La Jolla News Nuggets: Gillispie renovation, tennis tournament, meal packing, more

Gillispie School to renovate Girard Avenue building

Plans are taking shape to expand Gillispie School’s Fielden Hall, which faces Girard Avenue in La Jolla.

Local architect AJ Remen presented plans for the building’s renovation at the Nov. 10 La Jolla Planned District Ordinance Committee meeting, saying it would increase the number of “much-needed” classrooms.

Though the project is technically outside the jurisdiction of the PDO Committee, Remen said he “wanted to be a good neighbor” and present the plans so local residents could be informed before work begins.

“The main aspect of what is being added to is the second floor,” he said. “What you’ll see is not much more than what is already there. … The goal is to make it look like it was always part of the campus.”

Once renovated, the space to be developed will be used for classrooms. Currently, the area is used for attic space, mechanical wells for the gymnasium and light wells.

The intent is to complete the renovation of the exterior in the summer, when students are not in school. The interior renovation would be carried out when the fall session begins.

Beach & Tennis Club readies for December tennis tournament

The La Jolla Beach & Tennis Club will be the home of the Hard Courts tennis tournament Monday through Sunday, Dec. 1-7.

The event is a U.S. Tennis Association-sanctioned national tournament assembling top players from across the United States in the National 40, father/son and grandfather/grandson divisions.

Learn more at ljbtc.com/tennis/tournaments.

Meal-packing event coming to Bird Rock

The Bird Rock Foundation is partnering with the La Jolla Sunrise Rotary Club and The Outreach Program to help pack 30,000 meals for people in need this holiday season.

Participants can either donate money to pay for food items or volunteer during the meal-packing event from 9:30 a.m. to noon Saturday, Dec. 6, in the Bird Rock Elementary School auditorium, 5371 La Jolla Hermosa Ave.

Two volunteer shifts will be available: 9:30-10:30 a.m. and 11 a.m. to noon. Each shift is limited to 100 participants. A $50 donation is requested from each.

Volunteers must be in first grade or older. Children must be accompanied by an adult.

To learn more or sign up, go to zeffy.com/en-US/ticketing/bird-rock-gives-back-food-packing-event.

S.D. says yes to higher hotel valet parking fees but delays decision on hikes on street dining

The San Diego City Council approved a sharp increase in fees for hotels’ valet parking areas but postponed a decision on whether restaurants must pay more for on-street dining spaces.

City officials OK’d the valet hikes Nov. 4 since San Diego loses revenue when valet parking areas take up on-street spaces that otherwise could be metered parking spots. But critics say the fee increases are too steep and may worsen traffic congestion if hotels eliminate valet spots.

Annual fees for the two subsidized valet spots every hotel gets will rise from $634 to $5,000. Fees for any additional spots will go from $317 to $7,500 — less than the $10,000 proposed by Mayor Todd Gloria’s staff. In special-event zones like one recently established near Petco Park, annual fees for additional spots will jump from $317 to $10,000 — less than the $15,000 proposed by Gloria’s staff.

Even with the reduction, many hotels will see their annual costs for valet spots jump from less than $1,000 to more than $50,000, depending on how many spots they now use and how many they decide to keep.

Kim Avant, general manager of La Jolla’s Grande Colonial hotel, home to Nine-Ten Restaurant, said last month that the hotel has long-standing, city-approved valet parking arrangements with five “loading zone” spaces in front of the property at 910 Prospect St.

“Valet fees were never intended to serve as a budget-balancing mechanism,” Avant said of the proposed fee hikes. “They were designed to cover maintenance and manage turnover, ensuring access to local businesses, not to penalize them.”

She said the city’s plan would “force businesses to raise prices, cut jobs or reconsider future investments in San Diego.”

San Diego council committee votes to stop towing for expired vehicle registration

In light of adverse effects on college students and low-income people, the San Diego City Council’s Public Safety Committee voted unanimously Nov. 12 to support changing the penalty for expired vehicle registration from towing to a citation.

Registrations expired beyond six months are the No. 1 reason San Diego police order vehicles towed. A large percentage of towed vehicles are sold at auction because the owners can’t afford the fines.

The new policy, which needs approval from the full City Council in coming weeks, “is narrowly written to apply only to overdue registrations, which we will continue to enforce but with citations — not by taking and selling the cars of college students and low-income residents,” said Councilman Stephen Whitburn.

The new policy wouldn’t apply to tows ordered for violations of any other parking law, such as the city’s 72-hour rule for street parking or the oversize-vehicle ordinance.

Bishop’s musicians perform in refugee benefit concert

More than a dozen musicians from The Bishop’s School in La Jolla recently participated in the second Youth Benefit Concert in support of refugee youth education. All together, the concert featured more than 60 young musicians and singers from across San Diego presenting performances ranging from symphonic and folk ensembles to solo piano, viola and traditional instruments.

The musicians performed Nov. 8 at Good Samaritan Episcopal Church near La Jolla, raising more than $8,000 for RefugeeNet, a San Diego nonprofit that serves refugee families. The concert doubled its audience and tripled its donations compared with last year’s debut, organizers said.

UCSD study links weight-loss medications to improved colon cancer survival rates

A new study from UC San Diego in La Jolla offers evidence that the class of weight-loss drugs behind Ozempic, Wegovy and Mounjaro may do more than regulate blood sugar and weight — it might improve the chances of surviving colon cancer.

In an analysis of more than 6,800 colon cancer patients across all University of California Health sites, researchers determined that those taking GLP-1 medications were less than half as likely to die of the disease within five years as those who weren’t on the drugs (15.5% vs. 37.1%).

The survival benefit appeared most pronounced in patients with a very high body mass index (over 35), hinting that GLP-1 drugs may help counteract the inflammatory and metabolic conditions that worsen colon cancer prognosis. Researchers believe that beyond regulating blood sugar, GLP-1 receptor agonists reduce systemic inflammation, improve insulin sensitivity and promote weight loss — all factors that can dampen tumor-promoting pathways.

Laboratory studies also suggest that GLP-1 drugs may directly prevent cancer cell growth, trigger cancer cell death and reshape the tumor microenvironment.

However, scientists say more research is needed to confirm the mechanisms and determine whether the survival benefit represents a direct anti-cancer effect or an indirect result of improved metabolic health.

La Jolla lab looking at new approach to colorectal cancer tracking

More than 50,000 people in the United States will die from colorectal cancer this year, according to the Colorectal Cancer Alliance. But Miguel Reina-Campos, an assistant professor at the La Jolla Institute for Immunology, hopes his lab can help change that.

In a new initiative, Reina-Campos will work closely with UC San Diego Ph.D. student Harrison Ma to track how metastatic cancer cells — which are considered notoriously difficult to track because they can hide in organs for years before growing into new tumors — move through different organs.

“Curing colorectal cancer is not so much about targeting the primary tumor,” Reina-Campos said. “We need to go after the tumor cells that metastasize and end up in the liver or the lung or the brain.”

Reina-Campos and his lab have devised a way to spy on metastatic cancer cells. The team plans to use organoids, which are cancer cells that form small spheres, to shed light on where metastatic cancer cells go once they leave the primary tumor.

To facilitate this work, Reina-Campos recently received the Project Cure CRC Young Investigator Accelerator Award from the Colorectal Cancer Alliance to support a new project called “Neighborhood Watch.” The LJI researchers plan to use advanced bioinformatics and data analysis tools to uncover how immune cells and metastatic cancer cells interact in each organ “neighborhood.”

San Diego Unified’s Family Resource Guide is now available

People visiting the San Diego Unified School District website, sandiegounified.org, now are greeted with new grade-level information streams, weekly newsletters specific to district areas and a new Family Resource Guide to San Diego Unified.

Superintendent Fabiola Bagula said the new resource enables the district to better communicate. It includes tips for new families, information about before- and after-school programs, facts about the district, a guide to acronyms, information about students’ and families’ legal rights and more.

The guide is available in English, Spanish, Filipino, Somali and Vietnamese.

— San Diego Union-Tribune staff writer David Garrick contributed to this report.