Finally, Barrio Logan has its community plan
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Newton Avenue in Barrio Logan. Photo: Bob Chamberlin/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images
This time, Barrio Logan really has a plan to start untangling the mix of industrial businesses and homes that sit side-by-side in the community.
Driving the news: The California Coastal Commission gave final approval Thursday to a new Barrio Logan community plan, a month after the City Council begrudgingly altered it to accommodate the state agency's requirement to protect low-cost hotel options, as the Union-Tribune reported.
Flashback: The final approval comes two years after the Council approved new development regulations that, for the first time, zone the community to require separation between harmful industrial activity and homes.
- The passage also comes nine and a half years after city voters threw out a previous plan to do the same, after the area's shipbuilding industry collected enough signatures to force the city's approval to a referendum.
Why it matters: Barrio Logan, plagued by anything-goes zoning since 1978 and sliced apart by highways, now ranks as one of the state's most polluted neighborhoods with one of its highest asthma rates, too.
Details: The California Coastal Commission, created by voter initiative in 1972, has land-use and planning authority over the coastal zone, an area mapped by the Legislature that stretches the length of the state.
- A portion of Barrio Logan is within the coastal zone.
- The final demand the city agreed to last month required that the plan ensure any low-cost hotel or motel room be replaced if a property is redeveloped, and that new hotels reserve 25% of their rooms for low cost.
What we're watching: The Council also this month passed a new regulation that would force the closure of certain industrial businesses that opened legally under the old zoning to shut down in the next 15 years if they're within 50 feet of homes.
- But the Coastal Commission will need to approve that provision, too.