Activists in National City and Southeast San Diego are celebrating a $4.5 million state budget allocation to an initiative aimed at reconnecting communities that were divided by freeways.
The funding, which was approved by state lawmakers on Sept. 1 and signed by Gov. Gavin Newsom on Sept. 18, will support community outreach, planning and technical studies surrounding the proposed redevelopment of the 43rd Street on and off-ramps to Interstate 805.
The ramps were initially planned to become the start of Highway 252, a project that Caltrans abandoned in the 1980s amid community opposition. In 2015, the city of San Diego adopted a new community plan that called for the ramps' redevelopment into housing, parks and commercial space.
Then in March 2024, Caltrans announced the ramps would be a focus area for its nascent Reconnecting Communities: Highways to Boulevards program. The program seeks to make amends for the displacement and division that many low-income communities of color experienced with the construction of freeways.
The state initially pledged $50 million for the program. But that funding never materialized in the state budget, as California struggled to close a budget deficit made wider by the Trump administration's spending cuts.
Janice Luna Reynoso is executive director of Mundo Gardens, one of the nonprofit organizations Caltrans selected as a program partner. She said a federal grant pledged during the Biden administration has allowed the project to advance while they awaited state funding.
Mundo Gardens has hosted dozens of community outreach, beautification and cleanup events in the space, which totals roughly 57 acres straddling the border between National City and San Diego's Southcrest neighborhood.
"We have people honking when we're standing here, and when we're painting and we're doing events, because they're used to seeing this area blighted," Luna Reynoso said. "So there's a little bit of hope that goes a long way."
Actually redeveloping the land is still years away and would depend on future funding commitments to support construction, Luna Reynoso said. The $4.5 million state budget allocation came after a persistent lobbying campaign from local residents, she added — a continuation of the activism in the 1970s and '80s that stopped the construction of Highway 252.
"I applaud leaders that are seeing this as change that they can help uplift, even if they might not be there when it happens," Luna Reynoso said. "That's a beautiful thing."
