Opinion: City’s unrealistic plan for College Area ignores community input

In 2019, in anticipation of the city’s upcoming College Area Community Plan update, the College Area Community Planning Board started to develop its own community-driven, 30-year growth strategy. The planning board believed that if it could show where to place new housing density that hit similar growth targets approved for other San Diego communities, the city would give strong consideration to its plan.

After a year of meetings and working groups, the board’s finished plan called for creation of an urban village around San Diego State University adjacent to the campus trolley station. It envisioned high-density housing along College Avenue, Montezuma Road and other major thoroughfares with access to the existing bus system.

The plan anticipated adding approximately 11,300 dwelling units to the current 8,100 units — 137% more — and increasing the area’s population by 112% from 19,700 to 42,200. These increases are in line with recently approved community plan updates for Mira Mesa, Hillcrest and Clairemont.

In 2020, the City Planning Department started its formal multi-year College Area Community Plan Update. After an open house and initial comment period, the department put forth four plan alternatives, completely ignoring College Area Community Planning Board’s earlier effort.

The city’s current version of the community plan update calls for increasing the College Area’s population by nearly 300% from 19,700 to over 74,000 people, with no major infrastructure improvements. The document glosses over the fact that many College Area neighborhoods are surrounded by canyons that are designated “very high risk fire zones” with limited evacuation routes. The city’s logic seems to be that heavy density in areas of high fire risk is a way to mitigate that risk.

This plan is an exercise in upzoning large portions of the College Area, leaving it to investors and developers to decide what gets built when and where.

This is not strategic planning but an ad hoc approach in “market planning.” However, it will be taxpayers who will be left with the bill to fix the aftermath.

One thing most people do agree on is that SDSU is the center of the College Area community and impacts almost everything that happens in the area.

Knowing that, it’s incredible that the city didn’t include or couldn’t bring SDSU into the planning process beyond perfunctory meeting attendance. None of the population projections include anything SDSU has planned for its campus.

This begs the question, how can the city create a longer-term community plan without the collaboration of the largest area employer, that houses and feeds thousands of students on campus, brings thousands of vehicles into and out of the community on a daily basis, and has a major transit hub on campus? If that isn’t bad enough, the Metropolitan Transit System, the agency that operates the trolley and buses that will be tasked with moving many of these people, was not involved either.

This is government dysfunction at its worst.

By not accounting for what SDSU does on its campus, the city’s plan cannot accurately project infrastructure needs for parks, roads, police and fire. And who will cover those costs?

Currently, SDSU is in the first phase of the Evolve student housing project at the northern end of campus, three-quarters of a mile away from the campus trolley station, in a very high risk fire zone, with no pedestrian mobility plan for more than 4,500 residents.

If the city, SDSU and MTS along with the College Area Community Planning Board were working together and leveraging hundreds of millions of dollars in state money, SDSU would scale back its Evolve project in its current location and move a large portion of that student housing to the asphalt parking lots along College Avenue adjacent to the trolley station. This would accelerate the creation of an urban village that the city says it wants, and most people support.

Recently, the state legislature passed Senate Bill 79, which is expected to be signed by the governor. It calls for high density housing within a quarter mile of mass transit stations. With SDSU being a state university, this is another reason to place high density student housing in that location, and include the impact this new law will have in the plan update.

Unfortunately, the city has decided to sprint to the finish line with its half-baked plan with the hope the City Planning Commission will approve it on Oct. 9 so that the City Council can give its blessing in December.

It’s time for city to pull back from its current plan update and work with the College Area Community Planning Board, SDSU and MTS to create a realistic, vibrant and workable vision for the College Area for today and tomorrow.

Robert Montana is chair of the College Area Community Planning Board. Rene Kaprielian is a long-time resident of the College Area.