The letter, submitted by CBLG attorney Kathryn Pettit on behalf of Point Loma residents, identifies multiple deficiencies in the project’s environmental impact report under the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA). The Midway Rising proposal would redevelop approximately 49 acres of city-owned land surrounding the existing sports arena site with more than 4,200 residential units, a new 16,000-seat arena, commercial development, and public open space. While the project has been promoted as a major redevelopment effort for the area, CBLG’s analysis concludes that the environmental review fails to adequately analyze or mitigate several significant impacts.

Among the issues identified is the report’s failure to evaluate cumulative impacts from the nearby redevelopment of the Navy’s NAVWAR property. The letter also highlights concerns with the project’s transportation analysis, including the exclusion of key freeway ramps from detailed study despite projections that future development could result in substantial congestion and delays on surrounding roadways.
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The letter urges San Diego City Council members to withhold approval of the project until the environmental analysis is corrected and brought into compliance with CEQA. As the City prepares to consider the project later this year, the issues raised by CBLG underscore the importance of thorough environmental review and transparent planning for projects of this scale.

The column details how the City Council approved a revised lease arrangement benefiting a private nonprofit sports organization, removing prior restrictions and paving the way for expanded commercial use of land historically intended for passive recreation and public access. The property, commonly known as the Fairbanks Ranch “polo fields”, is subject to a grant deed limiting uses to passive recreational, equestrian, and hiking activities.

As noted in the article, community groups, neighboring cities, and environmental advocates have raised serious concerns regarding loss of public access to open space, traffic congestion and evacuation impacts, environmental degradation within the River Valley floodplain, failure to complete promised public trail connections, and removal of lease safeguards without proper environmental review. The opinion piece further highlights that the matter is now the subject of litigation filed by the Sierra Club challenging the City’s removal of lease restrictions and alleging violations of the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) and state law.

This dispute reflects broader, longstanding tensions over land-use decisions in the San Dieguito River Valley and the proper stewardship of publicly owned open space. Chatten-Brown Law Group represents Sierra Club in this matter and remains committed to protecting public open space and ensuring compliance with environmental laws.

The proposed Chalcifica development would consist of six three-story structures containing 136 ADUs and 70 parking spaces on a roughly three-acre site near the intersection of Bluffside Avenue and Pacifica Drive. The City initially processed the application as a ministerial project under its ADU bonus program, without discretionary environmental review.

In August 2025, Chatten-Brown Law Group filed a lawsuit against the City and the developer alleging the project raises significant environmental and public safety concerns including traffic congestion, inadequate parking, and wildfire evacuation constraints. The project is located within a high fire hazard severity zone and encompasses land of substantial cultural significance as the former location of a Kumeyaay village.

The lawsuit argues that the scale and impacts of the project trigger discretionary review and require compliance with the California Environmental Quality Act. In granting the injunction, Judge Bacal determined that petitioners demonstrated a likelihood of success on the merits, a key standard for temporary judicial relief. By halting permit processing, the Court ensured that the City must now analyze the project’s impacts in a comprehensive environmental review, including tribal consultation, before any further approvals may proceed.

The grant deed, adopted in 1983, conveyed land historically known as the Del Mar Polo Fields to the City with explicit requirements that it be preserved as open space for passive, non-commercial recreational uses and that it prohibit large assemblages of people and vehicles. As reported by The Coast News Group, in October 2024, the San Diego City Council approved a termination agreement removing these protections and amended its lease with Surf Cup Sports to permit up to 40 days of large-scale events annually. The decision drew widespread opposition from residents, environmental organizations, and neighboring cities.
 
CBLG’s lawsuit alleges that the City failed to analyze the environmental impacts of intensifying use at Surf Sports Park and eliminating deed restrictions not only on the polo fields, but on additional open space parcels conveyed under the same grant deed. The petition asserts that increased traffic, large events, and expanded commercial uses threaten surrounding communities and the San Dieguito River Park, and that the City relied on outdated data while bypassing required CEQA review.

​The California Environmental Quality Act prohibits an agency from treating all projects under a program as ministerial where even some of those projects may require the application of discretion. The City’s ADU Density Bonus Program does not supersede the City’s Land Development Code, which requires discretionary processing in instances where important resources are located on a project site. Yet, the City has established a pattern and practice of treating all such projects ministerially and failing to exercise its discretion and apply its Municipal Code when required.
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The 136-unit “Chalcifica” project is proposed by SDRE Homebuyers, a development firm behind several highly controversial ADU projects that rely on the ADU Density Bonus Program and are functionally apartment complexes located on single-family residential parcels. The project is currently undergoing a ministerial approval process, despite the fact that there are well-documented, significant tribal cultural resources onsite, as well as steep hillsides and high fire risk. CBLG alleges that the processing of this project as ministerial is in violation of CEQA and seeks to compel the City to exercise its lawful discretion in determining whether to approve or deny the project. 

In the Petition, Chatten-Brown Law Group documented extensive evidence of the City’s failure to acquire lands for conservation, failure to re-zone lands acquired to a zoning designation that would ensure permanent protection, failure to update the in-lieu fee amount to serve as a deterrent for incompatible development, failure to maintain lands that the City identifies as already-preserved, failure to meet targets set by the PSHCP, and failure to adhere to the special design guidelines. As set forth in the Petition, each of these failures is a separate and distinct violation of the PSHCP’s requirements.
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As stated by Dave Hogan, Sierra Club San Diego Legal Chair, “In spite of repeated requests from state and federal agencies, the City of Poway has failed to uphold its promise to safeguard sensitive habitat lands . . . Simply put, Poway has refused carry out its obligations to protect nature.”  Jeff Schmidt, President of Preserve Wild Poway, added, “City leadership has willfully neglected its responsibilities. As a result, the City has failed to properly mitigate habitat loss due to development, irreparably damaged the reserve design, and imposed serious consequences on our regional wildlife.”

​The California Environmental Quality Act requires agencies to conduct environmental review before committing to a course of action; here, the County finalized and implemented terms of the contract—including the fee schedule, the counters American Airlines would use, and the scheduled times for the flights—before conducting environmental review. American Airlines also began to sell tickets from the airport before the contract was even approved by the Board of Supervisors.

The McClellan-Palomar Airport is also subject to a Conditional Use Permit granted after the land was annexed by the City of Carlsbad, so the County must seek an amendment to the permit to change the airport’s designation from B-II. The planes American Airlines intends to operate from the airport are C-III designated, which are larger than may be safely operated at a B-II airport, yet the County did not seek an amendment to the Conditional Use Permit, as required by a Court Order.
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The County Board of Supervisors approved the contract despite these violations. Citizens for a Friendly Airport has filed a lawsuit to challenge the contract. 

​The project proposed to utilize incentives intended for affordable housing projects to seek waivers from the City’s zoning regulations for a medical office building, based on promises of housing in a later “second phase” of the project. Additionally, the City of San Diego’s Development Services Department originally concluded that the site contained steep hillsides, which would have required the project to undergo the City’s more scrutinous discretionary review as opposed to ministerial review and to adhere to the City’s Steep Hillside Regulations, which have long served to preserve San Diego’s canyons and hillsides. When the City attempted to later argue that the site was not subject to the Steep Hillside Regulations, CBLG provided extensive evidence, including the City’s own surveys, to demonstrate that the site was part of a steep hillside system, which would be compromised by the footprint of the project and the planned excavations. CBLG also raised community member’s concerns that the existing building on site was a historical resource, as it was designed by Lloyd Ruocco and Homer Delawie, two prominent architects who pioneered the local modernism movement.

​Legal experts weigh in on Caltrans’ approval of a controversial $140 million freeway interchange expansion project in Fresno County raising serious questions about the validity of Caltrans’ environmental review under state law.
 
A copy of the article can be viewed below.

Dan Silver, Executive Director of the Endangered Habitats League, explains: “[The City is] basically saying it was the California Coastal Commission’s job to designate the environmentally sensitive habitat areas…It’s the city’s job to designate it, not somebody else’s. The courts have determined that when a city has an LCP (Local Coastal Program) under the Coastal Act, it needs to identify ESHA. They are really just circumventing the process.”
 
A copy of the article can be viewed below. 

​Endangered Habitats League filed a Petition for Writ of Mandate, alleging violations under the California Coastal Act and California Environmental Quality Act during the City of Encinitas’ environmental review and approval of the Piraeus Point project. In particular, the Petition challenges the City’s claim that it had no duty to consider the presence of Environmentally Sensitive Habitat Areas, whose protections are paramount under the Coastal Act.  
 
A copy of the Petition can be viewed below.

​Under the settlement agreement, Lennar Homes will apply for the construction of new roads for emergency access and evacuation, fund evacuation equipment storage sheds, add more park area at Junipers and plant trees to screen noise and pollution from I-15.
A copy of the article can be viewed below.

CBLG client PQ-NE Action Group and Lennar Homes reached a settlement agreement permitting Lennar Homes to resume construction of the 536-unit Junipers senior community development in Rancho Penasquitos in exchange for Lennar Homes taking specific actions to lessen traffic, noise, and wildfire threats. 

​Under the settlement agreement, Lennar Homes will build a new wildfire evacuation route, provide more park space at Junipers, plant trees to screen noise and emissions from I-5, and build road upgrades to ease traffic congestion.
 
A copy of the article can be viewed below.