Voters in Tuesday's election rejected the San Diego City Council's rezoning plan for the Barrio Logan waterfront.
Sixty percent of voters voted against Proposition B and 62 percent said no to Proposition C, defeating both measures.
"This means we can retain the culture, we can retain the feel of what Barrio Logan was and what it can be in the future," opponent John Alvarado said.
San Diego City Council first approved the plan in a 5-4 vote last September. However, opponents launched an aggressive referendum drive, collecting enough signatures to get the issue on the June ballot.
The debate was between community activists and the maritime industry. The plan proposed in the ballot measures would have created a buffer zone between homes and the shipyards.
Supporters said the buffer would protect the community from pollution. But opponents, who spent more than $1 million on their campaign, said the plan was bad for business and would have put thousands of jobs on the line.
City Councilman David Alvarez, one of the chief supporters of the plan, said the opposition told voters false information.
"At the end of the day, they spent over a million dollars telling people that the Navy was going to leave, jobs were going to be lost, none of which is true," Alvarez said. Nonetheless, we are where we are, and what's most unfortunate is that Barrio Logan, a community that's been so neglected, a neighborhood that's really just been left behind for the last 35 years, is still in the same spot it was before. Nothing's changed."
For California Marine Cleaning owner Matt Carr, city leaders’ attempt at rezoning was not a cure.
Carr has been involved in the ongoing process and feels it has been biased against businesses since the beginning.
“The problems with the community plan still need to be worked out,” he said.
Now that Props B and C have been rejected, the Barrio Logan community plan approved by council will be thrown out and zoning changes can not be resubmitted to council for one year.
