Port agrees to consider revised proposal for Coronado Ferry Landing

The operator of the Coronado Ferry Landing retail center and its government agency landlord will seek to bridge a $17.5-million divide and mend a fractured relationship as the parties’ contentious contract dispute quickly approaches a cliff.

Tuesday, the board for the Port of San Diego, which controls the tidelands around San Diego Bay, agreed to evaluate a recently revised lease and renovation proposal from its longtime tenant, Port Coronado Associates LLC. The board of port commissioners, however, did not consent to a one-year lease extension, as requested by PCA.

The decision leaves a seven-month window of opportunity to come to terms before the operator’s current lease expires at the end of June.

But the gap is wide and tensions are high.

“No tenant, no entity, no business, has the right to control public land in perpetuity. Nobody does,” Commissioner Dan Malcolm said. “Controlling public land, being a tenant on public land is a privilege. And in order to to keep that privilege, you’ve got to go over a very high bar, the least of which is complying with your lease document, maintaining your property and maintaining it in a way that that doesn’t cause life safety problems, and where you don’t walk on the property and see obvious signs of deferred maintenance.”

The remarks address the heart of the disagreement.

PCA believes it is entitled to a 40-year lease extension since it has proposed to invest nearly $20 million into revital...