Possible Sites for Sports Center Kept Hush-Hush

Although San Diego’s bid to become the first warm-weather U.S. Olympic athletic training site was unanimously approved Friday by U.S. Olympic Committee delegates meeting in Washington, the location of the seven sites being considered for the multimillion-dollar sports complex remained a close-kept secret, sparking opposition to the otherwise uncontroversial project.

Councilwoman Gloria McColl, leader of the local group promoting San Diego as a training center for the nation’s elite amateur athletes, pledged to Olympic Committee delegates that a site acceptable by both Olympic officials and the local task force would be selected within 90 days.

On her return to San Diego late Friday, McColl said the locations under consideration for the Olympic training center would remain unidentified while a final choice is made.

Site Selection Will Be Private

Olympic officials, representatives of the 35 or so Olympic sports organizations and local task force members will make the final site choice in private, before public hearings about the location are held, she said.

Investigations into possible archeological deposits on some sites and other factors “which might trigger some sensitivity” will be made, she said, during the private negotiation period.

Councilman Robert Filner, the only council member to vote against the proposal, reiterated Friday that he will remain opposed until there is full public disclosure about site locations.

“They have kept it a closed, secretive process in order to keep opposition from surfacing” about specific locations for the massive complex. “I cannot vote to support such a project unless the locations are made public and the financial commitments of the city are made public,” Filner said.

He added that he believes the local volunteer group that has been working to obtain Olympic Committee approval for a year-round training center here “has gone about it all wrong” and should have been more forthright.

“I’m sure that no one on the Olympics committee would want to locate at a site where there was opposition, and it would be better that any arguments come out in advance,” he said. “This way, they are inviting public suspicion, and I am one of the suspicious ones.”

Filner said that the “secretive process” made him wonder whether land in the city’s urban reserve, areas that cannot be developed until after 1995, might be under consideration for the training site.

Marla Marshall, a McColl aide, said that some of the private developers who had offered sites to the city had asked that their proposals not be publicized.

The five private and two public sites now under consideration are not in areas where opposition has surfaced, Marshall said. City land near Lake Hodges, property in Mission Trails Regional Park and sites in Balboa Park have definitely been ruled out, she said.

Other Reservations

Councilwoman Judy McCarty also expressed reservations about the Olympic training center, pointing out that it was “antithetical to the entire no-growth movement.”

McCarty said she supported the project because of “the tremendous amount of work that Gloria (McColl) and those people have put into the effort of attracting this facility.” She said she had been assured by McColl that all agreements would be aired at public hearings before a final decision is made.

Dal Watkins, who heads the San Diego Convention & Visitors Bureau, said the prestige of being the country’s only fair-weather Olympic training center should put San Diego into the international spotlight.

He said center and its athletes “will attract hundreds of thousands of visitors from all over the world” to the San Diego area, boosting the economy.

ConVis has not played a large role in the local efforts to attract the Olympic center here, but Watkins praised the task force’s selection of Les Land and Peg Nugent as project administrators “because of their important roles in the very successful Super Bowl effort.”

Nugent was hired two months ago by the city for a new post as special projects coordinator and presumably will devote part of her time to the Olympic training center project.