This is City of Villages month. The San Diego City Council is slated to consider, and presumably approve, four final candidate “pilot projects” in varied San Diego communities. These projects have little in common with respect to size, development concept, funding and markets served. They are diversely located throughout the city in neighborhoods of San Ysidro, along El Cajon Boulevard, at SDSU and in Encanto. They are ambitious and innovative, and all are deserving of whatever gifts the city bestows on them.

What the pilot village candidates do have in common is being located in communities in transition. These are areas that have long been troubled and historically passed over in terms of market rate housing and even redevelopment attention. In each selected neighborhood, social service agencies, foundations and business organizations are the catalysts for change. The partnerships are impressive.

Private Development Is The Key

Unfortunately, none of these pilot villages is being driven by private developers. Ultimately, if the effort to rebuild our existing communities is to be achieved on a grand scale, it is the private development community that must participate, much as it does Downtown.

The significance of Downtown’s redevelopment is that it has achieved a nexus between the efforts of the Centre City Development Corp. (its specially designated redevelopment agency) and private development. The agency set the stage, but private developers take the risks and construct the buildings.

Similarly, private developers must be brought in to make the big projects happen in the neighborhoods. To be sure, developers are not ignoring the potential for infill projects. Developers are involved in diversified projects in a variety of neighborhoods, from condominium conversions to mixed use. But with some exceptions, such as McMillin’s Liberty Station on the former NTC site in Point Loma, they are smaller projects.

Targeting The Older Suburbs

The pilot projects are projected to spur private developers to take on similar projects in other San Diego neighborhoods.

What is needed is a monumental expansion of designated redevelopment areas, initially into the communities of Clairemont, Serra Mesa and Linda Vista. Most of these neighborhoods need the major assistance that can be brought about by redevelopment designation and agency attention. This includes the ability to assemble large parcels of land for redevelopment as well as the application of tax increment financing.

These communities ring the so-called “inner city.” They are the first San Diego suburbs. They first rose in the decade following World War II. Most of the housing stock is 40 to 50 years old. The first homebuyers were veterans and their families, many of whom still reside here. One young woman recently told me that she and her husband had just purchased their first home. It was in Serra Mesa, and they were only the second family to occupy the house.

These older suburbs are extremely well located relative to San Diego’s major employment locations, shopping and attractions. While predictably wary of change, these communities also have engaged citizens in the community planning groups who will accept reasonable redevelopment to improve their neighborhoods.

These communities are poster children for what the city is trying to accomplish: create new development in the older neighborhoods, accommodate growth in the right places and do it in a way that doesn’t place excessive demands on transportation systems.

Any major scale proposed redevelopment will tax existing infrastructure and services. This is a truism throughout the city. None of the older communities can support new growth without much infrastructure improvements. But these improvements are sure to be delayed for many years without embracing the dollars that come with new development.

After The Villages Are Started

Once the Pilot Villages are officially chosen and the projects are started, the really important process begins. The key to each of these villages is that they present and follow development programs and concepts that can be replicated in other communities.

Also crucial is the city’s ability to help. The main obstacles are political, infrastructure and service related. Existing communities are resistant to change. The key to dealing with this resistance is to mitigate the impacts of expanded development on streets, schools, parks, sewer pipes, police and fire services, etc. This means that money, something the city does not have right now, will have to be raised. The only practical way for this to happen in the foreseeable future is through expanded redevelopment designation to these communities.

The pain here is that to achieve large-scale redevelopment, assembly and, ultimately, condemnation will have to take place. Some neighborhoods will have to be reconstructed to make way for higher density, contemporary development.

Demand Is Expanding

San Diego has little choice about growing vertically. Our children must be accommodated and, with few exceptions, the region’s suburban development will end in the next decade when all the appropriately zoned land is developed. Today’s density, use and overall zoning guidelines must accordingly be rewritten. Voters are not going to allow existing open space and land set aside for environmental reasons to be developed.

The path we are on is a good one. What the city of San Diego is accomplishing with the pilot villages is about the most progressive planning occurring in the nation today. The wonderful thing about it is that the philosophy of accommodation will embrace the needs of all demographic groups and potentially resurrect the older suburbs.