Key City Council Committee Approves College Area Plan that Calls for 300% Population Increase

Campillo Is Lone Vote Against Approval

By Maura Fox / San Diego Union-Tribune / November 24, 2025

A development blueprint that plans for tripling the population of the College Area over the next 30 years is one step closer to being adopted, after a San Diego City Council committee voted to approve the update.

The community plan, which hasn’t seen an update since 1989, will guide land use and development for the neighborhood for the next two to three decades. It will now head to the full City Council for review.

It projects ambitious population growth in the College Area and expects more opportunities for cycling and public transit, green spaces along busy streets and a campus town center near San Diego State University.

“I’m excited to see how, outside this plan update, we can work to make those recommendations a reality for the community,” Councilmember Sean Elo-Rivera, whose District 9 includes the area, said at Friday’s meeting of the Land Use and Housing Committee.

The plan update passed 3-1, with Councilmember Raul Campillo, who represents nearby District 7, voting no.

“As I reviewed the plan for discussion today, I had many questions relating to the magnitude of the density as part of this plan, the traffic and infrastructure impacts that we are seeing from increased density,” Campillo said.

Response to the proposed update has varied, with some community members praising it for housing plans they hope will bring more affordable housing to families and SDSU students who live in the area.

But over the course of the update’s development, others have raised concerns about its expected growth and what they see as a lack of services to support it, pushing for more fire safety, parks and parking for the College-Rolando Library.

The College Area is served by three fire stations in the surrounding neighborhoods, but residents want to see more of a focus on fire safety in the immediate area. There is now one neighborhood park, the 1.6-acre Montezuma Park. And neighbors have pursued a years-long effort to improve parking access to the library.

“We need to get the ability to get those facilities that we desperately need before we allow density to go so extreme that we’ve created an unsafe, unhealthy living environment,” said Julie Hamilton, chair of the College Area Community Council.

San Diego’s future population is expected to grow by nearly 5% by 2050, from the current 1.37 million to 1.44 million, according to estimates from the San Diego Association of Governments.

City planners see the College Area as a neighborhood that is uniquely well positioned to help accommodate the growing population. Under their plan update, the area could see its population capacity reach about 76,800 people, living in around 34,000 homes.

That would be a significant jump from the current numbers — about three times as many people, and four times as many homes. As of 2022, the College Area had more than 26,000 people and 8,000 homes, according to SANDAG.

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