Politically targeted security contractor Blackwater is staying in San Diego despite recently withdrawing controversial plans to build an 824-acre training camp near the U.S.-Mexico border.

Blackwater has become a Democratic Party symbol of the Bush administration’s Iraq quagmire. San Diego peace activists mobilized with local residents in rural Potrero last year to fight Blackwater’s proposed training camp there, culminating in five members of Potrero’s community planning board being recalled. Congressional critics have included San Diego’s Democratic U.S. Rep. Bob Filner of Chula Vista.

Blackwater now has a city permit for a border-adjacent, Navy-focused, 61,600-square-foot indoor training facility in a warehouse district in San Diego’s Otay Mesa neighborhood. City officials gave Blackwater the permit in mid-March, the Union-Tribune reported this week.