Neighborhood Takes on Trolley to Save Bay View : Transportation: Transit agency wants to elevate tracks that pass through Harbor View and Little Italy.

Anthony G. (Tony) Cutri, whose family ties to Harbor View and Little Italy go back half a century, calls it “the rape of a neighborhood.”

Resident Rob Quigley, who says it violates a city ordinance about protecting the views of the bay, sees the impact as devastating--aesthetically, culturally, economically.

The proposal by the Metropolitan Transit Development Board to elevate 4,000 feet of trolley tracks as a way of bypassing gridlock in Harbor View and Little Italy has triggered a storm of controversy.

The issue involves ocean views and families with long histories, and may not be settled until it ends up in court. The next phase in the ongoing debate is an MTDB board meeting on Thursday, when both sides will air arguments, before a vote on July 25.

Last October, the 15-member board voted unanimously to elevate the trolley through Harbor View and Little Italy, bordered by Beech Street on the south, Laurel Street on the north, Pacific Highway on the west and Interstate 5 on the east.

The outcry led to a study group, appointed by MTDB and made up of representatives from the agency itself, as well as the Centre City Development Corp., community members and officials from city government.

The group recommended keeping the tracks at street level, findings opposed by the agency and its powerful chairman, former State Sen. James R. Mills. Mills says the elevated tracks are necessary because of concerns about traffic, particularly in the 21st Century.

If unable to make their point, residents and property owners say they’ll take their fight to court. Many say that they and their families have had ties to the area for years. Many say MTDB is not playing fair.

“People talk about preserving old buildings, but this is a whole neighborhood,” Cutri, an architect and a member of the study group, said. “It would clearly have a devastating impact in many ways.”

Indeed, many in Harbor View/Little Italy say the elevated trolley--which MTDB acknowledges would cost $16 million more than the $3 million at-grade solution preferred by residents and property owners--would destroy their community.

But Mills says that putting the trolley at grade through Harbor View threatens to set off delays and gridlocks that could cripple the service--the point of which, he says, is efficiency.

In Mills’ view, elevating the tracks as a way of bypassing traffic is the only solution.

MTDB claims to have on its side the city engineering department and teams of experts, armed with statistics, most of which point to rail efficiency. The Harbor View group has on its side Mayor Maureen O’Connor, City Councilman Ron Roberts, whose district would be affected, and developer Ernest Hahn.

Roberts said the City Council will adopt a resolution before July 25 that could sway MTDB, which depends on city taxes and revenues for much of its funding.

Roberts said that, at the moment, he favors a compromise solution that would elevate the trolley only at Laurel Street and leave the picturesque views along Grape and Hawthorn streets intact.

City Architect Mike Stepner, who chaired the study group that examined the problem after the community outcry, said he, too, favors the elevated-at-Laurel compromise.

Stepner said elevating only at Laurel would add $4 million to the cost of the 3 1/2-mile line, which would mean a cost of about $7 million in laying tracks from Date Street to Old Town. Elevating the same portion would cost $16 million, and the estimated cost of putting the tracks below grade (underground) would be $55 million.

Putting the entire portion at grade (street level) would, Stepner said, be $3 million total for a project earmarked for completion in 1994.

Councilman Roberts: “Jim (Mills) seems pretty adamant about wanting it all elevated. As I look at the arguments and the technical data, it seems pretty conclusive with Laurel Street (that the tracks should be elevated). But it also suggests something quite different with Grape and Hawthorn . . .

“I look at Laurel and Grape and Hawthorn as separate problems. The topography issues with Laurel are really quite different. As you look at Grape and Hawthorn, you have to consider those magnificent views being compromised in a major way.

“Coupled with that is the traffic issue. Only if you take the worst of all possible conditions would you have the kind of impact that merits spending the dollars to put it above ground or below.”

Mills, who has yet to appear amenable to any compromise and wields a firm hand over the agency he’s controlled since the trolley began running in 1981, cites a number of reasons for why elevating the tracks is the only solution:

* Time. Estimated 90-second delays caused by traffic at peak hours will become “more and more a factor as the day goes on,” Mills said. “If the (at-grade) plan works the way it’s supposed to work, it will close Grape and Hawthorn streets 38 minutes out of 60 at rush hour.

“That’s what the other side assumes, and what they say is fine. But 38 out of 60 at rush hour will have quite an adverse effect on traffic. It wouldn’t be tolerable.”

Mills said the average American’s time is worth $7.20 an hour, and if forced to build at grade, the Harbor View trolley and its unavoidable, rush-hour delays “could cost San Diegans millions of dollars in valuable time.”

* Safety. Mills said that putting the tracks at grade, which they are through most of the system, puts pedestrians and motorists at greater risk.

* Growth. Mills said the predicted growth for the area between now and the next century is evidence that the trolley through Harbor View must be elevated. He and design engineer William C. Lorenz argue that the city’s recent growth rate--2% a year--is proof that elevating the line is the only alternative.

* Legalities. Mills said that Santa Fe, which owns the right of way through which the trolley would operate--as well as Amtrak passenger trains, freight trains and commuter lines that will use the narrow corridor in the future--might not grant permission to an at-grade solution.

Spokesman Mike Martin said that Santa Fe has not yet received a formal proposal from MTDB to elevate the tracks and that negotiations over right of ways are continuing.

Both sides agree that the best solution would be to place the trolley underground. But the estimated cost is $55 million, money the agency “just doesn’t have and won’t,” Mills said.

“Who has a pot of gold?” he asked rhetorically.

He said the only agency capable of commanding such funds is the San Diego Unified Port District, which oversees Lindbergh Field. Mills said a case “could be made” for the Port providing such funds, since the line in question provides access to the airport.

And if the airport is moved? Commercial and retail development at the current airport site would lead to an even greater need for mass transit, Mills said, making the investment in below-grade tracks even more prudent.

“I haven’t explored it,” Mills said about asking the Port. “It would not be appropriate for me. But I have mentioned it to a couple of people.”

Spokesman Dan Wilkens said the Board of Port Commissioners has not been approached about funding a below-grade trolley but is “closely monitoring what effect the trolley, through that area, will have on the Port.”

Wilkens said Port officials are concerned that an elevated line, 40 feet above grade, with power lines running 12 feet above that, would pose a safety risk to incoming jets, as well as create an electromagnetic field that could disrupt telecommunications between the Lindbergh Field control tower and surrounding air traffic.

“We asked the FAA about a month ago to study it,” Wilkens said, “and we’re waiting to hear.”

Real estate developer Michael B. Galasso, president of the Harbor View/Little Italy Neighborhood Coalition, says the elevated line does pose safety risks for incoming jets, which would first have to clear the 110-foot-high Laurel Travel Center and then make their way over the trolley.

Other residents in the area say the elevated line threatens to impose a visual and psychological barrier that, once installed, can never be challenged.

Architects Cutri and Rob Quigley--both part of the 20-member study group commissioned by MTDB--say the Harbor View extension is different from all other trolley lines, in that it cuts through the heart of a high-density, mixed-use neighborhood for the first time.

Cutri said the elevated line would have a huge impact economically.

“Take the potential development of office space,” he said. “You’re looking at a reduction of half a dollar per square foot. Over a 10-year period, that’s a potential revenue loss of $20 million.”

Quigley said the elevation would have a devastating impact on the quality of life, creating a barrier between people in Harbor View and the bay to the west.

“The issue is the quality of life downtown,” Quigley said. “Who’s going to want to live downtown? That’s the issue. Now, if you ask a traffic engineer what’s the issue, he or she is not going to care about that. They’re going to argue the quickest way of moving people from point A to point B.

“But that has little to do with the quality of life downtown. It’s not just a matter of seeing blue water through a view corridor. It’s removing a psychological barrier. Lots of people, and not just people who live in the area, use those streets.”

Quigley, who has lived in Harbor View for three years, said that, “as a property owner, business owner and resident, I love that bay. I’ve been fighting to keep that bay walled off since I came to San Diego. We simply ask the question, can the trolley work at grade? We believe it can and that it will cost $13 million less.”

Quigley said that public policy is jeopardized by an elevated line. He cites an ordinance approved last year by the Centre City Development Corp., which cites the relationship of the city to the bay and why it’s worth protecting.

“This would be the first major act of desecration to that plan,” he said. “The hotels along the waterfront, those were built before the ordinance. This is a clean blow to it. If the bay wasn’t there, a lot of other issues remain, such as crime. But the bay makes it far more compelling.”

Harbor View proponents say that elevated rail lines in Chicago, Boston and New York are passe, symbolizing a bygone method of moving people from one place to another.

“They keep talking about the effect of elevated structures in all those old cities,” Mills said. “And I keep telling them, they shouldn’t look at those, they should look at BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit). They have some beautiful elevated structures.

“They say, ‘You’ll have terrible crime, drug peddlers, etc.’ I say, ‘Can’t you look at something modern, like we’re going to build? Do you have to be so focused on something built 100 years ago in Chicago?’ That’s not the kind of thing we’re talking about.”

Mills suggests that prominent architects could be hired to “beautify” the elevated structure. Opponents say that would add to an already inflationary price tag.

Stepner, the city who architect who headed the study group that brought together representatives from MTDB, CCDC, the Harbor View community and city government, says Mills’ board will have three options before it when it votes on July 25:

“They’ll have a report from their own people that says, from the standpoint of moving people, elevated works best, no question. They’ll have a report from the city engineer’s office that says, in order to move traffic and not take chances, elevated works best.

“And, they’ll have a third report that considers all of the aesthetic and emotional arguments, as well as the others, that says keeping it at grade, with an elevation at Laurel Street, works the best by far.”

Those in Harbor View argue that, if people and their concerns weigh in at all, only the last option makes sense.

“Consider this,” Stepner said. “If we had relied on technical information alone, we would have never built the San Diego Trolley. All the technical information available at the time clearly pointed against it--against building it in the first place. Now would that have been the right thing to do?”