A metal storage building on the pier in San Diego? Gerry Braun of The Union-Tribune can hardly believe it...

A lot of folks in the backcountry like to use big, ugly storage sheds. But neighbors complained so much about these hulking metal building eyesores that a law was passed banishing them from front yards.

In San Diego, we think of the waterfront as our front yard. So it came as something of a shock this month when the Port Commission decided that Broadway Pier would be the perfect place to plop down the equivalent of a humongous cargo container.

In fairness to Port officials, none of them use the term “humongous cargo container.” They prefer “prefabricated metal building.” Same thing, I say.

The metal building they have in mind would be about 40 feet high, 70 feet wide and 400 feet long. It would serve as a second cruise ship terminal, a place for seafaring tourists to disembark with bulging wallets and return, hours later, with bulging shopping bags.

Port commissioners approved the idea knowing little more about the structure than what you now do. There are no designs, just a sketch of what looks like a sinister warehouse, the sort where hostages are held in kung fu movies.

Compounding the indignity, the Port says this tin monstrosity will be a permanent addition to the waterfront, not, as earlier claimed, a temporary commercial steel building to be torn down once the B Street terminal is remodeled.

The architect does not have a big budget. But Rita Vandergaw, the Port's director of marketing, said that an awful lot can be done with paint and colored lighting.

“Your imagination can run wild with this,” Vandergaw said to me, inviting trouble.

Before that happens, I should point out that others have been imagining the future of the waterfront for many years, and at no point did their imaginings include this prefabricated metal building.

Rather, they imagined Broadway Pier as a public open space with a platform for viewing San Diego Bay and for peering down Broadway into the heart of the city.

Port officials evidently imagine that parade a little differently: a long line of convertibles being driven to a chop shop.

The best ideas for Broadway Pier are spelled out in the North Embarcadero Visionary Plan, a $228 million waterfront master plan that the city and the Port have approved already.

Apparently when the Port gave its approval, its fingers were crossed.

Included is a conceptual design for Broadway Pier that has been around for about five years. It shows a golden pier where people stroll among decorative silver towers, some of which are topped with tall silver plumes like you might see on dancers in a floor show at the Copacabana.

It's not my cup of tea, but neither is a metal building and a patchwork of garage doors, no matter how colorfully they are painted.