Civic leaders in National City and Southeast San Diego have been working with residents this summer to reimagine 57 acres of land that were once planned for a freeway.
An unusually long Interstate-805 offramp bisecting the Southcrest neighborhood is all that remains of Highway 252, a project the state began planning in the 1960s but abandoned in the 1980s amid neighborhood opposition.
Most of the freeway's right-of-way has already been redeveloped into housing, parks, a shopping center and an elementary school. But the very start of the freeway — an interchange with I-805 that is currently used as the 43rd Street on- and off-ramps — remains standing.
The National City nonprofit Mundo Gardens is tasked with engaging the public on how to plan for the area's redevelopment into a neighborhood, as called for in the community plan.
Workshops held throughout the spring and summer have been collecting feedback from residents and are often informing them of the highway's forgotten history, said Janice Luna Reynoso, executive director of the organization.
"They might not know all of the story," Luna Reynoso said. "So it's always a good thing to share the story about the 252, of residents stopping that freeway 50 years ago that gave us an opportunity to reclaim the land."
The next workshop takes place on Thursday, Aug. 13, from 5 to 8 p.m. at the Mundo Gardens home base in National City.
San Diego was one of three cities selected in 2024 to receive funding from the state's Reconnecting Communities: Highways to Boulevards program, which seeks to repair the division that many freeways caused in low-income neighborhoods.
But more than two years later, funding has still not been allocated in the state budget.
Luna Reynoso said despite the lack of funding, to actually change the infrastructure, the planning process currently underway is helping residents imagine a better use for the land.
"We have residents from National City, from Southeast, from Shelltown, from the surrounding neighborhoods, sharing what they would like to see in their own communities outside their doors … but also how we are going to weave that into the new space and connect our communities," Luna Reynoso said. "Because this land divides our communities."
