By Donald H. Harrison
SAN DIEGO – It was a long time coming – 28 years in fact – but, as San Diego City Councilman Raul Campillo declared at a community celebration on Saturday, Aug 5: “We bought the lot!”
Now plans can proceed to build a modern, 25,000-square-foot “state-of-the-art” branch library in the San Carlos neighborhood. The planned structure has been estimated to cost between $29.5 million and $29.8 million and will replace the 8,400-square-foot library that had been built in 1974.
The event, held on the recently purchased lot, which formerly had been the site of an ARCO gasoline station, featured speeches by Campillo; San Diego Mayor Todd Gloria; Congresswoman Sara Jacobs; San Diego Library Director Misty Jones; and Patrick Stewart, the CEO of the Library Foundation S.D.
If anyone ever doubted that we Jews are still the “people of the book,” they might have been convinced by the names that were called out during the library ceremony. Jewish community members, living and dead, who were mentioned, in addition to Congresswoman Jacobs, included the late Jack Wiener, who was a major advocate for an expanded San Carlos branch library; Sue Braun, a former member of the San Diego City School Board, who was a member of the citywide Friends of the Library organization and for whose family a small library is named at Tifereth Israel Synagogue; the late Price Club/ Costco entrepreneur Sol Price; and Art Goldstein, the ARCO representative who participated in a 1995 ceremony by which the oil company leased the lot to the City of San Diego at a very favorable rate.
Braun was introduced from the audience as was former San Diego Mayor Dick Murphy, who prior to serving as mayor, had been the councilman from the 7th Council District that Campillo now represents.
Adjacent to the current library at 7265 Jackson Drive, the lot and speakers’ area were decorated with bright red roses. Campillo explained why: “On July 25, 1995, a public ceremony was held at this very lot to celebrate the agreement for the city to lease for $1 per year and to essentially purchase the real estate for $150,000. [The late] Councilwoman Judy McCarty presented the ARCO representative, Art Goldstein, with a red rose and a $5 bill as payment for the first five years of the city’s lease of this lot!”
Before the lease arrangement could be converted to a sale, ARCO and its successor corporations had to remediate the land on which the gas station had stood, and various levels of government had to verify that the soil had been sufficiently cleansed of oil products to be environmentally fit. The last of those approvals, from the water quality board, came earlier this year. At that point, the City of San Diego, which had been dutifully keeping up its $1-a-year payments, forked over the $150,000 to the Tesoro Refining and Marketing Co., which had inherited the property from British Petroleum, which in turn had taken over the property (and others) from ARCO.
The grant deed, showing that the City of San Diego now owns the lot at the northwest corner of Jackson and Golfcrest Drives, was recorded as Document # 2023-0168555 on Wednesday, June 28, by County Assessor Jordan Z. Marks, another member of the Jewish community.
In emphasizing how long it took from that day in 1995 to this Saturday, Campillo noted that after the lease was agreed to, many San Carlos residents hoped to take their children, and later their grandchildren, to a new library, even as he and his wife, Nadia, hope to do when their first child is born later this year.
Further emphasizing the time that had elapsed, Campillo said that in 1995 a hotdog at Qualcomm Stadium cost $1.49, just a penny less than “the really good Hebrew National hot dog” and soft drink combination at the local Costco, a chain that had absorbed its predecessor Price Club. Today, Campillo reported, a hotdog costs $7.50 at Petco Stadium, but continues to cost $1.50 with a drink at Costco. However, he quipped, the Costco hot dog no longer comes with onions. Nor, one might add, does Costco serve Hebrew National hot dogs anymore, but the hotdogs are all-beef.
Picking up the Costco theme, Mayor Gloria said he loves Costco hotdogs and invited Campillo to join him at a Costco one day for lunch. “It’s the best deal in town, thank you Sol Price, for ever and ever,” the mayor commented. The mayor actually had more than Costco to thank Price for; the Price family had established the Aaron Price Fellowship in which students spent two years touring and learning about business and government. From that Fellowship, Gloria proceeded to college and then to the staff of [former] Assemblywoman Susan Davis (D-San Diego) who previously had served as director of the Price Fellowship, and thereby launched his career.
Gloria said his role at Saturday’s ceremony was that of a supporting actor. “I am Robin to Raul Campillo’s Batman,” he said. “We have purchased the lot but we still have a funding gap,” Gloria said. “We are counting on our federal and state partners to help. Councilmember Campillo and I have worked this through the city’s budget process for this particular year — $5 million for this project. We are piecing it together but there is still something of a gap. We are counting on our philanthropic community.”
“We will get this done,” Gloria declared. “We will work as long as it takes, as hard as it takes, to make sure that now that we own this lot that it doesn’t stay a lot; that it becomes a library, a place for the people, if you will; a place where the community can come together.”
Campillo, in an interview following the ceremony, reported that he believes there is a very good chance that the state Legislature will provide 2-to-1 matching funds for the San Carlos branch library, meaning another $10 million, thanks to the support for the project from the State Senate President pro tempore Toni Atkins, D-San Diego. Adding to the pot, he said, may be a federal grant of at least $850,000 that Congresswoman Jacobs has gotten through the House Appropriations Committee. But the budget measure in which the San Carlos Branch Library figures still must be passed by the House and Senate and approved by President Biden. Even with the city, state, and federal funds, Campillo said, “we are going to need eight figures ($10 million or more) from philanthropy, and that is where San Diego’s Library Foundation can come through. This is one of the most-desired, longest-planned libraries in the city and we feel the philanthropic community is ready to step up, because they have been asking ‘When can we help?’”
Jacobs told the crowd of more than 100 that she was pleased to have bipartisan support for her measure, one of 15 local projects for which she has been seeking funding from Congress.
“Libraries are on the front lines of our fight to preserve, recognize, and teach our history and our truth, to fight back against information and hateful book bans, and to empower a new generation to think critically and to reflect and to learn and to do better,” the Democratic congresswoman said.
Pointing to some preschoolers who had accompanied their mother to the event, Jacobs, 34, said that “this project was a long time coming. In fact, I was about their age when we started this!”
Misty Jones, director of the city’s libraries, said the new library, when built “will serve as a flagship library for Council District 7.” The new branch will provide the community with a “modern, spacious, and fully-equipped library that meets the needs of the residents. The new library will be able to accommodate a larger collection of books and other materials as well as provide dedicated spaces for children, teens, community events, workshops, programs, study rooms, a large community room, an ideal layout, indoor and outdoor space, and a proper space for The Friends of the Library.”
Over the years, Jones later told me, library usage has undergone changes. “Before it was a lot about checking out books and coming in to borrow materials. Now we are seeing them as gathering spaces. We are seeing our visitors go up. Our circulation statistics have gone down a little bit. They are coming back after COVID, but we are seeing more and more people coming in to experience programs, to meet with other people, and using it for meeting room space.”
Patrick Stewart, the San Diego Library Foundation CEO, told the gathering, “Paramount to San Diego Public Library’s ability to deliver on its promise of opportunity, discovery, and inspiration is ensuring that our libraries are modern, they are technologically equipped, and they have the needs of its patrons.”
More money needs to be raised, and he pointed out, not coincidentally that the San Carlos Branch Library was having its monthly used book sale on that very day. Ron McFee, book sale manager, said typically the once-a-month sales bring in about $2,000 for an annual total of $24,000. Buttressed by fast sales of newly donated science fiction novels, the proceeds on this Saturday came to $2,345, McFee said.
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Donald H. Harrison is editor emeritus of San Diego Jewish World. He may be contacted via donald.harrison@sdjewishworld.com