What’s With 820 Fort Stockton in Mission Hills?

By Doug Poole

What is going on with 820 Fort Stockton? I’ll break it into sections for ease of reading.

Status of the Permit
There has been no activity on the permit since February/ March 2026. The same 17 deficiencies remain, the most critical being the number of affordable units and the building height. There has been no communication from the Development Services Department (DSD) to our attorney, DeLano & DeLano, nor any response to repeated requests from Ralph Teyssier — a very experienced structural engineer who, together with me, tried to arrange a meeting with the DSD engineers and the project manager.

Fees and Why Developers Love Micro-Units
City records show the developer paid several permit fees on 6/6/2025, totaling $52,000. These fees so far are based on what was on the site — the six units in the three buildings Stockdale demolished.

The Development Impact Fee (DIF) portion of that appears to be about $33,000. For a Complete Communities project in Uptown (which includes Mission Hills), DIFs run about $16,000 per unit, as long as each unit is under 500 square feet — versus roughly $28,000 per unit for regular units over 1,301 square feet. Complete Communities projects also get a 25% DIF discount, largely because they’re “near transit.” DIFs are meant to fund parks, mobility (bike infrastructure), libraries, and fire service.

The upshot: developers are heavily incentivized to build units under 500 square feet, which is exactly why we’re seeing so many micro-units go up. DSD itself has called them “not suitable for families” — which suggests the City isn’t really pushing developers toward projects that could actually house families.

My Read on What’s Really Happening
Here’s my supposition.

Stockdale’s Modular Domo project at 3743 4th Ave is about nine months behind schedule and still not open. Stockdale took out a $15.5 million loan in February from Endeavor Bank, a one-year term. Meanwhile the rental market has softened across the board, and it’s especially bad for micro-units. Case in point: 901 Washington (the Sason building) is barely over 50% leased after two and a half years — and those units, at 200–300 square feet, actually have better views than anything Modular Domo is offering. If Stockdale can’t lease the property on 4th Ave, how would they possibly get a construction loan to put 120 units of the same type at 820 Fort Stockton?

There’s been no activity on the 820 Fort Stockton permit since February 2026. The 17 deficiencies remain, including the issues DeLano raised in his December 11, 2025, letter to DSD — the two biggest, also flagged by DSD itself, are height and the affordable unit count.

My speculation: the ownership entities behind 820 Fort Stockton — Affordable Development 818, LLC and Affordable Development 820, LLC — will probably reduce the height and add some affordable units to get the permit through. Records show those entities, along with several affiliated co-borrower LLCs, took out a $9.5 million loan from Northern Trust in March 2026, secured by a deed of trust against a combined site — 816-818 and 820 Fort Stockton Dr, plus 4061 Goldfinch St — to refinance the property. That’s a larger assemblage than the original 820 parcel alone, so this is a bigger bet than it first appears. (Steven and Shawn Yari, who own Stockdale Capital, signed as managers for several of the co-borrower entities; Affordable Development 820, LLC itself was signed by Edward and James Kaen as managers.)

A reduced-height, permit-approved project would leave them holding a larger, refinanced site with a viable permit — but who’s going to finance a construction loan for a 10-story, 100-unit micro-unit building when a 7-story, 60-unit building half a mile away can’t lease? Best to sell it and the buyer can put up a 5-story, 1-2 BR project with some reasonable amount of parking.

Stockdale’s broader portfolio — office, retail, medical, even Horton Plaza’s design before the default — is large-scale, well-built work. The 4th Avenue and 820 Fort Stockton micro-unit projects are a departure from that: cramped, standardized, and hard to square with what the firm normally builds.

I don’t know what the relationship is between Edward and James Kaen — who signed as managers for Affordable Development 820, LLC — and Stockdale’s principals, but the arrangement is most likely a separate vehicle set up specifically to chase the Complete Communities density bonus and the factory-housing push, rather than a project Stockdale would put its own name behind. Whatever the structure, it’s not something Stockdale can point to with the same pride as the rest of its work.

Track Record Worth Remembering
This isn’t Stockdale’s first financial collapse in San Diego. The firm defaulted on more than $350 million in loans for the Campus at Horton redevelopment downtown. Its lender, AllianceBernstein, foreclosed and took the property back at auction in September 2025 for a $130 million credit bid — a fraction of the roughly $550 million Stockdale claimed to have invested. In 2022, Stockdale also signed a 25-year lease with the City committing to renovate and reopen the adjacent Horton Plaza Park, with a minimum $5 million investment required. The park remains closed today.

And yet none of that seems to matter to the City. Under Complete Communities, a developer’s track record — defaults, foreclosures, broken public commitments — simply isn’t a factor DSD considers. The program evaluates permit applications on paper: FAR, height, affordable unit counts, deficiency lists. Whether the applicant has the financial standing or the credibility to actually deliver the project isn’t part of the review. Stockdale can leave a $350 million crater downtown and still walk into DSD with a straight face on 820 Fort Stockton.

And finally, the City does have the ability to change Complete Communities from a complete giveaway to developers to a reasonable program that helps pave the way for needed housing, not just a build whatever, anywhere program that is destroying neighborhoods.

Doug Poole is a Mission Hills resident and chairs the Mission Hills Community Review Council. He can be reached at poolede@gmail.com