San Diego Mayor Todd Gloria announced Monday his preferred redevelopment plan for the city-owned 48-acre Sports Arena property: Midway Rising.
The announcement was not a surprise since Midway Rising ranked first among five candidates when city staff last updated the City Council on the project in the spring. Officials credit the development team with providing the most low-income affordable housing that state law requires the city to prioritize when redeveloping public land.
“Following a transparent process in accordance with state regulations, I am confident that Midway Rising will deliver on my vision to create thousands of new affordable and middle-income housing, good-paying local jobs and a new world-class arena and entertainment district,” said Gloria in a statement. “This project represents metropolitan energy and I look forward to getting this done for the Midway community and our city.”
Midway Rising would build 4,250 apartments — 2,000 of them with limited rents affordable to low-income households. Another 250 homes would be affordable for middle-income households, while the remaining 2,000 would charge the market rate.
Also included in the plan is a new arena with capacity for up to 16,500 people, a 200-room hotel, 250,000 square meters of retail space and 20 hectares of parks and open spaces.
Gloria plans to present her recommendation to the council’s Agriculture and Housing Committee on Sept. 8, followed by a vote by the full council on Sept. 13. He promised to release “all supporting documents” regarding the redevelopment plan by Friday.
If the council approves Midway Rising, city officials will still have to negotiate more details with the development team led by Encinitas-based Zephyr. Also on the team is affordable housing developer Chelsea Investment Corp. and Legends, who built SoFi Stadium home to the Los Angeles Rams and Chargers.
Key details yet to be determined include how much revenue the city will get from the project and how the affordable housing will be financed. Some council members expressed a desire to see the development team shoulder the cost of building the affordable housing, though that would likely require the city to forgo revenue from the property’s ground rent.
State officials last year forced the city to scrap an earlier redevelopment plan chosen by former Mayor Kevin Faulconer because the city did not follow the Surplus Land Act. This law, updated in 2019, requires local governments to first offer surplus land to affordable housing developers. It also requires cities to prioritize projects with the most affordable housing, although cities can still reject those projects if they can’t provide fair market value for the land.
Hanging over the redevelopment plans is the city’s 30-foot height limit for new buildings outside downtown and west of Interstate 5. Neither proposal would be feasible under the height limit.
San Diegans voted to exempt the Midway District from the height limit in 2020, but the measure has been tied up in a lawsuit. A vote on the height limit exemption is set to appear on the November ballot as Measure C.
