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Judge Taylor Rules for SOHO on Balboa Park Court fees
February 2016
SOHO won a resounding victory in court last month, marking the last phase of our more than three-year legal battle over Balboa Park. A Superior Court judge ruled that we are not responsible for $96,000 in legal fees incurred by the Plaza de Panama Committee, backed by Irwin Jacobs. Thus ended our 2012 lawsuit to prevent the destruction of Balboa Park's historic core, which was threatened by Jacobs' Centennial Bridge, massive bypass and parking structure.
Furthermore, Judge Timothy Taylor argued in his January 8 decision that SOHO, not the Committee and the City, essentially won the case over time. Indeed, SOHO successfully stopped the construction that would have gutted a National Historic Landmark District, he wrote, an effort that significantly benefitted the public. Taylor also noted that former Mayor Bob Filner successfully revamped the Plaza de Panama and rid it of parked cars without damaging the park. In addition, Taylor reasoned, time ran out to complete Jacobs' irreversible radical makeover by the start of Centennial celebrations on January 1, 2015, and the development permit expired.
Taylor concluded: "Said another way, it is more than arguable that SOHO was the 'successful party,' by stopping the Centennial Bridge and the parking structure, neither of which appear to this court to be on the proverbial drawing board as 2016 begins and Balboa Park begins its second century. Any [public] benefit conferred by the Committee is theoretical only, as it could not work on the Centennial Bridge or the parking structure absent a reissuance of the [permit] (which appears unlikely to occur)."
Read more in the Reader article HERE
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