By Lisa Mortensen
This year, the San Diego Architectural Foundation awarded the Orchid Award for Private Architecture to The Sasan apartments in Mission Hills. You know that pink eyesore that one can see from miles around?
One of the jurors’ states that the building stands out with its pink exterior as a presence ‘that is refreshing for San Diego’. Another juror believes the building has ‘a good relationship with the city.’ That’s pretty obvious by the award.
However, should anyone ask those who live in the surrounding community about their reaction to this albatross, it is best known by us as ‘Evil Barbie’s Dream House’ or ‘Pepto Dismal’. That pretty much sums up our interpretation of this ‘architectural abomination’.
Lisa Mortensen is a resident of Mission Hills
Sasan Lofts (Orchid for Private Architecture) is at 901 W. Washington St., San Diego. Owner/developer: Soheil Nakhshab; architect/designer: Soheil Nakhshab
“The Sasan Lofts apartment building in Mission Hills stands out with its pink exterior, which one juror called “a presence that is refreshing for San Diego.” The building includes 32 studios across six floors. “The building has a good relationship with the city,” a juror said.”
“I hate this” is the foundation of almost every article (and nearly every comment) on this website
Uh, and including yours it seems ….
? Not sure what you mean Frank. I’m simply pointing out the never ending stream of posts about things that the writers and commentors on this website dislike. You of course get local updates that I appreciate from the Library or the OB Garden Center but otherwise this is just a place for people to be mad (especially when people comment with differing perspectives).
Uh, unless you didn’t notice, this is an election year so it’s the season to be aware of our electeds and what they’re doing, and there is of course a particular focus on politicians, and in general, things are not so dicey as you imply (‘quit complainin’ you dropes!) Our aim is keep government’s feet to the fire, to afflict the comfortable and comfort the afflicted.
So, we’ll let you know when things are okay.
Literally no one more comfortable on the planet than 70 year old california homeowners.
Another Yimbyist troll, how quaint. What was your previous name? Zack? Lilah?
You and Geoff called them.
I don’t know who the f*ck you’re talking to.
You “hate” our “I hate this” stuff.
Why are you entertaining this troll, editor dude? The writing style is exactly like several of the pseudonyms you already mentioned.
A comment from a person who does not have the courage to put their name to what they have to say is – to use an old saying – not worth a warm bucket of spit.
It took me a couple of comments to realize Middle was the same troll as OB Sam and another.
A quick search on this website has 8 articles from Lisa Mortensen, all of which are her being angry at something that’s happening. I’d imagine a similar ratio from the rest of the regular authors here. Just pointing it out!
Actually I think the building is kinda cool looking. All in the eye of the beholder.
Correction, Middleman, I never used the word hate. But when Larry Turner is elected Mayor of San Diego, I’ll be sprinkling fairy dust around because things will be better. Please be patient, just 29 more days of frustration with the administration of Fraud Gloria. Thank you.
From your mouth to God’s ears. Cannot happen soon enough. I concur this building does not deserve an Orchid,and I’m pretty sure 99 percent of Mission Hills residents would agree. Is this juror even commenting about its relationship to the city even FROM San Diego?
Thanks Lisa! Can I ask you how you’re so confident? I Want Larry to win too but I’m really worried. How can he pull it off?
I hope you’ll be OK the morning after Larry Turner loses to Todd (who I do not like and did not vote for) by 20 points because, just like every other NIMBY this website has backed since 2018, he will lose. They always lose. At some point I’d assume you’d realize that your ideas have no constituency outside of the comment pages of the OB Rag but the electoral results speak for themselves. I would think loss after loss after loss would lead to self reflection but you’ll do the same thing in D2 in 2026 and, again, lose.
Looks like PLMiddleMan has a new alias.
Exactly correct! What a troll. This ladies and gents is what a troll is: someone who harasses other commenters to a page or post and keeps changing their signin “names.” Like Amelia here, this person has had at least 4 different “names” over the last couple of months. They’ve been called out but always return with a new handle.
Ah, it’s the PLMiddleman again, or OB Sam or – addresses are the same. Why, just the other day, “Amelia” said: “I Want Larry to win too but I’m really worried. How can he pull it off?”
So Bad.
the building is so “Miami”.
Why do buildings scare you? It’s a place where people get to live instead of being homeless. This one even has plants built-in to the facade, that seems pretty rad to me!
As I mentioned above, I actually think the building looks kinda cool. That being said, this building is not preventing anyone from being homeless.
Just because it’s not a literal homeless shelter doesn’t mean it’s not preventing people from being homeless. It’s a place where people get to sleep at night indoors. Every single building matters in the fight against homelessness/housing affordability because it adds units to the supply of housing.
So, I guess you know what the rents are on this place and they are affordable? Is that correct? How about providing the information for us all here.
Geoff, it appears that a 250/sf studio starts around $1800/month, while a 463/sf studio can be had for $3350/month.
WTF?! That’s a hotel room.
This is the micro-apartment building with no onsite parking, so the tenants park in the surrounding neighborhood.
So the residents park on the city street you mean? If you want private streets, move to a gated subdivision. You’re in a city.
“private streets”? “gated subdivision”? WTF.
Or in the overnight bike lanes?
“Every single building matters in the fight against homelessness/housing affordability”. Not true nor your opinion that it is.
“Every single building matters” is a lame attempt to sanitize YIMBY’s appropriation of the racist retort, “All Housing Matters.”
Didn’t you get the memo? https://obrag.org/2024/08/the-yimby-lexicon/
What does “Not true nor your opinion” even mean? You are saying that statement is not a fact or an opinion? That makes no sense.
The population of San Diego County has grown by ~600,000 people in my lifetime. Where do you expect people to live if we don’t build housing for them? Wyoming is not a good faith answer. If housing is not built in SD, rich people will move here anyways and directly displace the people that already live here onto the streets (or to Wyoming). You claim to want to protect locals, but you can’t have it both ways unless San Diego County succeeds from the US and blocks all immigration.
It’s bizarre how proud you are of being economically illiterate, while forcing suffering onto your neighbors and children. We just want a place to live our lives and not be punished just because we weren’t born during a generation that had ample opportunity before pulling the ladder up behind them.
We just want a place to live our lives and not be punished just because we weren’t born during a generation that had ample opportunity before pulling the ladder up behind them.
Here we go again blaming the previous generation.
Jake, you should be out LOUDLY fighting for a complete and TOTAL BAN of STRVs if you are actually a pro-housing for people advocate. An enforceable ban on those would definitely change things IF the city would take the profit out of breaking the rules.
And I just loved his ‘economic illiterate’ comment, didn’t you? $40,000 a year in RENT for a fricking 20×20 foot studio box. With no parking! Does that qualify for being an illiterate or what?
sealintheSelkirks
Why would I advocate for my friend’s in the hospitality industry to lose their jobs, when we could just build more housing instead? Tourism is the third largest industry in San Diego. It brings in billions to our local economy, significant tax revenue and employs people who live here. Short term rentals are capped at 1% of housing stock, that doesn’t seem unreasonable in a tourist town. If we had enough housing to go around, nobody would complain about short term rentals. You just need a scapegoat to justify doing absolutely nothing to put roofs over our growing population.
When you make building as hard as possible, it becomes even more expensive and developers squeeze as many units as they can into the allocation they have. Perhaps, if you stopped complaining about new buildings, those of us not already in rent controlled apartments or houses purchased years ago, wouldn’t have to live in studios. Buildings aren’t evil, they are inanimate objects where people get to sleep. If your generation doesn’t want more buildings, you shouldn’t have had kids. We need somewhere to sleep.
And the starting rent in the building being discussed is less than the average rate for a studio ($1,999) in SD and in line with the market in OB as well which this publication claims to protect (based on there being only 6 zillow listings at/or below $1800 in OB when I checked yesterday). Housing is expensive for those that don’t already have it locked in. We just want a place to sleep and live our lives, please stop making that so hard for us.