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The national media was here to declare that San Diego’s civic core was an “anomaly.” As other downtown areas suffer, ours is popping!
CBS took into consideration sales tax revenue levels and a UC Berkley study that used cell phone data to determine that downtown San Diego was 99 percent back to pre-pandemic activity levels.
This week on the VOSD Podcasts hosts Scott Lewis, Andrew Keatts and Andrea Lopez-Villafaña take turns giving downtown their own grades, based on their own experiences in that part of the city.
Plus: We have updates on smart streetlights and why activists aren’t happy. A billionaire is back in San Diego philanthropy circles but not everyone is excited about that. And the mayor has done a reorg to address homelessness better.
Just when Todd Gloria and his minions have managed to flim-flam CBS into putting out an item celebrating how much downtown is “poppin”, along come the party poopers at VOSD to point out all the ugly truths the mayor tried to paper over. Anyone paying attention who reads the UT, VOSD and other local media outlets knows that downtown is facing a real estate crash and office buildings continue sitting empty due to remote work practices adopted during the pandemic. Real estate experts are taking bets among themselves about how awful the crash might be. Others are singing happy talk about how startup life science companies will all troop south from the UCSD area to downtown, abandoning the institution where most of their products are being invented and discovered. Chances of that happening are slim and none, and big real estate trusts who have bet the farm by investing billions to redevelop the Navy Broadway Complex site on the bayfront and Horton Plaza are likely to lose their shirts. Wonder if the mayors office and CBS will sing a different song when that happens?