Home Care In Vista, CA

California’s meetings and events landscape has a new heavyweight. The Gaylord Pacific Resort & Convention Centre

This hotel opened in spring and is now the largest hotel convention property in the State and one of the most ambitious hospitality projects on the West Coast.

Developed by RIDA Development and operated by Marriott International under its Gaylord Hotels brand, the resort represents a $1.3 billion investment and has taken than two decades in the planning. Set on a 36-acre waterfront site just south of San Diego, the property is designed to serve as a self-contained hub for large-scale conventions, corporate retreats, and bleisure travel.

The numbers are staggering: 1,600 guest rooms (including 89 suites), 477,000 square feet of meeting and event space, and California’s largest hotel ballroom at 140,000 square feet. There are 67 breakout rooms and 135,000 square feet of outdoor event lawns and terraces. The design prioritises flow and flexibility, with all venues accessible via the central atrium, the signature Gaylord feature that floods the space with natural light and nautical flair.

Guest rooms range from 389 to 623 square feet, with floor-to-ceiling windows, dedicated workspaces, and high-speed connectivity. Suites offer additional living areas and connecting options for executive teams, while the Presidential Penthouse stretches to 3,200 square feet with private balconies and spa-style bathrooms.

For downtime, the resort offers a 4.25-acre water park, a 7,500-square-foot fitness centre, and the Relâche Spa & Salon. Dining is a major draw, with 12 venues including Old Hickory Steakhouse, Treo Kitchen + Bar, Taiy? sushi, and Growlers Sports Bar & Taproom with Michelin-trained executive chef Jakob Esko overseeing the whole culinary programme.

The “all under one roof” model is central to the Gaylord brand. Planners benefit from dedicated event managers nicknamed “Teal Coats” who coordinate logistics from registration to closing banquets. The layout allows attendees to move between sessions, meals, and accommodation without stepping outside, streamlining large-scale operations.

The resort’s opening coincides with a rebound in group travel and corporate events. Early bookings suggest strong demand from national associations and international delegations. City officials estimate the Gaylord Pacific will generate $475 million annually for the local economy, catalysing development along Chula Vista’s bayfront.

With fewer than 13,000 hotel rooms under construction statewide in 2025, a 21% decline from the previous year, the Gaylord Pacific stands almost alone in its scale. Opening rates start at $350 per night, climbing to over $500 on weekends, with Bonvoy redemptions available from 44,000 points.

The Gaylord Pacific isn’t just a hotel; it’s a purpose-built city of meetings. For business travellers and planners, it offers a compelling new stage on the West Coast. Whether it becomes California’s answer to Las Vegas will depend on how the market responds – but the message is clear: Chula Vista has arrived.

Eleven dogs and two cats were found living in hoarding-like conditions at an apartment in Vista, according to San Diego Humane Society.

VISTA, CA — Thirteen pets were recused from an abandoned apartment in northern San Diego County.

Eleven dogs and two cats were found living in hoarding-like conditions at an apartment in Vista, according to San Diego Humane Society. The four-day rescue operation began after the property's landlord contacted authorities, reporting that the tenant had not been seen for several weeks.

With assistance from the San Diego County Sheriff's Department, officers entered the two-bedroom apartment Wednesday and found dogs hiding under beds and furniture.

The rescue was extremely challenging due to the amount of trash and debris filling the apartment, according to San Diego Humane Society. The dogs had created tunnels to move around inside the unit, which was stacked floor-to-ceiling with household items.

The multi-day effort required additional staff, large dumpsters and deep cleaning, San Diego Humane Society officials said.

The small dogs, including Pomeranians and Chihuahuas, were frightened and in poor condition, with fleas, skin issues and overgrown nails, officials said.

They were receiving medical care at San Diego Humane Society's Oceanside campus and have been placed under emergency boarding status as officers continue to investigate this case. The team also plans to continue to use traps and cameras to ensure all animals have been rescued from the property.

"This is a heartbreaking case, but we are grateful these animals are finally safe," San Diego Humane Society Chief of Humane Law Enforcement Jace Huggins said. "Sadly, situations like this happen when pet owners become overwhelmed or face personal challenges. If you or someone you know is struggling to care for pets, please reach out for help before it gets out of control."

The mass intake comes at a time when San Diego Humane Society is already at record levels of dog capacity, officials said. With the addition of the Vista rescue, the organization is now caring for 792 dogs.

Forty years ago today, the Grateful Dead wrapped the second and final leg of their tour with a Sunday afternoon show at DeVore Field, a small football stadium on the campus of Southwestern College in Chula Vista, CA. Spanish for “beautiful view,” the city sits halfway between San Diego and Tijuana, Mexico, with Southwestern’s campus located on its eastern fringes.

The band, then in its ’80s lineup of Mickey Hart (drums), Bill Kreutzmann (drums), Brent Mydland (keyboards, vocals), Phil Lesh (bass, vocals), Bob Weir (guitar, vocals) and Jerry Garcia (guitar, vocals), were finishing one of the better periods of the so-called “dirty ’80s” era, a time when Garcia’s health and substance abuse issues made for inconsistent shows and tours. The initial leg of the tour would be the best start-to-finish run of the era. While the beginning of the second leg was marked by Garcia’s fluctuations in stamina during outdoor shows in intense heat, the band kept finding ways to work around it.

Grateful Dead — DeVore Field — Chula Vista, CA — 9/15/85 — Full Audio

[Audio: Jonathan Aizen]

The band had two days off before the show, so they were well-rested as they took the stage just after 2 p.m. on a beautiful late summer day, with temperatures in the high 70s and a light breeze. The first set was relaxing, enjoyable, and essentially a warmup for what would come.

Garcia opened the show with “Alabama Getaway” as Weir countered with Chuck Berry’s “Promised Land” and its California references. Two more California-tinged songs followed via Garcia’s “West L.A. Fadeaway” and Weir’s take on Bakersfield native Merle Haggard’s “Mama Tried”, pairing it with Johnny Cash’s “Big River”. Next up was “Dupree’s Diamond Blues” with a couple of strained vocal notes from Garcia, and the set’s highlight came from Weir’s rare first set airing of Howlin’ Wolf’s “Smokestack Lightning, which got some extra room to stretch out before Garcia knocked out “Deal” to close the set.

The first half was all perfectly good on a relaxing summer afternoon in California, but the show would get weird and lurch into higher gear at the top of the second set, with the initial spark coming from the decision to blast through a loud, effects-laden version of the Twilight Zone theme after tuning up. The band and longtime Garcia collaborator Merl Saunders had actually scored the 1985 reboot of the show earlier in the year, so this wasn’t completely out of nowhere. But the short instrumental freakout with loud effects panning back and forth jump-started one of the most unpredictable sets of the year.

The Twilight Zone theme led straight into 23 minutes of “Scarlet Begonias” and “Fire on the Mountain”, with Garcia hitting all of his marks. Both the “Scarlet” mid-song solo and outro jam contained patient, gradual swells with a consistency and focus that were sometimes missing during this era.

The jam gradually transitioned into “Fire on the Mountain” over the span of more than a minute, and the ensuing 12 minutes of “Fire” were equally patient and consistent. After a quick break to retune, Weir belted out the Dead’s arrangement of Reverend Gary Davis’ “Samson and Delilah”, a staple of Sunday Dead shows.

The band had now reached a point in the show where Garcia might be fatigued enough to head offstage and prompt Kreutzmann and Hart to start the “Drums” segment a song or two early, but instead Garcia delivered the show’s high point—arguably the finest version of Bob Dylan’s “She Belongs To Me” that he’d ever play with the Grateful Dead. The performance was so definitive that it later became track 2 on the 2002 official release Postcards of the Hanging, a compilation of standout live Grateful Dead performances of Bob Dylan songs. Garcia’s serene delivery made for a quieter version of the song, but he’d found the zone and cast a spell over a mesmerized crowd.

After Weir led the band through their autobiographical anthem “Truckin’” and its short buildup-then-booms jam, Deadheads recording the show readied themselves for the upcoming “Drums” segment and the tape flip, as the band had now played five songs that had lasted 43 minutes during an era when the “pre-Drums” section of the show rarely exceeded 45 minutes.

But Garcia, clearly still feeling the vibe from “She Belongs To Me”, instead steered the music into “Comes A Time”, a sporadically played ballad undergoing one of its periodic revivals in 1985 after a four-year absence. It led straight to an even more unexpected moment; the band remained onstage for a seventh song, Chuck Berry’s “Around And Around”, while tapers raised their eyebrows and exchanged glances.

“Around” had been a staple in the Dead’s repertoire since the early ’70s, but by 1980 it had lost its extended double-time closing jam and become a formulaic three-and-a-half-minute number that invariably appeared as the second-to-last song in second sets, between Garcia’s late-show ballad and Weir’s rocking set-closer. Were the band about to cut the show short by skipping the “Drums” and “Space” segments for the first time since 1978?

Nope. Hart and Kreutzmann got to do their thing immediately after “Around”, but from the get-go, “Drums” felt different coming so late in the show. The first half was a subtler, marimba-led segment that sounded great in the afternoon sun, before a workout of larger drums of The Beast upped the intensity.

“Space” then tumbled along pleasantly for over seven minutes until Garcia hit an effects pedal and started toying with the notes of “U.S. Blues”, which had not made an appearance outside the encore slot since 1976. Weir signaled his approval with some loud squalls on his guitar, the drummers provided a nice rolling intro as the song just sort of surfed out of the PA, and its novel placement inspired the band to deliver one of the best versions of the song in years.

So, was this now the end of the show? Not yet. Weir counted in The Rolling Stones’ “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction” to close the set, and it too would be one of the best versions they’d ever play, ultimately set apart by Mydland’s chemistry with Weir. Mydland’s improvisation of steady backing vocals prompted Weir to build up an effective call-and-response vocal vamp that continued upward to a loud, screaming peak, and Mydland’s full-blast Hammond B3 chords during the song’s closing crescendo served as the final exclamation point of a gloriously weird set.

It all returned to normal for one song with the tour-closing encore of “Brokedown Palace”, a gentle come-down before the drive home. But the crowd had been wowed by a second set with an unusual concentration of highlights and surprises, and the show remains a strong candidate for an official release.

Grateful Dead — DeVore Field — Chula Vista, CA — 9/15/85 — Partial Video

[Video: Christopher Hazard]

Setlist: Grateful Dead | DeVore Field | Chula Vista, CA | 9/15/85

Set One: Alabama Getaway > Promised Land (Chuck Berry), West L.A. Fadeaway, Mama Tried (Merle Haggard) > Big River (Johnny Cash), Dupree’s Diamond Blues, Smokestack Lightning (Howlin’ Wolf), Deal Set Two: Twilight Zone Theme > Scarlet Begonias > Fire on the Mountain, Samson and Delilah (Traditional), She Belongs To Me (Bob Dylan), Truckin’ > Comes A Time > Around and Around (Chuck Berry) > Drums > Space > U.S. Blues > (I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction (The Rolling Stones) Encore: Brokedown Palace

If you live in Chula Vista, whether you can walk to a public park nearby depends largely on which side of the freeway you live.

In 2020, Chula Vista residents who live east of Interstate 805 had access to almost the amount of park space per person than residents on the city’s older, more industrialized west side.

This year though, Chula Vista officials are taking a step towards mending those inequities. The city parks department is drawing up a proposal for a new half-acre park in the city’s southwest corner, on an empty lot at the corner of Oxford Street and Fourth Avenue.

The new park would extend access to over 4,000 people who currently don’t have a park within walking distance — many of whom are low income and identify as Latino. That’s according to the , a national environmental group that studies parkland, whose data Chula Vista officials are relying on for their planning.

It would be the first new park that Chula Vista has built west of the I-805 in nearly 20 years, said Chula Vista Parks and Recreation Director Frank Carson. The last park city officials built on the west side was Harborside Park in 2006.

“I want more places like this,” Carson said. “I want more opportunities like this for western Chula Vista.”

Many residents are already excited about the idea. Jacob Helfman, a West Chula Vista resident and geographic information systems (GIS) researcher who has studied parkland access, said the move would be a step in the right direction.

“I felt like the city is paying attention to the community's needs,” Helfman said. “They're making progress.”

West Chula Vista is certainly not alone in its relative lack of parkland. Many Americans do not have public parks in their neighborhoods, a loss that disproportionately affects .

That’s despite the fact that having a public park nearby can . Researchers have found that they encourage physical fitness, improve air quality and cool down neighborhoods on hot days. People who live close to parks are more likely to be healthy and physically active.

The city’s park system also came under scrutiny as the number of people falling into homelessness . Amid the turmoil, dozens of unhoused residents took shelter and established an encampment at Harborside Park in southwest Chula Vista.

City officials moved to evict the Harborside encampment, citing higher rates of arrests and reported crimes than other city parks. They considered closing the park for good but backed down after .

Chula Vista has a overall when compared to other large cities in the United States, according to the Trust for Public Land.

The city maintains close to 3,300 acres of parkland. 70% of residents live within a 10 minute walk of a park, much higher than the national average. But much of that parkland is part of East Chula Vista’s newer, master-planned communities.

It’s not yet clear how much the proposed park would cost the city. Carson said his department would look to state and federal grants, along with funding from the city’s .

The proposal still has to make it through a series of community meetings and other planning decisions before it would go before the City Council. City officials are currently in the process of from the surrounding neighborhoods.

Carson expects a final decision by February.

The land where the park would sit doesn’t look like much right now. Four years ago, it was an aging fire station . Now, it’s an empty concrete lot filled with dead leaves, dry grasses and a leaning eucalyptus tree.

Oscar Rodriguez, 52, lives just a few blocks from the lot. He was excited about the planned park, and said he was thinking about the needs of seniors and disabled people. Rodriguez wants to see more trees and a restroom, along with maybe some food vendors.

“It would be nice to relax,” Rodriguez said. “Instead of going a block to another park, or possibly long-distance walking.”

Carson said many of the people who have responded to online surveys so far want to see a dog park. He envisions a fenced-off section for dogs to play, along with a playground, exercise equipment and picnic tables.

He does have hopes of keeping the tilting eucalyptus tree.

“This is an at least 30-year-old eucalyptus tree, and it is a wonderful piece of shade,” Carson said. “I'd hope to keep it here as part of the park.”