What will become of 76 prime acres?

Now that San Diego finally has the legal right to evict the residents of a waterfront mobile home park on Mission Bay, city officials and community leaders have begun discussing what to do with the park’s 76 prime acres.

Previous proposals for the De Anza Cove site have included building a resort hotel with a botanical garden, restoring the area to ecosystem-friendly marshland, erecting community amenities such as sports fields, or combinations of those ideas.

Most of those proposals have either been abandoned or have spent years collecting dust on shelves while a legal battle over the 500-space mobile home park dragged on for 11 years.

But the city and the residents agreed this fall to a $29 million settlement that became final Nov. 16 when the appeals period expired. The park’s roughly 1,000 residents are scheduled to move out no later than February 2016.

While city officials say they aren’t close to deciding what will become of the site, the City Council’s Smart Growth and Land Use Committee has scheduled a February hearing to discuss a hybrid proposal that’s been praised by many people.

The “Mission Bay Gateway” plan would improve water quality in the bay by making roughly 50 acres of the park marshland, while also building an aquatics center, a skateboard park and an amphitheater.

It would also include building a nature interpretive center, creating a bird sanctuary and connecting bicycle and pedestrian paths now interrupted by the mobile home park.

“It’s a balance between improving the environment, providing recreation and accentuating educational opportunities,” said Scott Chipman, a longtime Pacific Beach resident who helped craft the plan four years ago with input from community leaders.

He said it dovetails with the goals of the Mission Bay Master Plan, which aims to boost public access to the bay and increase recreational opportunities.

Chipman said a particularly appealing element would be that all of the amenities could be built without any taxpayer money.

The marsh land could be sold to developers as mitigation for destroying marshes and similar sensitive habitat in other places.

“Marsh land is the most expensive kind of mitigation land,” said Chipman, estimating his plan could yield as much as $40 million for amenities.

Councilwoman Lorie Zapf, whose new district includes the land, has praised the plan as a way to boost the environment while also providing recreational opportunities that residents and tourists have been craving.

A spokeswoman for Zapf said last week that the councilwoman wouldn’t support proposals that include hotels or private development of the site.

The spokeswoman, Alex Bell, stressed that the state gave the land to the city in 1945 for recreational purposes, a key factor in the lawsuit involving the mobile home park, which was an illegal residential use of the land.

Despite that, a developer proposed a plan in 1989 that would have brought 1,400 hotel rooms and a botanical garden to the site.

That plan never came together, and similar proposals would face many hurdles, said Bill Harris, spokesman for the city’s Transportation and Stormwater Department.

Unless the hotel was much less dense than most resorts, the city and the Coastal Commission would have to allow an exception to the area’s 30-foot height limit, he said.

Harris noted there was “an outright community revolt” when city officials suggested lifting that height limit last spring in order to build multi-story condominiums along the planned Morena Boulevard trolley extension.

Before moving forward with any proposals, Harris said city officials would probably issue a “request for qualifications” to find someone to create a plan. He said no time line for that has been set.

Mayor Kevin Faulconer said last year, while he was a councilman representing the beach communities, that the Mission Bay Gateway proposal should be among those considered.

Brian Curry, chairman of the Pacific Beach Planning Group, said his group has supported the plan since Chipman unveiled it.

“I think Scott’s plan seems very reasonable,” Curry said. “It may not end up being exactly like that, but it’s the right idea.”

Megan Baehrens, executive director of San Diego Coastkeeper, said she couldn’t comment on the specifics of Chipman’s proposal, but said it wouldn’t be a nonstarter just because some of the land wouldn’t be preserved.

She suggested the city should focus, when choosing what to do with the land, on proposals that account for sea level rise attributed to global warming climate change.

“Mission Bay is an area that will be affected by rising sea level,” she said.