San Diego is taking another step toward making the distribution of its parks fairer with some help from California’s new climate fund.
Last month, city and state officials announced that the state will invest $4.3 million to start building a new park called Grove Neighborhood Park on the edge of Nestor, a neighborhood nestled between San Ysidro and the city of Imperial Beach.
Nestor residents have been trying to bring a new park to the area for decades. The neighborhood is a poorer and majority-Latino community, and it has access to less park space than much of the city.
“There isn't really a green space that is walkable for the families and children that live around here,” said Alberto Velasquez, who chairs the Otay Mesa-Nestor Community Planning Group. “So this particular park is really exciting.”
The money will come from California’s new climate fund, which voters approved in 2024 through a statewide bond measure called Proposition 4. That measure gave the state permission to borrow $10 billion for projects aiming to address human-caused climate change.
Assemblymember David Alvarez, D-Chula Vista, announced that he had secured the funding at a press conference last month. He said the money would fund a children’s play area, picnic facilities and new lighting and artwork.
“Our goal was to make sure that places like this community had access to the outdoors through parks and many other investments,” Alvarez said of the bond measure. “And because the voters said yes, we actually have the funding to make this thing happen.”
In general, San Diegans have pretty good access to parks. More than 80% of residents can walk to a park in less than 10 minutes according to the Trust for Public Land, a national environmental nonprofit organization.
But Nestor is one of the areas where access is more limited.
A lot of what’s considered a park in Nestor is just open space, according to city planning documents. The city says the neighborhood is short about 10 acres of parkland based on how many people live here.
In 2024, Nestor and its surrounding neighborhoods had a median household income of around $80,000. That’s compared to San Diego’s overall median income of more than $100,000.
Around three quarters of residents in these neighborhoods identify as Hispanic, according to 2024 estimates by the San Diego Association of Governments.
“We’re a blue-collar neighborhood,” Velasquez said. “We have a lot of retirees, a lot of former-military service folks and also young families.”
City officials have been drawing up plans for Grove Neighborhood Park since at least 2018.
The challenge has been finding the funds to build it, said Mike Grzenia, who serves as vice chair of a local community group that advises the city parks department.
In 2021, the city started pushing money into planning and permit approvals for the park. But Grzenia said that momentum quickly came to a standstill amid the city’s ongoing budget challenges.
“The city kind of ran low on money,” Grzenia said.
Velasquez said the park project is an example of the broader challenges that Nestor and the surrounding neighborhoods have faced when it comes to getting local officials to invest in its infrastructure.
“Only within these last 15 years have we been seeing some improvement with that, but there’s still a long way to go,” he said.
That’s where the state’s $10 billion climate bond comes in.
The bond sets aside money for all kinds of environmental priorities, including repairing dams, pruning overgrown forests and restoring coastal wetlands. That includes building more public parks, which help to cool urban neighborhoods and offer other environmental and health benefits.
Nestor does rank among the parts of San Diego that are more vulnerable to heat waves, according to NASA researchers who mapped out heat exposure across the city in 2021.
The researchers found that Nestor and surrounding neighborhoods were more at risk because residents have higher rates of heart disease and diabetes. Those conditions can make it more dangerous to be in extreme heat.
This money comes from a bond measure, which means that the state is actually just borrowing the money. Taxpayers will have to pay it back with interest over the next 40 years.
But in the meantime, some of that money is starting to flow to places where the effects of climate change are happening right now.
Grzenia is excited that the park is one step closer to construction.
“I’m feeling really good about it,” he said. “It would have been nice to see money coming directly from the city to fund this, but it's really nice that Assemblymember Alvarez had the forethought to appropriate some money for this park.”
Velasquez is a little more cautious. He thinks many residents will feel more confident once they start seeing dirt being moved.
But he is happy to see money coming from the state’s climate fund, in particular. He thinks about the fact that Nestor also sits right next to pollution sources like the I-5 freeway and the Tijuana River Valley.
“I think it's great that these funds are being made available to the communities that are being impacted by these changes,” he said. “Helping our families and kids have, again, just green space and park space for them to enjoy.”
