By Kate Callen
Density advocates kicked off the new year by lamenting what a January 10 Union-Tribune editorial headline called “the latest housing initiative to flop.”
The commentary followed a December 29 U-T report that the Trolley’s Blue Line corridor along Linda Vista and Clairemont hasn’t seen a glut of high-rise development.
Editors pouted, “Why doesn’t City Hall … ask builders exactly how the government can best expedite new housing?” and added, “How many more years of housing failure must San Diegans endure?”
Come again? Housing failure? Not enough government incentives for builders?
For four years, City Hall’s “Complete Communities” venture has opened the floodgates to rampant density. Throughout the city, the initiative has spurred construction of mid-rise housing towers with few affordable units and scarce on-site parking.
Developers have stacked tall bunkers on the property lines of small homes. “Granny flat” accessory dwelling units have morphed into massive complexes that choke traffic in residential neighborhoods.
But, alas, this surge of growth just hasn’t been enough. “Greed’s worst point,” wrote the philosopher Seneca, “is its ingratitude.”
Given that housing construction has mushroomed everywhere else, might there be another reason developers aren’t flocking to the Blue Line mid-city expanse?
A Bay Park listing for “a very well-located high-density multi-family development site” offers some clues.
The 9,280-square-foot lot is posted on the website of Crudo and Associates, a La Jolla real estate firm. The asking price is $2.495 million. The proposed density is 74 units in a 7-story building.
Studios account for 45 units, more than half the total. Only 5 units “are to be designated with a varying degree of affordability.” Only 3 “are anticipated to be below market rents.” There is no mention of on-site parking.
Most of these residents would be paying high rents for small apartments. But Crudo offers another lure, something that’s been a Complete Communities selling point: proximity to transit.
The prospectus says, “The Trolley’s UC San Diego Blue Line Tecolote stop is a 5-minute walk away.” The parcel is at 1485 Morena Boulevard. The Tecolote Road Trolley Station is at 1364 West Morena Boulevard.
According to the Metropolitan Transit System’s Trip Planner, the distance from the lot to the station is a half-mile. MTS estimates the walking time at 12 minutes. Pedestrians would hike up Morena Boulevard, cross busy West Morena Boulevard, then hike down West Morena to the trolley stop.
Anyone familiar with the physical layout of West Morena knows it isn’t “walkable.” The thoroughfare has a few crossable intersections with long stretches between them. Its high-speed traffic endangers anyone foolish enough to jaywalk.
The real obstacle to development along this Blue Line corridor isn’t a lack of builder incentives. The problem is a lack of buildable land – Mission Bay occupies the entire west side – and West Morena’s blockage of pedestrian access to trolley stops.
Few residents could or would make the rigorous trek to Blue Line stations. Most would drive the half-mile. Which defeats the whole point of proximity to transit.
A suggestion for density advocates: Before you look to assign blame for a “housing failure,” first take a look at a map.
Another sad oddity was last night’s community plan meeting for the college area. Mind you the city is trying to make the main arteries of Montezuma, College, and El Cajon Blvd more dense, more walk able, more transit and bike lanes, and basically less cars, catering to SDSU. The western end of the college area is more canyon space, prone more to wildfires, accessible by mainly Montezuma Rd. So when you bottleneck the main thoroughfares , you increase the inability to evacuate. Traffic during the Montezuma fire was at a stand still, as Montezuma was shut down, and the other 2 ways out for 300+ homes in college view estates went through SDSU. On top of all this, SDSU wants to add 4500 more student beds in the future. Montezuma will become the main traffic thoroughfare for all events at Viejas once the arteries/ streets are gummed up. These are your Gloria city planners at work screwing it all up. Density in the area is using old numbers and not accounting for all the city tweaks of bonus density, and ADU’s that have been built mainly for college students.
Isn’t everybody getting the idea from the on-going burn in LA that density in a fire zone may not really be something to desired? I remember the Santa Ana days blowing howling offshore winds with the smell of smoke at us out in the water where our eyes were burning from it…but nothing like that 100mph insanity LA dealt with last week. A destabilizing climate had a lot to do with this Firestorm.
I’m thinking about the huge fireboxes in the ugliest ADU contest pictures sitting on the edges of the canyons. Built with hardly any space between the buildings, where people don’t have parking, with narrow clogged streets for an exit route that will cause people to abandon their cars in the road…if they even have cars (how’d you like to call an UBER at that point?). That really happened last week in the Palisades. Mind-boggling.
Imagine how scary it was for those people to be between the torching walls of flames of burning houses on either side in the dark being told by a cop to run.
Coming for San Diego one of these days. Be sure of it. The climate is only going to get hotter, the storms (including windstorms) will keep getting more intense, and…humans don’t learn our lessons very well. Last year officially the hottest worldwide temperature in recorded history, and 48 YEARS since we had a below-average temperature year?
Globally, 2024 Was The Warmest Year On Record
https://weather.com/news/climate/video/noaa-report-reveals-2024-was-the-warmest-year-on-record
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I dare say it doesn’t bode well for the steep canyons dotting San Diego County. But then it never has even when it was ‘normal’ times.
sealintheSelkirks
What makes real sense for the Morena Trolley Station is dense, high rise development the block bounded by West Morena and Buenos, where the old Toys R Us, Jeromes and Urban Leaf are located. That would make a walk to the trolley station a mere 200 feet or so. The development could also contain services like a grocery, dry cleaner and such.
Just think of all the workers at UCSD, Scripps and other UTC businesses who would live there and take the trolly to work, avoiding that nasty northbound I-5 traffic.
I do think it’s a mistake to completely get rid of parking, but I sense if you limit parking to one space per bedroom, the complex would be popular and easily rentable. With the trolly right next door you also accomplish your goal of reducing vehicle trips substantially.
But I hear the folks up on the hill don’t want their view taken from them. There ya go, shoot environmental goals in the foot because of your vanity.
Frank, here’s a question: Think of something tangible about your home that you enjoy every day, like the sunlight coming through your windows. Now imagine if it were abruptly taken away. Your feelings of sadness and loss would not be “vanity.”
The physical impacts of saturation density have turned too many people into collateral damage. So the new mid-rise on your property line keeps your house in the shadows. You had a nice view for years, and now you’re looking at the wall of a bunker. Well, too bad for you. Suck it up.
Is this what we’ve become? Can’t we feel any sympathy for the legions of San Diegans who, through no fault of their own, have irrevocably lost something they treasured?
Apartments built on the old Toys R Us property are across Morena Blvd and three more very long blocks from the nearest homes on Savanah Place and those folks don’t have a view.
We have a severe housing shortage and we’re not going to address that shortage by denying new housing at a location that makes ultimate sense like the Morena Trolley Stop.
Didn’t Kate just show that was unrealistic and unreasonable?
The trolley stop is actually called Tecolote Road Station, not Morena Trolley Stop.
This is kind of an insane comment. Think of all the people who can’t afford a home. You would rather protect people’s view than provide enough housing for people. I would argue the latter is way more important than the former.
Not environmental goals. Developer profit and more housing units. Not vanity, but real taxpayers’ personal quality of life concerns. “Studios account for 45 units, more than half the total.” Not the “home” people want. One parking space per bedroom? In your dreams. This is essentially a much needed commercial corridor to serve Clairmont, Bay Park, Linda Vista.
So it a should just remain an empty parcel rather than put apartments on it? What does the writer of this post think should go there?
The writer of this post later responds tl a comment talking about views being taken away. If that is her belief than only 1-3 story max buildings will be built there, which will necessarily limit the number of people who can live there.
So, if views are more important than increasing the potential number of people who can live on what is currently an empty lot, then maybe the writer should just say so? Should zero people live there to maintain someone else’s view?
Joseph, this story focuses on the con job of “transit-oriented density” at sites that are not within walking distance of transit stops. And it challenges density advocates who keep whining that our YIMBY city government (led by a mayor who is the darling of the building industry) doesn’t do enough to promote building.
My comment about views was a plea for compassion for residents who now live hemmed in by tall bunkers that block sunlight and leave them in the shadows. As for the empty lot, yes, something needs to go there. But what? More huge complexes of small housing units? With rents too high for working-class people? With no open or green space? That’s pretty much all we’ve gotten from “Complete Communities.”
ICYMI, Circulate San Diego just called for “car bars” on the trolleys to help increase ridership. Yeah, that will sure do it.
I saw that article and quickly realized it was an April Fools joke.
You saw the article and immediately thought how you could use it to criticize trolley ridership. So you posted a flippant comment on (yet another) anti-housing article from Ms Callen.
I thought you supported public transit and housing near it (Lemon Grove transit station project)? True colors have been revealed it seems.
Hi Paul, thanks for risking coming onto the Rag. There was nothing to indicate that the position was a joke. And I saw it as another example of how out of touch Circulate SD was. I’ve never criticized trolley ridership, in fact just the opposite. I have criticized the MTS leadership. Neither Ms Callen nor I have posted anti-housing articles because we both realize that we don’t have a housing crisis — we have an affordable housing crisis. And Paul, that’s a big dif. You have helped your developer friends to create hundreds, if not 1000s. of market-rate houses; those developers are driven by their outsized appetites for profits. The affordable housing developers are not so driven.
Your apparent defense of this insane policy of giving developers special subsidies if they build A MILE AWAY FROM MASS TRANSIT THAT IS CURRENT OR THAT WILL BE BUILT IN THE NEXT 20 YEARS is what is revealing about you. Your true colors are those of the profit developers. And while you and your friends have a buddy in the mayor’s office and a bunch on the council, you will get your way. BTW, thanks for wasting resources, money and time on convincing Gloria et al to install miles of bike lanes that hardly anyone uses in order for the city to check the environmental box on their legacies.
Frank, the social posts end with the sentence “It’s April 1st, but we’re serious about making transit better.” The press release includes a few indicators of satire – “quipped,” “‘What could go wrong?,'” we “very seriously suggest increased transit frequency, expanded bus connections, and converting even more underused parking lots into affordable homes,” and a bolded mention of the April 1st of it all.
It’s fine to misread something – it’s weird to double-down!
Not sure what you consider “double-down” but whenever Paul Jamason comes on to the Rag, I have to remind him of how his group, Circulate SD, has assisted Mayor Gloria (a friend of yours?) and the council in their ruinous housing policies, particularly the transit rules they’ve implemented. . I don’t really care if the article was a joke or not, but the Rag gets grief if we post something that is a joke or satire without a clear indication that it is such. That’s all.