By Adam Behar / San Diego Reader / July 24, 2024
Community planning group considerations are supposed to be boring. Infrastructure, environmental impact reports, traffic studies, zoning…important stuff, but also dull enough to make most people zone out. But not this year. This year, University City and Hillcrest are updating their community plans, plans that will serve as a road map for developers in the coming years. The question those plans seek to answer: what should the community look and feel like from now until 2050? Arriving at that answer has been anything but boring.
On one side, you have the city planning department, the mayor and city council, and the building industry, along with other special interests; their mantra is build, build, build. They want to urbanize and densify University City and Hillcrest via high-rise apartment buildings and tons more people, essentially turning them into downtowns. On the other side, you have community planning groups, community activists, and homeowners, who say some density is okay, but don’t want their communities to become unrecognizable. They don’t want high rises to engulf single-family homes; they don’t want congested roads to ruin their quality of life. They don’t want their communities to be turned into downtowns, because they aren’t downtowns — not yet, anyway.
But density appears to be destiny. Because on July 30, it seems a fait accompli that the city council will vote to approve development-friendly community plan updates for both University City and Hillcrest. If approved, University City, whose plan hasn’t been updated since 1987, would see its current population of 65,400 nearly double to well over 129,566 residents. The plan would pave the way for development of over 30,000 housing units, including high-rise apartment buildings and commercial space. It will add 72,000 jobs to the area, 162,000 jobs in total, by 2050. The Hillcrest Focused Plan Amendment to the Uptown Community Plan would increase the population of Uptown from around 40,000 to more than 100,000 by 2050. The plan was first updated in 2016; the amended plan would add 17,000 new housing units, many in luxury apartment towers.
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A long but interesting read, but, hey rents are coming down. So don’t be fooled by the YIMBY mantra.
https://timesofsandiego.com/business/2024/07/25/substantial-changes-shown-in-san-diego-regional-rental-market/
chris, your post is confusing. you say rents are coming down, but don’t be fooled by yimby. are you attempting to be sarcastic, and really saying rents are going up?
what are you saying?
The TOSD story says rents are coming down. When YIMBY’s say build, build, build, 10 or 15% gratuitous affordable housing isn’t necessary. Mass occupancy buildings have and are being built. Targeted 100% affordable is what’s needed. The mindset that more downtown’s are needed is another misconception with outdated phantom population growth projections. Downtown Portland for example has a S-ton of commercial space available despite all the pack em in, mass transit, city density.
I’ve advocated to target distressed commercial, through the banks, pay a fair price, and rehab the property, where infrastructure already exists. There are other places like the old Fry’s, and parts of the Mission Gorge/hwy 8 area that are good areas but are being sat on.
Just my opinion.
I’ve owned property and lived in Hillcrest for over 26 years. I am delighted with the changes making Hillcrest more like downtown. Ten years ago it was a broken down place with nothing but vacant storefronts. Not any more! However, before I lived in Hillcrest I lived in midtown Manhattan for 15 years so my sensibilities are somewhat different.
I recognize a downtown scene is not what some people want or like. However, as Victor Hugo said, nothing is more powerful as an idea whose time has come. That idea has come to Hillcrest at last.
Carl, my sensibilities are somewhat different too, because (a) while I enjoy visiting midtown Manhattan, I certainly don’t want to live there and (b) I’ve seen what happens to neighborhoods where the build build build (as opposed to sensibly planned and developed growth) mantra gets played out.
During my time at UCLA, I lived in a neighborhood not terribly far from campus that was comprised of a mixture of bungalows, duplexes and six- to eight-unit apartment buildings. It was a very pleasant place to live and very convenient to school. When I return to that neighborhood now it is comprised of multi-story apartment buildings with very few of the small homes and apartments. There is virtually no street parking, because all the streets in this area are part of residential permit parking districts because the required off-street parking is inadequate. Traffic clogs the streets at all hours, What was a ten minute drive to campus is now 30 and up. What was a very pleasant and affordable neighborhood has turned into an very unpleasant enclave of the West LA upper middle class. I cannot even imagine living there now.
This isn’t what I want for my neighborhood, but it is what I see coming if we continue to plan and develop in the way Gloria/Von Blum/BIA/Circulate San Diego wants.
I guess “progress” is in the eye of the beholder.
Mayor Gloria, beholden to developers, sees progress in the form of
bulldozers and high rise buildings.
Others see lovely neighborhoods, with some open space and trees, as the way of life they chose and would like to maintain.
I had to leave Ocean Beach due to impossible rents and now have a large apartment in a much quieter place, with green grass and trees the view outside my window. No airplane noise is a relief. All this for less than I paid for the cottage in OB.
More luxury apartment towers, yay! And entire generation of market rate renters. These residents are all going to be on welfare with no savings or housing security when leave the workforce.
Ms Gloria is beholding to anyone tha gives him mula and the more the more beholding!!!!!