Impact of lengthy Harbor Drive pipe project may be softened by schedule A city water line that runs underneath the runway at Lindbergh Field must be moved to Harbor Drive next spring to accommodate airport construction plans, but the city says traffic impacts will be lessened because the work will be done at night. The new pipe will run mostly along the eastbound sides of North Harbor Drive and W. Laurel Street between Terminal 1 and Pacific Highway, said John Harris of RBF Consulting, who addressed members of the North Bay Community Planning Board on Oct. 19. The project, which should break ground next spring and take up to eight months to complete, will knock out two lanes during work times. However, all lanes should be available between 5 a.m. and 9 p.m., Harris said. Another part of the project will replace 4.4 miles of pipe beginning on North Harbor Drive west of the boat channel. This part will begin in the spring but will require 18 months to complete, said John Stohr of the city’s Engineering and Capital Projects Department. Besides North Harbor Drive, affected streets will include Nimitz Boulevard, Rosecrans Street, Locust Street, Evergreen Street, Avenida de Portugal, Cañon Street, Hugo Street, Catalina Boulevard and Point Loma Avenue. Both parts of the project will replace five miles of cast-iron pipe and one mile of asbestos-cement pipe at a cost of $13 million, Stohr said. Over the next 10 years, the city plans to replace roughly 100 miles of cast-iron pipe, which was installed in the 1940s and ’50s and is now rapidly deteriorating, causing sinkholes and traffic messes, he said. In other North Bay planners news, Kenneth Rae is the newest board member, replacing Tony Lombardi, who recently moved to Chula Vista. Rae is the vice president and director of employment services at Veterans Village of San Diego. — Tony de?Garate

Twenty-year Navy proposal stalled The California Coastal Commission determined that the Navy’s downtown redevelopment proposal — which was approved by the commission in 1991 but never started — is no longer valid because conditions downtown have changed drastically over the past two decades, making the project inconsistent with the Coastal Act in terms of public access, safety, view corridors and other criteria. The 20-year delay was initially caused by an economic downturn and base closures in 1992. More than a decade later, the Navy entered into an agreement with developer Doug Manchester, who proposed a Pacific Gateway redevelopment plan on a 4-block site south of Broadway between North Harbor Drive and Pacific Highway. The gateway plan would develop nearly 3 million square feet of mixed-use office, retail and hotel space and replace the Navy’s existing regional headquarters at no cost to taxpayers. At the meeting on Nov. 2, the commission urged the Navy to reconcile the plans to the changed circumstances downtown such as the U.S.S. Midway Museum, Petco Park and proposed expansion of the Convention Center. Mark Delaplaine, the commission’s director of federal consistency issues, said the commission’s determination does not alter the timeline for the Pacific Gateway project because there is neither financing nor strong demand for the new development. — Mariko Lamb