Daily Business Report: August 11, 2026
Community rallies to help renovate Fire Station 16 in La Jolla
By Karen Pearlman | Special to Times of San Diego
After more than four decades, firefighters at San Diego Fire Station 16 are finally getting something most people take for granted: a quiet, private place to sleep.
The station on Mount Soledad is undergoing its first major renovation since opening in 1982, replacing cramped, makeshift sleeping quarters with insulated private rooms designed to give firefighters the uninterrupted rest they need between emergency calls.
The nearly $150,000 project, now in its final stages, culminates years of discussion and planning.
Is There Enough Cliff to Support Any Del Mar Housing Development?
by Fiona Bork| Voice of San Diego
Below the cliffs overlooking Del Mar’s Dog Beach, caution tape encircles mounds of sand that have accumulated from repeated landslides. Signs warn beachgoers to, “stay back!”
A woman who owns part of this triangular peninsula, known as the North Bluff, has waited 25 years to develop it. The city of Del Mar has opposed every large-scale development effort there, though the land presents an opportunity to build the affordable housing the state mandates.
Del Mar needs to make way for 113 low-income units by 2029, according to the state of California. The city has failed to meet state targets, especially for low-income housing, in the past. It has also supported efforts to override state housing laws in favor of local control over housing and land-use decisions.
Lawsuit Abuse Is Raising California’s Cost of Living
by John Allard | California Globe
Ask anyone who runs a business in California what keeps them up at night and the answer is familiar: payroll, rent, energy costs, regulation, and an insurance bill that seems to rise every year. Less often discussed, but just as real, is the cost of litigation. Even before a lawsuit is filed, businesses price that risk into nearly every decision they make, from whether to hire another worker to whether they can afford to keep operating in California at all.
Start with the size of the problem. In 2022, tort costs in the United States reached $529 billion, or 2.1 percent of GDP, and the U.S. Chamber Institute for Legal Reform projects they could exceed $900 billion by 2030 if current trends continue. No legislature voted for that burden. No candidate ran on it. But families pay this tort tax anyway.
Nowhere is this tax more visible than California. The American Tort Reform Foundation’s latest “Judicial Hellholes” report calls California “the trial bar’s laboratory,” where lawyers pursue “innovative new theories of liability” and push the envelope on business liability. The same report notes that California produced 199 nuclear verdicts, meaning awards of $10 million or more, from 2013 through 2022, totaling more than $9 billion.
