SAN DIEGOSAN DIEGO — Controversial proposals to double the populations of Hillcrest and University City by allowing more high-rise housing are being debated Thursday by San Diego’s Planning Commission.
The commission will also discuss a related proposal that would change San Diego’s citywide blueprint for growth to prioritize climate-friendly housing opportunities near jobs, schools and mass transit.
The proposals for Hillcrest and University City, which city officials have been discussing for years, could be finalized this summer by the City Council if planning commissioners express .
The proposal for Hillcrest would add 17,000 new homes, some of them in buildings with 20 stories or more. It would swell the population of Uptown — a wider area that also includes University Heights, Mission Hills and Bankers Hill — from about 40,000 to more than 100,000 by 2050.
The proposal for University City would add more than 64,200 residents by 2050, nearly doubling the neighborhood’s current population of 65,400. It would do that by adding just over 30,000 housing units.
It would also add an estimated 72,000 new jobs by changing zoning in many places to allow developers to build 20 million more square feet of commercial projects.
Some community leaders in those neighborhoods have expressed concerns that the proposals could bring too much change, damage community character and significantly worsen traffic congestion.
They’ve also expressed concerns about gentrification, losing affordable housing and not having enough new parks to serve the new residents.
Other concerns include changes to roads. In Hillcrest, there’s opposition to plans to make Robinson and University avenues one-way streets. In University City, critics oppose shrinking Governor Drive from four lanes to two.
City planners say they are proposing such aggressive increases in housing density in those two neighborhoods because they have already-strong employment bases, and because housing demand there is strong enough to warrant high-rises.
Hillcrest is already a relatively dense and highly urban area with high-paying jobs in its sprawling medical complex. University City is already the region’s top employment center, and a new trolley line to the neighborhood began running in 2021.
The University Community Planning Group requested some corrections to the city proposal and made some recommendations.
The group praised plans for three new linear parks on Regents Road and Governor Drive and a pedestrian promenade on Executive Drive.
The group also expressed optimism about incentives for public spaces in new commercial developments and plans to revitalize shopping centers without replacing them.
But another University City group called UC Peeps has been more aggressive in its criticism.
“Commercial areas would be upzoned to a ridiculous level of density that would be completely out of scale,” said Bonnie Kutch, a leader of the group. “Our concerns are about more than just community character. The plan would generate far more traffic than this area could handle.”
Kutch said her group is particularly concerned about plans to allow several hundred homes on the sites of two plazas, one anchored by Vons and another by Sprouts. She notes that the city’s proposal doesn’t require developers to include grocery stores in new projects on the sites.
“If we lose our grocery stores, we will have to go to other communities to shop,” Kutch said.
Kutch said many people in her group feel like the city started out with a plan for University City and didn’t veer at all from it despite intense community opposition.
Regarding the Hillcrest plan, Uptown Planners — the neighborhood group that has represented Hillcrest — summarized its opposition in a recent letter to the city.
“Added density would require improvements to infrastructure for safety services, public utilities, recreation centers, green spaces and other basic community needs that are not being proposed or adequately considered,” the letter said.
The group also criticized the changes to Robinson and University and a bus lane proposed for Washington Street.
“The negative effects would extend beyond Hillcrest businesses and residents to businesses and residents throughout Uptown, as well as to traffic on Highway 163,” the group said.
The City Council last week voted to replace Uptown Planners, which has been criticized as aggressively anti-development, as the recognized community planning group for the area. They instead opted to let the community group Vibrant Uptown create a new called the Uptown Community Planners Group.
The Hillcrest proposal also calls for celebrating the legacy of the neighborhood’s gay community — which continues to thrive after emerging in the 1970s — with a special historic district featuring public art, preserved buildings, plaques and other attractions.
The update to the citywide growth blueprint is called Blueprint SD.
“These updates are part of our sustained effort to ensure our community plans our goals of building more housing and improving our neighborhoods now and into the future,” Mayor Todd Gloria said this spring. “They underscore our commitment to walkable communities served by transit to give people more transportation options and help us meet our climate goals.”
For details on the Hillcrest proposal, visit planhillcrest.org.
For details on the University City proposal, visit planuniversity.org.
