Morning Report: About the Mayor’s Big Shelter Plan

Mayor Todd Gloria is on a mission to turn a vacant warehouse near the airport into a 1,000-bed homeless shelter.

Gloria on Thursday unveiled plans for a 35-year lease for the nearly 65,000 square foot former print shop at Kettner Boulevard and Vine Street in Middletown.

Our Lisa Halverstadt hustled to round up details on the pitch, potential costs and the backstory on the now-vacant warehouse.

What we know about the tab: Halverstadt found that the city initially expects to spend $30 million on annual operations for the site alone – plus $1.9 million a year on the proposed lease and up to $18 million in building upgrades.

It’s not a done deal: The City Council will need to sign off on Gloria’s pitch and it’ll likely have lots of questions about the costly plan during a tough budget year, the real estate deal and more.

Read the full story here. 

The Crushing Weight of Childcare in San Diego 

Childcare is tough to come by in San Diego. That’s no secret to any parent of a young child. In a new in-depth series on the state of childcare in the county, KPBS reported one in eight local childcare providers closed between 2020 and 2022. 

To make matters worse, even if parents find childcare, it’s expensive. 

Adding to the crunch: California’s universal transitional kindergarten program, which created a new, free grade for the state’s four-year-olds further stressed the system by siphoning out the most profitable age group. 

Meanwhile, San Diego Unified has viewed the influx of four-year-olds as a way to blunt a pattern of enrollment decline, though that hope hasn’t really come to fruition. San Diego Unified board member Richard Barrera has gone one step further, saying that the patchwork system of private childcare that currently exists should be scrapped altogether.

“We can’t, as a society, look to protect a system (where) 3 and 4-year-olds are sort of a cash cow,” Barrera said. “I would hope that the goal eventually is to continue to move the public school system down to younger and younger groups of students.” 

Even given his confidence, some parents and teachers have expressed concerns about whether the district rushed the rollout of its universal transitional kindergarten program. Others have loved their experience. 

Given the lack of available space at existing childcare providers, however, it may be the only option for many. Pre-enrollment for San Diego Unified’s universal transitional kindergarten program ended in February, but the district will be accepting applications through the summer. 

Here’s some of what you need to know before you take the leap.

SeaWorld Revamps Its Image, Still Building Back Post COVID

Ten years after the documentary “Blackfish” threatened to bomb SeaWorld theme parks nationwide, the San Diego-based theme park is slated to celebrate 60 years in business at its flagship Mission Bay site, reports the Union-Tribune. (Read Voice of San Diego’s brief history of the “Blackfish” damage control.)

The park weathered a year of shuttering following the Covid-19 pandemic as well. It’s since stopped killer whale breeding in captivity, and cut back on the animal circus-style attractions to tailored animal-education style shows. Shamu, the iconic performative killer whale show, is now gone. But you can now get a cookie in its likeness. 

Despite the park adding more roller coasters, a jelly-fish themed exhibition and more, the park still faces challenges. The city of San Diego says the park owes $12.2 million in back rent and fees. And the park is still struggling to build-back its audience to pre-Covid levels. 

Read past Voice of San Diego SeaWorld coverage here.

In Other News

• The Port of San Diego joined a multitude of other local leaders and agencies declaring the Tijuana River sewage crisis an emergency. It’s part of a larger effort to secure more funds to fix a broken sewage treatment plant on the U.S. side that’s been out of compliance with federal pollution laws. (KPBS)
• The city of Oceanside is set to begin a search for good beach sand from offshore deposit sites along the coast. It’s part of a larger plant to widen the city’s withering beaches. (Union-Tribune)
• San Diego’s termed-out city attorney proposed a new website where whistleblowers could lodge complaints about fraud, waste or abuses of city resources. (Union-Tribune) 
• Big waves ahead: The National Weather Service issued a hazardous surf advisory beginning 2 a.m. Friday through midnight Saturday as a Pacific storm approaches. Waves could be up to 8 feet high (yee). (Union-Tribune)

The Morning Report was written by Lisa Halverstadt, Jakob McWhinney and MacKenzie Elmer. It was edited by Andrea Lopez-Villafaña.