San Diego Civic Center revitalization push continues after Gloria halts city plan
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Mayor Todd Gloria last year abandoned plans to rebuild City Hall and the surrounding Civic Center area, citing budget woes, but a private effort to realize the revitalization is carrying on.
Why it matters: City government — not its policies, but its physical presence — has itself become an impediment to economic development in the center of downtown San Diego.
The big picture: The Civic Center complex has become a line of demarcation between the thriving west side of downtown and the struggling east side, said Matt Carlson, a San Diego-based executive VP for commercial real estate firm CBRE.
- "The blight there in the middle is separating, almost in the way a freeway gentrified and ruined neighborhoods in the 1970s," he said. "And the fact that the city won't do something to spread out quality in the market is disappointing."
State of play: Private groups working on a plan to envision options for future revitalization of the six city-owned blocks expect to unveil their final product in three to six months, said Grant Oliphant, CEO of the Prebys Foundation, which spent $300,000 on the effort.
- In December, Gloria announced he was "halting the Civic Center revitalization proposal" along with other emergency cost-cutting moves.
- "The language the mayor used was unfortunate, because it suggested that the visioning and the planning that the community was doing was also going to end," Oliphant said.
Reality Check: Gloria conceded that the savings associated with pausing the project were "fairly minimal."
- His announcement was more symbolic of his pivot to austerity than a significant cost-cutting decision.
Flashback: The Prebys Foundation partnered with the Downtown San Diego Partnership last April to create a new blueprint for the Civic Center area, which is bound by A Street and C Street to the north and south and First Avenue and Third Avenue to the east and west.
- Both groups have said they would draw on a 2023 report from a mayor-created task force, which led to Gloria's offering the properties to developers, who mostly ignored the request.
What he's saying: "What creates the east side-west side dynamic is this piece of urban development from 60 years ago that represents the best-worst thinking of that era," Oliphant said.
- "It's almost perfectly designed to kill street life, to isolate from what's going on outside," he said. "When we think about the possibility here, it is to break down that barrier and open up the city again. Forget a few blocks; we can redefine what this city is about."
How it works: The city won't be forced to follow the plan, but the plan would offer a long-term road map of ideas whenever an effort to replace the Civic Center complex can resume, said Nathan Bishop, the senior director of economic development at the Downtown San Diego Partnership.
- "A vision is important — whether it's residents, businesses or our partners, they want to be part of something bigger than themselves; they want to know where you're headed," Bishop said. "This is to get buy-in on where this part of downtown is going so that there's expectations around it."