Imagine New Yorkers asking for the Statue of Liberty to be moved elsewhere, allowing condos to be built on Ellis Island (which developers attempted to do), or telling the United Nations that New York is the wrong place for their headquarters.
Yet you do not have to imagine San Diegans taking this type of action. You can see it with the Naval Training Center demolition.
Business leaders in New York know the importance landmark symbols and institutions play in building it into a great city of commerce. They know preserving statements of high principle and lofty action in the long run vastly benefit the economic bottom line of their local business community.
San Diego, on the other hand, has been described as a poor stepsister to another great city, Los Angeles. It has struggled to forge its own identity in the shadow of this modern-day Rome. We seek to prove we are a major-league city by building temples for our sports franchises when in fact our opportunity is to become something much greater.
It has been said that we are a new Athens to emerge as the “First City of the 21st Century.” Yet, destruction of NTC indicates we do not know completely what it takes to become a great city of the world. When a region looks to gain the attention of the world’s most influential people or to inspire the general population to embrace new ideas, the most cost-effective method is altruistic service. Nothing else delivers more bang for the buck or good will.
Global Center of Influence?
NTC’s reuse is first a decision whether the business community desires San Diego to emerge as a global center of influence and power. If that is the case, then demolishing this most subtly powerful and strategic asset for the sole purpose of standard commercial development of houses, offices and hotels is extraordinarily counterproductive.
Public reuse is the opportunity to effectively introduce emerging technologies, such as those coming forth from the biotechnology industry, to a general public which may have fears and reservations to their development. By NTC being a neutral ground to resolve with adversarial forces these types of issues, challenges are addressed in a manner beneficial to everyone.
Sustainable Development
Also, NTC is the opportunity to teach today’s and tomorrow’s community leaders from around the world the skills and ideas which nearly all global leaders see as the most vital and necessary today. By doing this, we grow a priceless army of boosters who look first to us for guidance and advice on cutting-edge ideas. The emerging concept and mandate available to accomplish this is sustainable development. Sustainable development is larger than smart growth, fuel-cell cars or new environmental techniques.
Sustainable development also is more than ensuring future generations have adequate resources to meet their needs. It is a process of understanding the full implications of actions from a heightened perspective and ensuring what we do actually maximizes our prosperity and abundance , not only on the economic bottom line, but also in our quality of life. It is a tool of such irresistible power that more top global visionaries and leaders than most imagine are already laying the groundwork for its implementation.
Former President George H. W. Bush understood the value of sustainable development. For that reason, sustainable development was the only major policy brought forth at the Rio Earth Summit which he agreed to commit the United States.
While some environmentalists have since coined sustainable development “Republican environmentalism,” at its heart is a transcendent process encompassing the integrity and ethics NTC taught and which any long-lasting corporation lays as its foundation.
President Bill Clinton went on to bring top American business, environmental and social leaders together to define what sustainable development is. After “10 Goals Toward a Sustainable America” were developed, the next step was to demonstrate them. NTC, whose design incorporates sustainable design principles, is the ideal site.
Federal officials told me that transforming NTC into America’s first demonstration and research center dedicated to sustainable development was entirely possible. This would create a campus as valuable to business as UCSD.
Even though the president’s council on sustainable development was disbanded and demolition of this unique facility has proceeded, the opportunity to implement this federal mandate at NTC has not gone away. The world is looking to America to take action implementing sustainable development. While many major corporations have discovered that even a limited understanding of this concept dramatically improves the bottom line, the bigger prize is discovering how the whole puzzle goes together.
Rarely does the opportunity to dramatically build a region’s economic health through a cutting edge service program occur. Because this is not a cut-and-paste decision but rather requires effort, careful due diligence, abstract, out-of-the-box thinking and expanded vision makes it a more, not less, profitable course of action.
It’s an action capable of catapulting San Diego’s tremendous research focuses and cutting edge businesses to new levels of prominence. A use entirely capable of being financially self-supporting. And a direction that provides vital reasons for our country’s best and brightest to be living in and energizing our city’s core.
An Opportunity Lost?
Loss of this opportunity to be at the forefront of sweeping global changes should be a bigger concern to the business community than Corky McMillin getting the $1 billion Naval Training Center for $8. Or that NTC, being a redevelopment district, means tax revenues generated in the development will subsidize this commercial reuse instead of propping up a tenuous city budget.
Brian Fletcher, a descendent of Col. Ed Fletcher and the person who brought forth a lawsuit on the NTC decision, understands setting property aside for high purpose and good business sense are more than compatible. As Col. Fletcher knew, they are essential. The San Diego business community should not be fighting public efforts to preserve NTC but instead be taking the time to understand the bigger opportunity. It is in the business community’s interest to actively work with the community to ensure NTC reuse is for the most broad, inclusive and noble public purpose.
A reuse that, like in New York, recognizes the value to the business community of preserving great symbols of democracy and freedom and ensures local businesses reap the rewards of doing the right thing in making San Diego the center of the largest emerging global trend of our time.
McNab, a spokesman for Save Our NTC, Inc., is a former Navy officer and a resident of Golden Hill.