Category: Culture

By: Marie Coronel / 10News / Feb 16, 2026

A growing trend in San Diego is helping address the housing shortage as companies convert vacant hotels into apartment complexes, offering residents new housing options at competitive rental rates.

Ambient Communities has been working for years to transform the former Consulate Hotel, which was built in the 1970s and sat vacant for years, into the Celeste Point Loma Apartments. The project will offer 127 units in an area that has seen limited new housing development.

Robert Honer, a principal for Ambient Communities, said the conversion provides an alternative housing option for young professionals and students in a desirable neighborhood.

“If you’re going to graduate school, if you get your first job this is a community that people like to live in. For me the only way we could afford it was we put a bunch of kids in a single family home and did it that way. So this is an alternative to that,” Honer said.

From Peninsula News

Please join the Ocean Beach Historical Society on Thursday, February 19, 2026, 7pm, at Water’s Edge Community, 1984 Sunset Cliffs Blvd. Local author Jill Hall discusses her recent novel “On a Sundown Sea”

OB Rag Staff

The San Diego Community Coalition publishes this email bulletin to keep our members and the general public informed about important Council and Planning Commission hearings and other city public meetings.

Wednesday, February 18: Rules Committee, 9:00 a.m.

Agenda:

Item 2: Amendments to Council Policy 000-21 related to the submission of ballot proposals by the Mayor, the Council, City Hall departments and public agencies.

Why it matters: This proposal by Councilmember Raul Campillo would place new requirements on City-initiated ballot measures

OB Rag Staff Report

KPBS Public Media informed staff on February 11 that News Director Terence Shepherd and Director of People and Culture Lois Hoyt were “no longer with” the station. The internal memo signed by Chief of Staff Travis Tamasese gave no specifics about why both senior executives were leaving simultaneously.

“We recognize that these announcements, though unrelated, are being shared at the same time and reflect a great amount of change for the organization,” Tamasese wrote. “Please know that we are here to support you if you would like to touch base.”

Shepherd joined KPBS in 2022 after eight years as news director of WLRN, Florida’s major public news outlet. He previously worked as a business editor at the Miami Herald.

From Protect Point Loma

Jan. 23, 2026 Point Loma Community,

Protect Point Loma group wanted to update you on our fight to protect PL from the predatory developers.

The owner/developer, Michael Contreras, pushed his project to build an over-height, 4-story, 56-unit apartment building to be permitted and start construction in early 2026. He is there.

However, community opposition – coupled with the real threat of drawn-out legal action and the increased costs of environmental mitigation – is working. The community’s action appears to have paused the development of 1004 Rosecrans. In over a year, the community has stepped up repeatedly to voice our opposition in public, to our elected representatives, and to underwrite the work of a crack legal team. Community members provided essential historical data on the property that enabled us to initiate environmental actions to protect neighbors and Cabrillo Elementary students from exposure to carcinogens in the soil. The broad support of the community has been essential.

This pause is an opportunity. Community members have consistently offered to purchase the property from Contreras to prevent the project from going forward.  We continue to support those who are trying to make this happen.

“Don’t cause trouble. You’ll just make matters worse.”

Residents of Pacific Beach and other coastal communities who’ve been watching all the maneuverings by the developer, the city and mainline politicians around what’s called the PB Tower, (or Turquoise Tower, or Project Vela), may have become familiar with the name Matt Awbrey.

Matt Awbrey has become the face of Kalonymus, the developer of the Tower as he’s assumed the role of spokesperson. Just recently, Awbrey informed city planning officials that Kalonymus planned to resubmit plans for the 23-story structure, at 970 Turquoise Street, for a fifth time. This was in response to the ongoing dispute between the city and Kalomymus.

The in-your-face aggressiveness by Kalonymus over the past year has no doubt thrown Awbrey into a position that he savors, because this is not the first controversy he’s headed up. In a statement about the Tower to the Union-Tribune, Awbrey asserted, confidently:

PL-OB Monthly reporter Steven Mihailovich had a great piece on the OB Planning Board and its latest meeting on February 3 in the Feb. 11th issue of  Point Loma – OB Monthly  which is published by the SDU-T.

The most interesting part of his report for us was when he summarized in detail what some OBceans commented on during the Public Non-Agenda segment of the Board’s agenda. They had attended to raise concerns and support for their efforts to preserve OB’s historic district in order to prevent large-scale, super-dense or too-high new construction in the community.

Mihailovich’s account that follows raises very important details that OBceans need to acquaint themselves with because they go to the very existential heart of OB’s character.

Here is his report:

‘Emerging’ historical district
During non-agenda public comments at the board meeting, Barbara Houlton and Lynne Miller of the nonprofit organization Coastal Caretakers addressed an expected City Council vote Tuesday, Feb. 24, on adopting legislation called “Preservation and Progress Package A.”

If passed, the package would limit the status of Ocean Beach’s “emerging” historical district to the 72 beach cottages already designated historic and potentially open the rest of Ocean Beach to the city’s “Complete Communities” development rules.