By Doug Poole
A vacant lot sits at the corner of Fort Stockton Drive and Goldfinch Street in Mission Hills. It has been empty since October 2023, when the previous buildings were
demolished by Stockdale Capital Partners, a Beverly Hills private equity firm. They had plans then too. Those plans fell through. Now they’re back — with something much bigger.
What they’re proposing is a 12-story, 120-unit tower made of 288-square-foot micro-units manufactured in Mexico, with zero parking, zero setback, and only 5 affordable units out of 120. The building would be taller than anything in the neighborhood, casting shadows over adjacent properties and fundamentally altering the character of one of San Diego's most beloved historic communities.
The City of San Diego is processing this permit ministerially — meaning automatically, with no community input, no design review, and no public hearing. Under the Complete Communities Housing Solutions program, if a project checks the right boxes, it goes through. Period. Your opinion doesn’t matter. The shadows don’t matter. The parking doesn’9;t matter. The fit with the neighborhood doesn’t matter.
Here’s what is wrong with that. Our attorney has identified two clear legal violations in the application.
- First, the project’s Floor Area Ratio is 8.68 — exceeding the Complete Communities maximum of 8.0.
- Second, the project may violate height restrictions under the Airport Land Use Compatibility Overlay Zone. We submitted a formal legal objection on December 11, 2025. The City has not responded in five months.
When we asked for a meeting with the Development Services Department to discuss these concerns, internal emails obtained through a Public Records Act request reveal that DSD staff were instructed to use a “Standard Ministerial Response” and redirect us to our elected officials. The person who gave that instruction was Keely Halsey, Assistant Director of DSD for Housing Policy — the official whose job description includes community engagement.
We are not anti-housing. Mission Hills needs more housing. But 288-square-foot micro- units are not what this neighborhood — or this city — needs. A comparable 53-unit micro-unit building one block away has been open for more than two years and is only about 57 percent occupied. The market is telling us something.
We have proposed an alternative: a 5-story building with a real mix of studio, one-bedroom, and two-bedroom units — the kind of housing that serves people downsizing from single-family homes, young professionals putting down roots, and small families who want to stay in the neighborhood. It meets San Diego’s housing goals. It fits Mission Hills. It makes financial sense.
Complete Communities was a well- intentioned program. But without guardrails, it has become a tool for out-of-town investors to extract maximum density from San Diego neighborhoods while delivering minimum community benefit. The project at 820 Fort Stockton Drive is the clearest example yet of what happens when a good idea gets hijacked by bad incentives.
We are asking Councilmember Stephen Whitburn, the Development Services Department, and City Planning to do three things:
- respond to our attorney’s legal objections on the record,
- explain how this project FAR complies with Complete Communities standards, and
- confirm the basis for any height waiver given the fire and airport overlay restrictions.
If you live in Mission Hills — or anywhere in San Diego — this affects you. The same playbook is being run in neighborhoods across the city. 820 Fort Stockton is just the one we can see from our windows.
Doug Poole is a Mission Hills resident and chairs the Mission Hills Community Review Council. He can be reached at poolede@gmail.com
