Pond 20 - Economic Development with Potential 2024 Olympics

An announcement last week revealed that San Diego was one of the 34 cities approached by the US Olympic Committee to make a bid to host the 2024 Summer Games.   When asked about our chances, a representative from the City of San Diego Exploratory Committee said “We’re looking very, very good”. Last Saturday during a segment of the Winter Olympic coverage, Matt Laurer of NBC, while in Sochi, did a piece on the United States’ efforts to win the 2024 Summer games, and the first candidate location out of his mouth was “San Diego”.

In our effort to promote economic development of Pond 20, we submitted a formal Letter of Interest to the Port District for the Pacific Coast Historical Dinner Show, including a 1,200 seat indoor arena surrounding a pond-like “stage”, please see www.pchdinnershow.com.  The aerial view renderings of this concept for Pond 20 include a velodrome (Olympic track bike racing event), a BMX Track (Olympic event), a Rowing Club (Olympic event), and a large multi-use area (countless applications).

In addition to the above-mentioned social and economic drivers, a 4-year university concept was proposed that showed homegrown architectural features and advanced environmental concepts for coexistence with nature, for these details please see webpage or search IB Patch Blogs “Pond 20 University”. The proposed buildings have multi-use potential, from classrooms to dormitories to offices to high-tech manufacturing, and more.

All of the above-mentioned concepts can be justified as stand-alone economic and social developments.  In other words, these concepts could be successful whether or not the Olympic Summer Games came to San Diego.

Success is where preparation meets opportunity.  NOW is the time to focus on the economic development for Pond 20, and fully explore how the possibility of the Olympic Games of 2024 could be leveraged to benefit our community.

It would be a travesty of justice to lose the opportunity to use Pond 20 for much-needed improvements to the economic and social fabric of the IB Area.  When I say “lose” I am specifically referring to the selling away of our future prosperity to the Land Mitigation Bankers (wetland and dryland restoration), that want to bolster their own self-serving economic and power interests, at our expense. Without vote or referendum, the citizens of the IB Area have already given too much to their cause.

It’s time to get started showing the real potential of the people of the South Bay to make great things happen.