan Engineers will present the results of a preliminary feasibility study on the proposed bike lanes at the Uptown Planers meeting on Dec. 7 at 6 p.m.<\/p>\n

Leo Wilson, a Park West resident and member of the Uptown Planners, also voiced concern about a bike lane on India Street. He said a tunnel motorists enter as they turn north off of Laurel Street onto India is \u201ca death trap for bicyclists.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m a bike person,\u201d Wilson said. \u201cI didn\u2019t have a car for four years. That is the most dangerous street imaginable.\u201d<\/p>\n

Officer Surwilo characterized the bike lane proposal as \u201cfreaking nuts.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cEven if you put a (speed limit) sign every 10 feet, they\u2019re still not going to go 35 miles an hour,\u201d Surwilo said. \u201cThey got tired of sitting at the airport waiting for their relatives. Now they\u2019re just like, \u2018Get me the hell out of this area,\u2019 so they\u2019re racing up Laurel Street, they\u2019re making the turn and they\u2019re racing to get on this freeway.\u201d<\/p>\n

Kathy Keehan is executive director of the San Diego County Bicycle Coalition, one of the groups championing the bike lanes. Keehan said she doesn\u2019t believe the tunnel on India Street is as dangerous as opponents make it out to be.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt looks scarier than it is,\u201d Keehan said. \u201cMost people are pretty good about keeping their cars where they should be.\u201d<\/p>\n

Keehan said one of the proposals in the feasibility study is to add additional lighting in the tunnel and elevate the bike lane.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt es<\/em> feasible to do continuous bike lanes all the way down India and Kettner, although there have to be some changes to the roadway,\u201d Keehan said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

One of those changes, Keehan said, would be to add a traffic signal at the freeway off-ramp to moderate the flow of traffic.<\/p>\n

To make room for the bike lane and additional on-street parking, Walter Musial, an associate principal at Linscott, Law & Greenspan Engineers, said the width of the traffic lanes\u2014which he said are uncharacteristically wide by modern standards\u2014could be truncated and the number of lanes reduced from two to three. \u00a0<\/p>\n

At one point where India Street presently narrows to two lanes (in the 3300 block, near the Aero Club Bar), existing on-street parking would have to be eliminated to accommodate the bike lane.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe big problem is that the lanes are too wide and people have this mental fixation that this is just a bypass,\u201d Musial said, noting that the bike lane would not be directly adjacent to the roadway, but separated by a painted median.<\/p>\n

Keehan said the bike lane on Kettner would require removal of an existing lane of traffic or about 100 on-street parking spaces adjacent to the freeway.<\/p>\n

Wilson said the city has already allowed for a bike lane along Pacific Coast Highway. With the planned expansion of the airport\u2019s passenger operations northward along Pacific Coast Highway, mitigation funds would be available for improvements to that bike lane, Wilson said.<\/p>\n

\u201cPacific Coast Highway is going to be improved, so you\u2019ve got plenty of room to put the bike lane over there,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Keehan said that point was raised during a recent presentation of the plans to the North Bay Community Planning Group (which represents the area near the San Diego Sports Arena).<\/p>\n

\u201cMy point back to them is that bicyclists are allowed to use all the streets,\u201d Keehan said. \u201cWhy would we not make it safe for them to be on all of our streets?\u201d<\/p>\n

Keehan said airport renovations also would create more intersections and traffic along Pacific Coast Highway\u2014\u201calready not one of the best places to be on a bike.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you live or work along India Street, Pacific Coast Highway doesn\u2019t really serve your needs,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Keehan said part of the airport expansion may include linking the airport directly to I-5, so that less people would be utilizing surface streets to access the freeway, though completion of the project isn\u2019t expected until as late as 2030.<\/p>\n

Officer Surwilo said the solution for traffic calming along India\u2014with or without a bike lane\u2014will require persistence on the part of business owners and residents.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s going to take a long time, but if you stay together as a group and if you stay loud and if you stay interested and you stay vocal you can get it done,\u201d he said. \u00a0\u201cI can get more officers down here and they can sit down here with their radar guns, and they\u2019ll do that for about two or three weeks, but it\u2019s not solving the problem.\u201d<\/p>\n

During the meeting, Middletown business owners also made a motion to form a nonprofit community development corporation (CDC). The CDC would manage parking and traffic-related projects in the Middletown-Five Points area, in conjunction with another newly formed CDC in Bankers Hill. Business owners discussed that plan earlier this year, before the announcement of Uptown Partnership\u2019s dissolution. They sought to succeed from the Partnership, believing that the embattled organization had not completed a fair share of parking-related in Middletown-Five Points.<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u201cA CDC is a nonprofit in which you can bring funds into the community,\u201d Wilson explained. \u201cWe have quite a few attorneys around who would run it. It would just be sort of a holding group. They wouldn\u2019t be involved in policy.\u201d<\/p>\n

A petition was circulated for business owners to sign, requesting that the City of San Diego allow them to form the Five Points\/Middletown CDC and break away from the Mission Hills Business Improvement District (BID).<\/p>\n

The petition read, in part, \u201cSince its inception, almost no funds have been allocated for projects in our area and we want to finally have a say in how our taxes benefit our specific business district.\u201d<\/p>\n

The group is requesting that all business taxes collected by the Mission Hills BID be immediately redirected for the formation of their CDC.<\/p>\n

Faulconer told the nearly 30 people in attendance that he supports their plans.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s one of the reasons why I wanted significant changes in the Uptown Partnership,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s a lot of money to be collected on parking meter revenue, and if it\u2019s not going where the community wanted, we\u2019ve got to make a change. I\u2019m optimistic that we\u2019re going to have a very good result coming out of that.\u201d<\/p>\n

In response to complaints about motor homes camping in front of homes and businesses for extended periods, Faulconer said he has spoken with the city council about creating an oversized vehicle ordinance to address the problem in Middletown-Five Points.<\/p>\n

However, because other council members have proposed similar ordinances for their districts, the costs have become temporarily prohibitive, he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe cost of doing that became astronomical because, in order to pass legal muster, you have to in essence have everywhere in your city or that community marked and signed, (stating) that we have an oversized vehicle ordinance.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve not given up on that,\u201d Faulconer said. \u201cWe\u2019re going to keep pushing. It will come back in some form this (coming) year.\u201d<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

WHAT: Results of feasibility study on bike lanes proposed for India St. and Kettner Blvd. WHEN: Dec. 7 at 6 p.m. WHERE: Uptown Planners meeting, Alice Birney Elementary School auditorium, 4345 Campus Ave. in University Heights INFO: 835-9501 or uptownplanners.org Business owners grapple with pot clubs and proposed bike lane As Uptown Partnership disbands, Middletown […]<\/p>","protected":false},"author":726,"featured_media":244029,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"11555","_seopress_titles_title":"Five Points business owners grapple with pot clubs, proposed bike lane","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[11551,11555],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-244028","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","category-uptown-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/244028","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/726"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=244028"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/244028\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/244029"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=244028"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=244028"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=244028"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}