Miguel Aguirre is determined to make it happen

By Barbara Zaragoza

SANDAG is nearing completion of its 15-month study to create an iconic National Gateway at San Ysidro’s Trolley Station, known as the Intermodal Transportation Center or ITC. But San Ysidro community members believe that the design falls short. In particular, Miguel Aguirre, a principal and part owner of the Historic Landmark McDonald’s Trolley Station Building is fighting hard for SANDAG and the City of San Diego to think bigger.

Aguirre was born at Scripps hospital to parents who emigrated from Mexico to La Jolla in 1956. His father started out as a bus boy at the La Jolla Beach & Tennis Club and his mother was a cleaning lady in the plush homes nearby.

Aguirre grew up in San Diego going back and forth across the border for cultural reasons. He remembers, “In the 1960’s it was very easy to cross the border. In fact, if the wait was more than ten or fifteen minutes, you would hear the cars start honking.”

Aguirre graduated from Point Loma College in 1984 and started his career in commercial real estate. He first managed lease transactions at the Kmart center on the west side of the POE. It was right here in San Ysidro where the first West Coast Factory Outlet was established in 1987. By 2003 Aguirre bought the McDonald’s Trolley Station Building with a group of business partners and he has managed it ever since. Thanks to his long-term commitment to building up the region economically, in February he was awarded the “Border Advocate Of The Year” by the San Ysidro Chamber of Commerce.

If the ITC project goes through, the City will buy Aguirre’s property through eminent domain and then demolish it. But Aguirre welcomes the potential. In fact, with the help of talented architects, he has constructed his own world class design that he believes resolves not only the current transportation problems at the border, but serves high level global trade agendas and will be embraced as a win-win for all of Southern California as well as for binational relations with Mexico.

The Grand Vision

Currently, at the intersection next to the trolley station a glut of cars, taxis, jitneys, buses, Pedicabs and private shuttles all crash together. The parking lots are usually marked full. The sidewalks are narrow with women, children and the elderly dodging through traffic. Solicitors confront pedestrians with illegitimate transportation out of town, also known as wildcatting, and often firetrucks and ambulances get stuck in traffic despite blaring their sirens.

Aguirre says, “The only way you’re going to resolve these mobility conflicts is by segregating the paths of travel. The trolley needs to go up. Once you take the trolley up, everything changes.”

Aguirre’s design lifts the trolley tracks 35 feet above grade level and repositions the station 600 hundred feet away from the border. With the trolley in Aguirre’s new location, the station also helps feed into the community of San Ysidro where, right now, only 14 percent of cross-border pedestrians enter.

He additionally wants the bridge that crosses over the Interstate 5 to connect into a mezzanine level of a Grand Central station. One story below, pedestrians who come out of the border processing building will enter into a grand plaza with a fountain, retail stores and restaurants. A ramp will then go down into a subterranean intercity bus terminal. The trolley will be on the second floor surrounded by more retail stores and perhaps even a world-class hotel and a major convention center meant for binational meetings.

Aguirre says that if the City of San Diego goes big on this project, private investors will come. “Right now San Ysidro has become positioned within the Trans Pacific. We are at the center of it. We are no longer at the Southwest most extreme corner. We are where Canada and the U.S. meet Mexico at the Pacific Rim to exchange. The increase in commercial truck crossing and even air cargo is about to explode here in San Diego-Tijuana-Otay Mesa. That’s going to create a vacuum for services, for transportation and for tourism.”

Opposition

SANDAG representatives working on the ITC have undertaken extensive research with the help of San Ysidro community members, border crossers and their own team of architects. Their design, however, keeps the trolley tracks at grade level which, therefore, still collides with pedestrians. The total cost is projected at a mere $200 million.

It’s unclear why SANDAG has low-balled the project, but the reason may lie in concerns voiced by public officials over the cost. In particular, at SANDAG’s Transportation Committee meetings, opponents have noted that the San Ysidro Trolley Station is not a tourist destination, but only a transportation hub where people come and immediately leave.

San Diego County Supervisor, Ron Roberts, for example, explained at the May 3, 2013 Transportation Committee meeting that the focus needs to be on the transit part of the ITC. He said, “This is going to be the starting point to the single seat ride that will be able to take you all the way up to an enormous shopping center, UTC.”

Roberts was referring to the Westfield UTC Mall, which in 2012 kicked off a $1 billion renovation project that intends to include high rise buildings, 150 shops  and 3,000 new parking spaces. The mall is expected to have 8 million shoppers.

Compare that to the approximately 21 million people who cross through the San Ysidro border annually in order to shop. That’s according to the Simon Property Group, owners of Las Americas as well as the Fashion Valley Mall (near where an above-grade trolley already exists).

Roberts was also a prominent backer of the MidCoast Trolley line, which will be constructed in 2015 and will have five new trolley stations, including at UCSD and Westfiled UTC.

SANDAG helped to secure the funding for the MidCoast Trolley through the TransNet half-cent sales tax as well as from the Federal Transportation Commission. The total cost, at first, reached $1.2 billion, but then an extra $500 million was deemed necessary, pushing the cost to $1.7 billion. The daily ridership for all five stations is projected to be 20,000.

Meanwhile, an average 11,461-trolley riders board at the San Ysidro Station every weekday, although Aguirre says the number is probably more than double that. While MTS annually collects 54 percent of its operating costs through fares (more than double the nationwide average of 24 percent) MTS officials credit the San Ysidro Trolley Station for the bulk of that revenue.

Although San Ysidro trolley riders (through their payment of fares) and shoppers (through their sales tax dollars) clearly generate immense revenues for San Diego County, at Transportation Committee meetings, the attendees have said that a world class hotel and a convention center for binational conferences are unnecessary. They note that they expect negative returns from the private sector as well. The committee has, however, approved SANDAG’s ITC design at the estimated cost of $200 million.

Aguirre says the fight for a world class global grand central station is not over. He is currently trying to get the attention of key representatives in San Diego County and even politicians in Washington D.C. In addition, he is working with potential investors.

If his design concept doesn’t come to fruition, he foresees a missed economic mega-catalyst for the entire binational region. “We could be poised to become the American Trans Pacific Symbol of the 21st Century,” Miguel Aguirre says.

“Under my plan, everybody wins.”

For more information about the ITC, see SANDAG’s website: http://www.sandag.org/index.asp?projectid=425&fuseaction=projects.detail