Balancing Housing Density And Community Character In San Diego

TOM FUDGE: By 2050, demographers at the San Diego Association of governments estimate there will be 4.4 million people living in San Diego County. What are we going to do with another million plus people? The answer maybe the unavoidable answer, housing density. That means our neighborhoods will look more like San Francisco, and less like Des Moines. How do you sell housing density to people who live in San Diego County today? Joining me to talk about that are Erik Bruvold and Dave Gatzke. Erik, you'll be having a panel on this subject tomorrow, is that correct? ERIK BRUVOLD: Yes, The San Diego County Taxpayers Association tomorrow morning at 730 at the University club downtown, a panel with myself, and a couple of other people counsel member Ed Harris will be talking about San Diego's housing future and the issues of density and choice. TOM FUDGE: Erik, starting with you, what do you think we are talking about when we talk about housing density? ERIK BRUVOLD: As you said, we have a huge challenge facing the region now, by 2050 will had to add somewhere between 380,000 and 390,000 housing units. That is a substantial amount of housing that has to go into the region. At the same time, we know the number one and two and maybe number three issues for companies in terms of where they choose to expand, make investments in regions are based on the availability of the workforce. If we do not have housing that is at least moderately affordable and available for people, folks are going to leave San Diego, and companies are not going to find the talent they need. It is going to put a damper on the future economic growth in our region. TOM FUDGE: Dave, what do you think about housing density and what it means for our future? DAVE GATZKE: I think he's absolutely right to vote we need to figure out how San Diego's going to grow over the next thirty years, and we also know that we cannot continue to grow the way we have for the past thirty years. I am a San Diego native, and the entire time I was growing up, there is a thing called the future urbanizing area, which is now called 4S Ranch, and other neighborhoods we know and love. But we have not identified a new future urbanizing area, and our planning documents do not allow us to continue building these large, master-planned communities that we have had in the past. We need to find a new way, and the good news is, we can finalize order communities, you can exciting and vibrant places to live, and make them affordable, using existing infrastructure to do it. TOM FUDGE: With no more master-planned communities, does that mean infill housing? DAVE GATZKE: Absolutely. If you drive down El Cajon Boulevard, you see underutilized land sites, you take in car lots, a six lane road that was originally the East to West Highway before Interstate 8 was built. That is existing infrastructure we can repurpose, and build on some of the great vibrancy happening in the areas like Northpark, where you have great nightlife and exciting things to do that are attractive to residents. ERIK BRUVOLD: Company thing that, is really a transformation in the American retail space. We have overbuilt the amount of square footage in the region that we need for retail, and the way in which we service that with big boxes, and strip malls with acres of surface parking. There are great opportunities in those suburbs that grew up right after World War II to go in and find opportunities and locations and add mixed-use elements to chip away at that housing unit deficit. TOM FUDGE: So you want to take old shopping malls and turn them into housing? ERIK BRUVOLD: Mixed-use developer, she would go up rather than be in a single story, you would go up to two or three stories, you would put some parking that you need underground, and you would put some retail that would be pedestrian and community oriented as opposed to a broader, regional big box. There are great opportunities that enhance communities to go in and do retrofit options. TOM FUDGE: Terms like smart growth and especially density tend to be trigger points for residents who do not want to change their neighborhoods. Do people fear density because they do not understand it, or because they understand it too well? DAVE GATZKE: Is a good question. I would like to talk about what we want our neighborhoods to look like, and who would like to live in them. And what we want neighborhoods to look like instead of density. Density is a math problem, and it talks about the number of acre of land. But it does not make distinction between a 3000 ft.? house in 4S Ranch, a 2000 ft.? penthouse apartment on the Balboa Park, or a 500 ft.? relatively affordable apartment. Cities that have done a good job at this urban infill and revitalization have gone to things like form-based codes, where they dictate how does this moving address the street, what is the height and mass of the building, where does allow corduroys and to not shoot existing parks, and it lets the market decide, is the broadest part of market demand to build one-bedroom apartments? Or is it luxury apartments? Because that is demographic of the neighborhood. ERIK BRUVOLD: The choice is not between density and status quo. The choice is really between enhancing our communities in a smart way, were exporting housing problems to southern Riverside county and beyond. 3000 people every day, right now, commute from southern Riverside county and San Diego County into San Diego. We have proved the social experiment in California. 200,000 people every day drive from another county into the Silicon Valley. 50,000 of them cross a county to do so. They cross from one county, and across a second, to get to their destination. People drive hours, and hours, and hours. So we can either enhance the community with smart growth, were we can make I-15 forty lanes wide, double deck it, and export housing problems to the north and to the east. TOM FUDGE: Let me give you one example of the public reaction to perceived density. At one point, the city of San Diego suggested in increase housing height limit around the coming trolley station in Vermont. This happened in May, and the neighborhood was up in arms. ERIK BRUVOLD: Let's be frank, the political leader who represents that area stoked up fears for political purposes. I understand how communities are conservative, and worried about change. Housing is the most important asset that people buy in their lives. They put a ton of money into it, and rightly so that they are worried that change would erode value. But where political leadership can make a difference is pointing out that we know that fixed rail, light rail and heavy rail enhance property values, and don't detract from it. We know that Claremont and the area around Marino Boulevard needs investment over the long term. Where political investment is important is to go into communities and talk to them to preserve what is good, and make smart decisions to balance needs. DAVE GATZKE: I am a resident of uptown communities, and I think we have seen what density has done badly. We have seen retrofits in the 60s, and 70s, building six to eight unit apartments that did not fit the character of the neighborhoods. This time, I think we need to make a commitment that Erik talks about, to the preservation of great neighborhoods, but also to find within them the opportunities to capitalize on infrastructure investments that we are making. The trolley is $1 billion or more, and if we are not also using that to meet the housing needs, and capitalize on the investment that taxpayers are making, we're throwing money away. TOM FUDGE: In terms of what the housing density and different housing is going to look like, is it going to be a matter of holding up instead of building out? ERIK BRUVOLD: We clearly have examples. Density does not mean Miami Beach, or the density that we see in parts of downtown. It means being smart about townhomes, multi family housing that is two to four stories tall, that can bring community finalization. For specialty retailers, the things that give neighborhoods character, it's the straightforward calculation that people make. How many rooftops, housing doors are there, and what is the income in the community? If you keep communities at the density of places like Bay Park or Claremont, you will not have enough demands generated in the community to create the kind of vibrant community, and the amenities that a lot of people like in terms of moving away from mass-market, mass chain retail, to the things that build and enhance the community's character. TOM FUDGE: Erik was talking about townhomes, that kind of thing, what would you like to add to that? DAVE GATZKE: As developers, we look at the living experience we create indoors and outdoors, and taking advantage of San Diego's great climate. We have the community in Northpark, eighty-three apartments on an acre of land. We deliberately spend time focusing on how that interfaces the street, and interfaced with the music store. And how do we orient the apartment inside the building to take advantage of two large, central courtyards, and provide amenities for the residents that allow them to take the uses that they would use in a family room of a single-family house, but do it in a more communal space. The result has been fantastic. It is important that we spend time focusing on building forms, expressions, and designs that work well. TOM FUDGE: We have a caller, Dave in Julian. NEW SPEAKER: I'm really tired of hearing how we have no affordable housing, the only way to do it is to build a ton more apartments and bring in more people. We don't have enough water for the people we already have. TOM FUDGE: But Dave, how will we stop them from coming, how will we stop families in San Diego from having children? NEW SPEAKER: You can pull down some of that marketing everybody is doing. I live in Julian, we're going to bring 6000 people up here this weekend, it is insane. I'm sorry. TOM FUDGE: Thank you very much for calling. What is our reaction? DAVE GATZKE: Smart growth is a more responsible use of resources. Water usage is less. We do not have front lawns, so we spend the money to irrigate community parks. We're finding it is also much less expensive to develop and maintain the community infrastructure. TOM FUDGE: I have heard people like Dave quite a bit, calling into the show talking about all of the people coming here. Can we stop them from coming? ERIK BRUVOLD: First of all, let's get two things out on the table. Was of the growth that will occur from here moving forward our children, and grandchildren, family formation, and the fact that people are living longer. We have more birth and death we do not have a lot of migration to the region. But you could have made a claim 20 to 30 years ago, that if we make commutes so long, so bad, that people will throw their hands up and moved to Idaho, or Arizona. We have proved this, people will drive as they do here, to the Bay Area and Los Angeles, commutes that would make many of us roll our eyes. Three hours on the road, 100+ miles from their place of work. We cannot pull up the drawbridge. It is really a choice of whether we do it inside of our communities or export the growth problem to Riverside county, or even out to Imperial county and told intersection that we need to get people on the freeways into work here. TOM FUDGE: We have someone calling from Claremont, let us hear from him. Daniel, go ahead. NEW SPEAKER: I am not against mass transit, but I am against forcing the issue to justify our neighborhoods without us talking about it. I understand that when you bring in mass transit and have the station, and put in a station, there is a mandate that you have to have density factored in. That is what is scaring us, because it is not about the community. It is about state, regional, and city force against our communities. DAVE GATZKE: I think that is exactly right. It is important that we engage the community and explain. The fear about the density and what it does to the communities does not match the reality. Unfortunately, we seem to have heated, politicized dialogues in San Diego, and we have not done a good job looking at models of what they have done in other areas where they have brought in transit. Arlington Virginia is a great example where the DC Metro made a huge investment in transit stops in the region, did a very good job of concentrating growth, living next to very attractive, expensive single-family neighborhoods. ERIK BRUVOLD: The right kind of dialogue is not a dialogue between the status quo and freezing everything the way it is. Or pell-mell development in which by rights developers come in and put together packed apartments in a community. It is about finding a way to acknowledge that we have to do density, but to engage the community in a way that we can do away have talked about, to put design on this together that enhance the neighborhood, rather than detract from it. TOM FUDGE: I'm thinking about the trolley, the orange line or maybe the green line that goes out to Grossmont Center. Since the trolley station went in, I think I have seen quite a bit of development of condos, attached housing, is that an example of what we want? DAVE GATZKE: Absolutely. You had a great differential between the street below and the Grossmont Center above. The height does not have impact on the views from La Mesa above, and it was smartly and appropriately designed at that place. I think more planning like that, like La Mesa did, which is based on a station area. One of the unique attributes to this area, what do we want to preserve, what do we want to be responsible for in our areas, and what are the opportunities to grow? The problem in San Diego, we have community planning updates that are over two large of an area that most of which we do not want to, and are proposing to change. The Otay Mesa plan took ten years. Barrio Logan was over in record time in four years, but was overturned over the controversy of a one block area. Let us bring planning into a smaller focus, and get it right. TOM FUDGE: We can squeeze in one more call. We have Jon from Chula Vista. NEW SPEAKER: Thank you very much. We have a wonderful city, is gorgeous. They have done many things, they have overbuilt the Lakeside area, but because system needs to help the people, bring their bicycles to work, and just make things better. Downtown they have built a nice place where the markets are. The Coronado Bridge. I think by having this conversation, all of the positive things, you're opening markets. TOM FUDGE: Thank you for calling. Making things better and doing a better job of selling density is I think with our caller was saying. ERIK BRUVOLD: I think that starts with political leadership. We need to go give assurances to the community that they are going to be good stewards, but they are not going to try to sell people on the Smith that if we stop everything, people will not come. They were just live in Menifee, and drive two hours, and make eye fifteen a talking a lot for eight hours a day. TOM FUDGE: Thank you both very much.