Two radio towers mark a high point in Emerald Hills. For now, the 31-acre property is quiet, green and mostly empty. An upcoming appeal hearing could decide how that changes.
It offers a rare 360-degree view from Mexico to La Jolla.
From his backyard, Kenny Key uses a rope and makeshift boards to scale a steep incline and take in the view.
Every morning, he can look to the east and watch the sun rise over San Miguel Mountain. He tracks its wide arc through the sky to set between the Coronado Bridge and Point Loma Lighthouses, and sees the moon rise in its stead. He can see every plane that flies over the city and every ship that docks in its harbor.
“We see the beauty of San Diego every day,” he said. “And so we love our community.”
Key’s mother bought their home in the early ‘70s, around the time redlining had recently ended. The hilltop property had been a country club and golf course.
“Blacks weren't allowed to play up here. Blacks weren't allowed to build up here. So when we came up here ... it was like, ‘Upgrade!’” he said.
He was 7 years old when they moved in.
“As kids, it was kind of like ‘Little Rascals’ up here,” he said, laughing.
The neighborhood kids would scramble over the hills playing with go-carts, slingshots and toy guns. They’d play football in the street that didn’t yet have many cars speeding by.
There used to be a drive-in movie theater below the hill. They would spread blankets on the hilltop or climb onto their roofs and tune in for free to “the latest thing” with their AM radios, he said.
Thomas Sharp bought the property in 1939 and built the radio towers on it.
Key said he and the other kids used to dream of what he calls “SeaWorld towers” — something visitors could ride up to take in the view.
He never let go of that dream. He created mockups to show his vision to the city.
“We need more than housing. We need amenities that were promised to us in the ‘70s and denied us up until this very day,” he said.
The Trust for Public Land measured San Diego’s park equity this year. They found residents living in San Diego’s Black and brown neighborhoods, like Emerald Hills, have access to 64% less nearby park space than those in white neighborhoods.
The hilltop is part of a chain of green spaces that run through the neighborhood.
The neighbors have been asking for a park there since at least 1978, when a housing development was proposed.
“If our community is to maintain its identity, we must preserve Radio Canyon as open space,” wrote neighbor Hazel Higgins at the time. “If 143 houses are built in Radio Canyon, it will be extremely detrimental to Emerald Hills. Our streets, facilities, parks, etc., were not designed to accommodate the number of people being thrust into our neighborhood.”
That housing development was not built. But nearly fifty years later, another is proposed.
The city marked “Southeastern San Diego” as an environmental justice community — overburdened by pollution, heat and lack of green space.
The city’s 2015 community plan flagged the radio towers lot for a possible park. So it came as a shock to neighbors when they heard of the plan to build 123 homes there instead. The owners of those homes could each build two accessory dwelling units.
“They want to make it to where only a few people can benefit from that view instead of this community which has been underserved and promised so much for so long with no deliveries,” said Marc Santos, who has been living next to the lot since 1995.
When neighbors looked at a zoning map, it didn’t appear 123 homes were even allowed there.
On a similarly sized lot in La Jolla, developers are only proposing 18 homes.
They dug for an answer, and found a small footnote added to city code in 2019.
It allowed for much denser development, but only in the Black and brown, low-income neighborhoods in Southeast San Diego.
It added to this feeling Santos and many of his neighbors have of being played.
“It seems like we were really cut out of the backroom deals,” he said.
Saige Gonzales Walding chairs the Chollas Valley Community Planning Group, which includes Emerald Hills and seven other neighborhoods.
“We’re a working class community, we’re a Black and brown community, we're a community of immigrants, we speak all different languages. So organizing a community that's already really working hard just to live in this time is asking a lot,” she said.
Advocating to save the green space has taken many hours of unpaid labor. Neighbors searched through more than a thousand pages of laws and public records to uncover the footnote.
“I think burnout is real. And when you are in communities of concern like ours, you wonder if that's not the ploy, right? Is this the plan?” she said.
Despite the challenges, the community did organize. They convinced the City Council to repeal the footnote last year.
But City staff said stopping already complete development applications could violate state law – including the one proposed for the radio towers lot in Emerald Hills.
San Diego is in a housing crisis. The San Diego Housing Federation estimates about 150,000 more homes are needed to balance the market.
Before Walding, Andrea Hetheru chaired the planning group. She said that number shouldn’t be the only goal.
“It's not just about rooftops. The community matters,” she said. “You can put the most beautiful housing and a number of housing in the South Pole, but if it doesn't have the amenities that you need, there's no point in the housing. So south of 94, before you put density here, we need amenities. We've been waiting for decades.”
She thinks the stakes for this particular property are high.
“It could be a park that changes the trajectory of an area that has been disinvested in for almost a century,” she said. “Once you get a world class park, a destination type park on that hill, you're going to attract business. You're going to attract institutional partners.”
“You need something of a huge scale and this parcel can do that,” she said.
The group appealed the housing development on every category of appeal grounds the City of San Diego has. The hearing is scheduled for July 7 at 2 p.m. in the city council chambers.
Walding will be among those making their case in a dispute she said reflects our times.
“You can't make more land. You just can't,” she said. “That's what everybody's after is land. Land has become the commodity of this century.”
In the meantime, city spokesperson Ombretta Di Dio said by email the developer is proceeding “at their own risk, processing construction documents before the discretionary project is approved.”
