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Monday, Mar 18, 2024
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Region Needs Creative Paths to Redevelopment

San Diego will be challenged in the coming decades, especially since the abolition of redevelopment agencies in California, to leverage the massive spending planned on transportation to spur significant commercial and residential development in the neighborhoods that need it most.

With $218 billion in transit improvements in the works over the next 40 years in San Diego County, including projects to enhance the region’s bus and rail lines, trolley services and bikeways, one city agency sees needs that such public investment can address.

“There are areas that are going to need better infrastructure and things like grocery-based retail,” Civic San Diego President Jeff Graham said during a recent downtown forum presented by the Urban Land Institute’s San Diego/Tijuana chapter. “Our focus will need to be on these neglected and underserved areas for many years.”

Such needs of a growing region, particularly in high-density areas, and the challenges meeting them were among the concerns discussed during the ULI forum.

Civic San Diego — the city’s successor agency in charge of redevelopment issues downtown and elsewhere after California disbanded more than 400 redevelopment agencies — is assembling public-private investment pools and other alternatives to leverage community dollars to attract project developers.

Transit-oriented Development

Forum panelists said transit-oriented development holds promise for rejuvenating neighborhoods and creating ripple economic benefits. Communities are encouraging the development of commercial, residential and mixed-use projects in areas close to trolley stations, commuter light-rail lines and other mass transit hubs.

But there are obstacles such as cost, land availability and regulations to putting the right kinds of projects in appropriate locations. Communities may need to do more, panelists said, to mitigate developers’ risks in buying and building on parcels — for example, by easing mixed-use requirements, minimum-parking provisions and other restrictions that make potential projects financially unfeasible.

“Real estate is very time-sensitive, and you don’t know what you’re going to end up with until you get to the end of the planning process,” said Tony Pauker, vice president of development for investment firm City Ventures.

Nevertheless, other communities have overcome obstacles to transit-oriented development without relying on redevelopment agencies, said Bill Anderson, vice president with consulting firm AECOM. He pointed to states like Washington, saying they have long deployed methods that encourage community development without having access to tax-increment funding mechanisms, which were used under California’s redevelopment agency program and are no longer available.

Also, he said California cities including Los Angeles and San Francisco, along with several in other states, have found ways to get mixed-use projects near transit hubs developed, although such projects remain cost-prohibitive for developers in much of San Diego County.

Making urban areas attractive

Coleen Clementson — principal planner with the San Diego Association of Governments, the regional planning agency also known as SANDAG — noted that the region’s population of 3 million is expected to increase by 1 million by 2050.

To support that growth, San Diego County will need to create about a half-million jobs and 350,000 housing units. Transportation-accessible urban infill projects represent a prime use of available space, since much of the new population growth will be coming to neighborhoods with existing high densities.

“Much of that growth is expected to take place in that western third of the region, where a lot of people already live,” Clementson said.

Upcoming trolley and bus line improvements are expected to increase transportation options in places like University Towne Center and Mira Mesa, with new transit routes in coming years connecting residents in other inland neighborhoods to local beaches and other places currently not accessible by public transit, she said.

Planned enhancements to the region’s bicycle paths, combined with other efforts to reduce vehicle traffic, will likely make urban areas more attractive to residents and developers, she said.

Tools Needed for Return to Cities

Redevelopment agencies were originally formed to help cities deal with the flight of residents to the suburbs, said Joe LaCava, president of consulting firm Avetterra, who also chairs the city of San Diego’s community planners committee. Now, alternatives are needed to deal with basic needs like affordable middle-class housing and infrastructural upgrades as people migrate back to the cities.

In neighborhoods that need additional amenities such as parking spaces, Graham said agencies like Civic San Diego could help promote the pooling of resources among property owners — or seek bond funding or government grants — to pay for things like shared underground parking lots underneath public green spaces.

“We need as many tools in the toolbox as we can possibly get,” Graham said.

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