By Jennifer Whitelaw
San Diego Metro Magazine
San Diego’s current housing stock is dominated by single-family homes and connected by cars.
With state and local climate goals calling on communities to radically reduce their emissions, conversation and planning in San Diego has turned to the intersection of transportation, housing and employment centers.
With many promising development projects in the pipeline, San Diego’s next wave of housing will be more convenient and connected.
One of the most transformative of these projects, Riverwalk, by real estate developer Hines, represents this shift in regional planning and development.
Hines, the firm behind the environmentally friendly La Jolla Commons office campus in University Town Center and managing the development of Downtown’s Petco Park—has partnered with the Levi-Cushman family to transform Mission Valley’s Riverwalk Golf Course into a 200-acre, transit-oriented village—the first in San Diego.
Riverwalk reimagines the existing golf course and clubhouse into a live-work-play, transit-first community that aims to alter the way residents connect and interact with the world around them.
“Throughout all phases of the project, our firm has worked closely with the local community to connect the best practices in land planning, transportation and design to deliver local residents a viable option to live a connected life with far less reliance on a car,” said Hines Director Eric Hepfer.
Plans for Riverwalk complement Mission Valley’s current offerings by fusing and carefully locating elements of housing, transportation, retail, office and open space to create an interconnected community.
The thousands of new housing units planned at Riverwalk will be geared to different income levels and will include approximately 400 affordable units. At a time when San Diego’s housing supply remains critically low, providing housing near transit gives San Diego an option for making up some of the housing deficit in a way that mitigates impact on surrounding roads.
It also marries the availability of affordable housing with affordable transportation, rendering the housing much more practical for those who can’t afford to operate and maintain a car…or who simply choose not to.
Hines will also bring online some 150,000 square feet of neighborhood-serving retail and over 1 million square feet of office space to make the concept of living, working and playing in one place a reality for thousands of San Diegans.
The urban village will be anchored by a new Metropolitan Transit System (MTS) green-line trolley station that will connect local residents to jobs, education and entertainment. The new stop will be activated by surrounding office space, retail and café offerings.
The trolley stop will be located a few stops from the Old Town Transit Center and MTS’s $2 billion, Mid-Coast trolley extension, which is currently under construction, connecting to the jobs-rich UTC area and the U.S.- Mexico border.Trolley connections from the green line to Downtown San Diego, another major employment center, are already in place.
Riverwalk is also proximate to eight MTS bus lines, freeways and adjacent major thoroughfares.
Hines will open up more than 100 acres of open space at Riverwalk to the community, including an 80-acre park, and rehabilitate a large, critical portion of the San Diego River, which runs directly through the project. This will be the largest recreational area accessible by trolley in San Diego.
As part of the restoration work, Hines will also extend a critical segment of the San Diego River Trail, furthering the vision of a 17-mile, contiguous bike and walking path from the beach to the mountains.
The Riverwalk plan reimagines development in San Diego— development that could provide opportunities for a wide range of San Diegans in a way that respects and celebrates the natural environment. Construction is slated to begin next year.
About Riverwalk
Riverwalk will be a 200-acre mixed-use community located in San Diego’s Mission Valley. At completion, the development will include approximately 4,000 multifamily units, 140,000 square feet of retail and one million square feet of office space. The project is located in an amenity- rich area and will offer convenient access to the city’s major thoroughfares and public transportation hubs.