After more than two years exploring its options, San Diego is now preparing to market the empty old Central Library at Eighth Avenue and E Street for sale or lease to maximize redevelopment of the half-block, downtown property where height limits are not a constraining factor.

Thursday, San Diego’s Land Use and Housing Committee voted 3-0 in favor of declaring the old Central Library at 820 E St. as surplus land.

The surplus designation means the city no longer needs the facility and has ruled out other options, such as redeveloping the property entirely for low-income housing. With the designation, the city can sell or lease the site for redevelopment — but it must follow the noticing and negotiating requirements of California’s Surplus Land Act.

Under the law, bidders need to set aside at least 25% of proposed residential units for affordable housing, meaning deed-restricted units rented to low- and very-low-income families making 80% or less of the area median income.

Although committee members agreed at a high level with Mayor Todd Gloria’s decision to offload the asset, they weren’t ready to give him the authority to seek bids for redevelopment without a broader policy conversation.

“I certainly believe that we should declare this property surplus. What I’m less comfortable with is giving carte blanche to the mayor and city staff to issue the notice availability without the City Council providing some more guidance,” Councilmember Sean Elo-Rivera said.

Elo-Rivera said he first wanted to the see the notice of availability, which is typically a short, stock document that alerts affordable housing developers registered with the state that the city intends to sell or lease its property.

“This is an incredibly important property. It’s an important action,” he said. “It seems appropriate for the council to provide some clear direction, if we choose to do so as a body, in terms of what is included in that notice of availability and what isn’t.”

The committee’s action tees up consideration by the full council at a later date. The future discussion will likely center around how council members can add development obligations to the noticing document without curtailing market demand.

Opened in 1954 and closed in 2013, the old Central Library is a locally designated historic resource that sat empty for nearly a decade before being used intermittently as a temporary homeless shelter, starting in 2023.

Over the years, developers have contemplated various alternative uses, including a 42-story apartment tower proposed by Bosa Development. The tower proposal was eventually scraped by the prolific builder in 2018.

More recently, the facility has been roped into the city’s ongoing conversation about homelessness.

The old Central Library was analyzed as an alternative to the failed Kettner and Vine shelter proposal. However, the estimated cost to renovate the 150,000 square-foot facility’s three floors and two basement levels was recently pegged at $86.8 million. The venue was ruled out as a viable homeless shelter option in February.

The mayor’s request to offload the city-owned asset dates to March 2023, when San Diego was preparing to put its Civic Center real estate on the market.

At the time, a few council members expressed interest in lumping the property in with the Civic Center blocks and other city-owned land to solicit developer interest for everything at the same time. The idea was to make excess city land available to quickly boost the production of homes for people of varying income levels. City staff recommended instead that the old Central Library be evaluated independently from the other sites.

The Civic Center blocks, which went on to be advertised for lease or sale per the Surplus Land Act a few months later, attracted no interest.

San Diego, pending approval by the full council, will also solicit interest in the old Central Library under the Surplus Land Act. The law was amended in 2019 to prioritize affordable housing when government-owned land is sold or leased.

The process begins with the notice of availability, which starts the clock on a 60-day window for interested bidders to respond with redevelopment plans. After the window, the law requires the city to engage in a 90-day negotiation period with respondents and give priority to the entity proposing the highest number of affordable housing units.

The city expects to publish the notice of availability for the old Central Library in the summer, Christina Bibler, director of the city’s Economic Development Department, told the Union-Tribune.

The timeline could get tripped up if council members take issue with the noticing document, which was not included in the agenda materials for Thursday’s meetings.

The current iteration of the document was described by Lucy Contreras, the city’s deputy director of real estate, as consistent with the Surplus Land Act noticing requirements. Interested parties will need to meet the affordable housing requirement, as well as comply with guidelines pertaining to the redevelopment of historic properties. The old Central Library’s historic elements include the building’s exterior, the csidewalk with the city seal, and two, city-owned sculptures on the facade.

“The intent is for us to put forward (a notice of availability) that either puts the property out for purchase or for lease, with the intent of maximizing the redevelopment potential of the site,” Contreras said. “If there were specific conditions that were going to be proposed in the (notice of availability), this would be the time, as well as with council, to have a conversation about (that).”

Elo-Rivera said he wanted to see the document before recommending additions.

“Pardon me for not just trusting the process here, but there’s nothing for us to read,” he said. “The council may decide that before we just open it up to the market and see what capitalism does for us, we instead draw some parameters and see if we can get a little bit closer to our goals on our first attempt.”

Councilmember Raul Campillo said his priorities for the property are on-site child care and residential units large enough for families.

Real estate analyst Gary London, a principal of local firm London Moeder Advisors, cautioned against the city adding more conditions in a weak real estate market challenged with limited access to capital and economic uncertainty.

The Surplus Land Act requirement to reserve 25% of residential units as affordable already challenges the feasibility of any project, he said.

“Whenever the city interferes with the marketplace, things go wrong,” London said. “While I agree with (Campillo) in terms of the kind of concept that ought to come out of (the solicitation), the idea of shoving that down a developer’s throat is basically inviting lower bids or a lack of bids.”

Councilmembers Kent Lee, Elo-Rivera and Campillo voted to pass on their recommendation for approval of the surplus designation to the full council. Councilmember Vivian Moreno was absent.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection’s San Diego Sector is experiencing a dramatic shift in its mission due to far fewer asylum seekers and undocumented migrant crossings.

CBP is spreading the message that you could be risking your life crossing the U.S.-Mexico border illegally.

“Catch and release is now over,” CBP Agent Justin Castrejon said. “You will receive serious consequences if you cross the border illegally.”

Castejon says the San Diego Sector was averaging 1,500 to 2,000 arrests per day. One year later, and it’s less than 30 people.

Agents are no longer spending most of their time processing and caring for those requesting asylum. Instead, they are back on patrol.

If it seems they are attempting more maritime crossings, both CBP and immigration advocate Pedro Rios say increased patrols have led to more captures, not more boats. 

“They are detecting more of them,” Rios said. “They are spending more time in the air, which means they will detect more of them that they might not have detected in the past.”

Maritime crossings have proved deadly. A recent incident near Torrey Pines State Beach killed three, and a 10-year-old Indian girl is likely the fourth. She is missing and presumed dead. Rios says attempting to cross illegally is more dangerous than ever.

NBC 7’s Dave Summers tells us more about those arrested in the South Bay and charged in connection with the deaths.

“The terrain, whether it is the desert or mountains or the maritime crossings, increasing the risk of injury or even death,” Rios said.

“These smugglers have no regard for the people they are smuggling. They don’t see them as human beings, only as human cargo,“ Castrejon said.

If caught, there could be fines, detention and deportation. Castrejon says the return is usually on a repatriation flight to Mexico City, instead of the nearest border town. The agent says that is a practice meant to put more distance between the migrants from the human smugglers.

“Sending them to Mexico City or even southern Mexico makes it more difficult to return and attempt that journey again,“ Rios said.

Castrejon says the majority of those attempting to cross now are Mexican nationals, unlike the surges of last year that included people from countries all over the world.

Rios says he and his group, the American Friends Service Committee, are spending more of their time holding informational meetings with migrants who were deported or waiting for asylum in Tijuana shelters.

As concern mounts over dangerous maritime smuggling crossings, U.S. Rep. Mike Levin said this week that he plans to ask Congress for $60 million in federal funding to install surveillance towers along the San Diego coast.

The move comes a week after three people died when a panga with 18 people aboard capsized off the coast of Del Mar. A 10-year-old girl also went missing and is presumed dead.

“Last week’s accident shows us that there’s a lot more we still have to do,” Levin, D-San Juan Capistrano, said at a news conference Monday in Del Mar. “As our land border tightens up … bad actors will continue to explore new ways to enter the U.S.”

Levin said he requested funding for autonomous surveillance towers to be deployed along maritime borders. These would include additional cameras, radar and infrared technology to help intercept maritime threats, he said.

Such technology is currently used at the U.S.-Mexico land border, according to a Border Patrol spokesperson. The solar-powered towers reach up to 33 feet tall and have a 3-mile diameter range, according to the U.S. Customs and Border Protection website.

The cameras use artificial intelligence, the agency said, to sort out real concerns from false positives. As a group or something of interest moves about, the monitoring is handed off from tower to tower, “keeping the electronic eyes on the situation at all times,” the agency said.

When the towers catch something of note, agents in the field get an alert on their phones or tablets.

There are towers for land use and maritime use, said Dave Maass, director of investigations with Electronic Frontier Foundation, a nonprofit that advocates for digital privacy. He said the United Kingdom uses similar technology to monitor the English Channel.

Locally, he said, there is at least one maritime camera on private property in Del Mar, north of Dog Beach, and another at Friendship Park along the border in San Diego.

Maass said it’s not clear what the maritime towers watch, whether they look just to the water or also see people on the beaches.

“I don’t think people have a good sense of what they are capturing and what they are seeing,” Maass said. “There should be some transparency about that, because if they are capturing people on the beach, questions should be asked.”

Levin said he was briefed on last week’s fatal incident by CBP’s air and maritime operations, as well as the U.S. Coast Guard. He then asked officials what was needed to prevent such incidents.

He said he hopes the autonomous system would be a deterrent to smugglers, who typically wait for bad weather to slip ashore. With bad weather comes greater safety risks.

“One common denominator currently hindering interdiction and response efforts is heavy fog or issues related to weather conditions,” he said. “That was the instance last week. These towers would help fill the gaps in our detection efforts and help make our borders more secure.”

As the number of migrant encounters between land ports of entry have declined, officials have said that maritime crossings could become more common.

Since the start of the Trump administration, the U.S. Coast Guard has tripled its resources on the southern border “to enhance border security, immigration enforcement, and to protect the territorial integrity of the United States,” the agency said in late March.

A family devastated

Last week’s incident was the region’s worst maritime smuggling disaster since 2023, when eight people, all Mexican nationals, died after two vessels capsized off the coast of Black’s Beach in La Jolla.

In the most recent tragedy, three people — two Mexican nationals and a 14-year-old boy from India — died at the beach. A fourth, the boy’s 10-year-old sister from India, is missing and presumed dead.

The children’s parents were among four people taken to a La Jolla hospital, where their father was in a coma. The hospital declined Monday to provide an update on the status of the patients.

The Indian Express news site interviewed the uncle of the man in the coma, who said his nephew had owned a business but the pandemic left him in financial trouble.

The uncle, identified as Anil Patel, said that last he knew, the family of four had gone to London on a visitor’s visa in October. He assumed the family would return. “They did not tell us that they were planning to enter the U.S. through the illegal route,” he said.

Patel said the Indian Consulate in San Francisco informed his family of the deaths of the two children.

Recent smuggling attempts

Del Mar has been the site of numerous maritime crossings in recent years — Del Mar Chief Lifeguard Jon Edelbrock said he’s responded to “hundreds” — and on Monday, city officials publicly supported Levin’s efforts to better secure the coastline.

“It is important to underscore that incidents like these are dangerous and put everyone involved at risk,” said Del Mar Mayor Terry Gaasterland. “We support efforts to bring the criminals involved with these human smuggling activities to justice and to prevent this activity from continuing in the future.”

From May 4 through Saturday, there were 11 maritime smuggling incidents on the Southwest border, according to weekly data from the U.S. Coast Guard in Southern California. Another nine cases were reported the week before, involving 52 people.

Over a 13-hour period on Saturday, Coast Guard personnel interdicted three suspected smuggling boats off the coast of San Diego and detained 18 people, officials said. One captain intentionally beached his boat while being pursued by a Coast Guard cutter, while another only stopped after a Coast Guard crew member fired copper slugs into the boat’s engine to disable it.

The first incident began after a 24-foot cabin cruiser was spotted around 4:40 a.m. by a Coast Guard cutter that activated its blue lights while trying to stop it. The boat’s captain sped off toward shore and intentionally ran into the sand near Windansea Beach, where 13 people jumped off and began running.

Homeland Security officers on shore were able to apprehend five men from Mexico, a woman from Cuba and a woman from Guatemala. Six got away, officials said.

The second incident occurred around 2:40 p.m. when a Coast Guard crew did a routine security boarding on a 20-foot pleasure craft 2 miles south of Point Loma. The boat was not displaying any registration, and the three people onboard were not authorized to enter the U.S. The three were detained and transferred to Homeland Security officials.

The final incident occurred around 5:50 p.m. when officials spotted an 18-foot cuddy cabin traveling north near Point Loma and watched with surveillance cameras as it entered San Diego Bay, officials said.

A Coast Guard boat crew went to intercept the vessel, but the captain drove off. The crew used verbal commands and fired several loud warning shots to try to get the captain to stop. When that didn’t work, a crew member fired four copper slugs into the engine to disable it. The crew boarded the boat and found eight people onboard, including five men, one woman and two teen boys. All were detained.

Besides the funding request, the congressman is also part of a bipartisan group of legislators that in February reintroduced a bill that aims to expand CBP’s jurisdiction from 12 to 24 nautical miles offshore.

“Specifically, it will increase detection, interdiction, and ultimately prosecution of those who are attempting to bring illegal cargoes (narcotics, bulk cash, guns and human trafficking victims) into the nation,” Levin’s office said in a news release.

San Diego County Supervisor Jim Desmond, a Republican who is running for Levin’s congressional district, called the effort “too little, too late.”

“Mike Levin has been complicit in the chaos we’re seeing today,” Desmond said in a statement. “This isn’t leadership — it’s political damage control.”

Levin said Monday he plans to submit the request for federal funding “within the next few days.”

Staff writer Karen Kucher contributed to this report.