A locally-based real estate company has just purchased a huge, 180-unit project in the Point Loma / Midway area — the site of the former Barnard Elementary School.
MG Properties, a San Diego-based multifamily real estate investment firm, announced the purchase of Dylan Point Loma Apartments, a massive piece of property that opened in 2016 consisting of one-, two- and three-bedroom floor plans. The colorful announcement states that the project is “complemented by a resort-style saltwater pool, a fitness center, community club house, a conference room, game lounge, demonstration kitchen, dog park and a volleyball court.”
It’s “colorful” because although the announcement claims the project is in “Point Loma,” it’s actually situated in the more problematic neighborhood of the Midway District, which is beset with a large homeless population, fast-food joints, malls and shopping centers, often described in negative terms by urban planners, police and developers. In contrast, the announcement asserts “Dylan Point Loma is situated in one of San Diego’s most desirable coastal submarkets, offering residents convenient access to major employment centers, beaches, dining, and entertainment.”
The purchase price was undisclosed. MG Properties bought the site which has a formal address as 2930 Barnard St, San Diego, CA 92110, from JLL Income Property Trust. The buyer pledged the following:
MG Properties plans to implement targeted capital improvements and operational enhancements designed to further elevate the property while preserving its neighborhood character.
And it described itself:
MG Properties is a privately owned, fully integrated real estate company specializing in the investment, redevelopment, and management of multi-family assets. MG’s current portfolio is comprised of over 32,000 rental homes in California, Washington, Arizona, Nevada, Colorado, Texas, and Oregon, across 115 communities.
The Rag has observed this site ever since the San Diego School Board announced it was selling off “excess land” back in 2012. We opposed the district getting rid of the property completely instead of leasing it.
In a Rag report from November 2014, we quoted reporter Ian Anderson in the San Diego Reader:
The cost of construction looks to hit the $30 million range, on land purchased for about $40/sq. ft. The school district handled the demolition of the school buildings that previously occupied the property, but a San Diego Unified rep could not provide a dollar amount for the cost of doing so.
Barnard Elementary, officially known as Barnard Asian Pacific Language Academy, moved to the former site of Bayview Terrace Elementary in Pacific Beach at the beginning of the 2013 school year. The Mandarin-language magnet school only briefly occupied the Point Loma campus, which was built during World War II as a school for children of Navy service members.
When this property – and others held by the School District – were sold, they were met with a barrage of criticism from the community – and their own board, in that they sold the land for way under what it was/ is worth, and that they should have held onto the property and leased it out instead of getting rid of it.
One commenter to Anderson’s article stated one of the main criticisms:
School districts should not be playing property speculation games, but that was what was happening with San Diego…. If/when the district ever needs more schools in those areas of the city, it will be hell to pay, in that assembling large parcels will be breathtakingly costly. Like as not, that will never happen. But some sort of real plan for this sort of thing would be a wonderful thing.
Also, writer Anderson added to his own article:
I tried to figure out what the worth of such property should be, but considering undeveloped property in Point Loma only usually exists as a hypothetical, the real estate savvy people I reached out to didn’t feel comfortable speculating. The math says it went $40/sq ft for the undeveloped property, with construction costs adding near $75/sq ft, meaning the post construction investment for Monarch would be $115/sq ft at ~$47 million.
If they turned around and sold it for double that (a simplistic estimation, I know), that would raise it to $230/sq ft. Looking as sites like trulia.com and zillow.com, I see single family homes in the PL area on the market for closer to $400/sq ft. Not scientific or reliable, but safe to assume it’s a pretty reliable long term investment for Monarch, with rental income likely to hover in the $4 million range annually, presuming an average rent of $1800/month (which seems to be the figure going around currently).
Perhaps more telling is that SDUSD would have sold the Barnard St. property for as low as $10 million (< $22 sq ft).
The Rag is not privy to what has transacted ever since and we do not know why the former owner felt compelled to sell the project. And we don’t know what the new buyer plans outside “targeted capital improvements and operational enhancements designed to further elevate the property while preserving its neighborhood character.” Why does it need to “elevate the property”? What “neighborhood character”?
If you wander around the buyer’s website, you will get an idea of what it will look like, with 32,000 example units already built: https://mgproperties.com/
Think Rite-Aide!
This is what happens when public land is sold to private interests. What once was a community asset is now blight. While this land was sold by the school board, it is the same strategy pursued by Gloria and gang. They are trying to sell our most valuable assets to pay for their own stupid mistakes. They will sell our publicly owned lands to private, for profit corporations, who will build the slums of the future.
Just curious why you consider it blight at the present time?
I wouldn’t want to live there and I would rather have a school, library or some other public facility that is useful to the community. Beyond that, that kind of development leads to overcrowding, more traffic (all the way to the freeway), overloaded sewer lines and other impacts. These are all forms of blight.
It’s not my favorite kind of development but seems like it’s a decent secure place to live. The city isn’t building new libraries. Heck, it’s taken decades to even get OB’s renovated. A school brings tons of traffic with every kid getting dropped off by their parents. If the city is going to sell land then the money should go for a good purpose and it should not be a give away to make developers a ton of money.
The library for PL got built and took away a convenient car wash and now sits a parking lot used by who? since most people use the lot on the other side of the library. We lost a good pizza place for the OB entryway that looks sad.
If you value corporate owned apartments over schools, and carwashes over libraries, you must be very happy about the way San Diego is developing. Personally, I am not. I think schools and libraries are the bedrock of our civilization. I also value those things we hold in common, our parks (think Mission Bay, Balboa Park) schools, libraries even our city streets are public property. When we lose (or sell) these things, when we lose our access to these things, we lose our culture and even our civilization. And before you call me a commie, please understand that selling real estate in San Diego is a bad business decision, and those people in city hall, that are trying to sell anything they can to pay for their mistakes, are selling our culture and our civilization.
Never said I value schools over apartments- there was a school there and that was fine and dandy with me. I never said I value carwash over libraries but rather the loss of a carwash to an idol parking which is seldom full.
I just noticed something else in the story. The current owner owns 32,000 homes. Ever wonder why it is so hard for the average person to buy a home in San Diego?
It was not city land to sell, it was school district land — and they sold it at a cheap price just to balance a budget then current. The point is, no pun intended, is that the district, the developer, the buyers and sellers all were able to do their thing, make lots of money without doing one damn thing for the immediate neighborhood — no new infrastructure, no new parks, no new roads, etc.
Frank, every single unit developed in San Diego has to pay a plethora of impact fees (e.g. school fees, park impact fees, etc.). This SD Housing Commission PPT from last year estimates that each unit generates about $30,000 in fees (slide #7, https://sdhc.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/107_Workshop_RAND_final.pdf). So, at 280 units, this development contributed $8.4 million in development impact fees before you even start to count property tax increases, actual physical improvements to the public right-of-way (i.e. new sidewalks & street trees, etc.). So, even this development does at least a little “damn thing” for the community. Here’s some more info on what all those fees are: https://www.sandiego.gov/planning/work/public-spaces/fees I don’t get why folks ire isn’t directed toward city agencies (where are all those impact fees going?) rather than at companies paying those fees and creating new housing.
I agree with your statement sold for cheap and no extras for the community. At least a play ground would have been nice or dog park.
That’s what the voters get from their elected officials-sad!
NTC give away that closed down the public pool – shameful!
Loma Portal
I walk in this neighborhood occasionally with no problems. I disagree with both the ‘colorful’ and ‘problematic’ descriptions of this Loma Portal development. My only opinion is that rents will go up.
Over the decades I’ve lived in this neighborhood at two different times. There used to be a great ice cream palace (forgot the name) and at least a music venue / club.
You made me smile. Halcyon for sure and I think Raputins too on West Point Loma
What was the name of that ice cream place? When I turned 21, I went there with friends and got their Bday trough instead of going to a bar to celebrate.
Halcyon and Rasputins were nightclub/bars somewhat popular with Navy recruits. I do remember a Buford’s but I think it was in OB.
Loma Portal is usually thought to be east, up the cliff, closer to PLHS and Loma Portal Elem school.
More of our reporting on this site:
Then in February 2015, we reported:
The huge project that is being built on the site of the former Barnard Elementary School has foundations poured for many of the 180 apartment units and 10 townhomes going in at the site.
This is one of the largest projects in the Peninsula, and its surrounded by 2-story apartments and condos in one of the most dense (and forgotten) neighborhoods in the city.
Barnard Apartments expands on 9.5 acres which was bought by the Monarch Group for $16.5 million. The gated community is scheduled to be complete by January 2016.
We also made this comment in October 2015:
… we also noticed that even thought these new apartments will usher in another – what? – 500 people into the area, there are no apparent additions to the local infrastructure to accompany those new folks. No new roadways so the new hundreds can access the main road in the area are being planned, no new libraries, no new anything.
And hopefully, there won’t be too many school-age children, right?.