SAN DIEGO—With Civic San Diego's unanimous approval of StreetLights Makers Quarter, the region will have a "home" to attract eventual office tenants and employees, urban planner Stacey Pennington tells GlobeSt.com. As we recently reported, L2HP—a collaboration between Lankford & Associates, Hensel Phelps and HP Investors—and its partner, StreetLights Residential, say the Civic San Diego board of directors unanimously approved the development permit for StreetLights Makers Quarter, a mixed-use development located at the corner of 16th and F streets in Downtown San Diego's East Village. The complete project will include 295 residential units, more than 20,000 square feet of retail, a pocket park on 15th Street and 477 parking spaces. We spoke exclusively with Pennington about Streetlights Makers Quarter and the progress on Makers Quarter itself.
GlobeSt.com: What distinguishes StreetLights Makers Quarter from other residential projects Downtown?
Pennington: The whole framework for Makers Quarter and urban planning is to use the interim before construction starts to engage the community, to test ideas and integrate the ones that work into the long term. The ones that don't work, we learn our lesson in the near term. That sets the stage for StreetLights Makers Quarter. The location is SILO, which is pretty cool because all the ideas we tested at SILO are being integrated into the StreetLights development. On the one hand, SILO was created as a venue to engage all the layers of the community. We set the stage in 2013 by having Makers Quarter host an event there, and we saw how the community responded. All of the animation at SILO for the last couple of years will carry on through the future pocket park at StreetLights Makers Quarter. It will be the hub of the community, activating the neighborhood, and it has been designed to do just that. There could be film nights, festivals, weddings, etc.
Another thing developed through SILO—and the community is telling us to do this—is the huge demand for engaging art. At SILO, we have had 25 rotating mural sites and have engaged more than 100 muralists, so maturing that concept with the evaluation of the neighborhood is a huge priority for us. For arts to continue to have a really strong role in this neighborhood, the inclusion of arts needs to advance with the neighborhood. We will have a five-story, rotating art installation, and it will have a combination of fixed and rotating panels. It will be curated by Christopher Konecki, curator of SILO.
Two powerful ways StreetLights Makers Quarter will differ from other residential buildings Downtown from a bigger picture are that Makers Quarter will be the employment hub for Downtown and the region. We will be building a million-square-foot office setting, with the first phase of office breaking ground this spring. It's critical to begin with the residential—it needs to become a home first. The StreetLights Makers Quarter tower responds to the future park. It fulfills the goal for the employment hub. Also, we will be integrating a quote from Martin Luther King in the pocket-park environment, which is an acknowledgement to the way culture is included in this project.
GlobeSt.com: What is the next step for the project?
Pennington: Construction will begin mid to late next year, and it will be about a two-year construction process, opening mid to late 2018. This unanimous approval from the Civic San Diego board marks the conclusion of the entitlement process—the unanimous decision is huge.
GlobeSt.com: What else should our readers know about StreetLights Makers Quarter and Broadstone Makers Quarter, the other residential project planned for the area?
Pennington: First will come the construction on Broadstone Makers Quarter and then the construction on the first office buildings. Right after that, construction will begin on StreetLights Makers Quarter. It's a big project—it's not the kind where we're ready to butcher it all up; it needs to integrate with the neighborhood. I feel like we were advancing pretty quickly, but others in the community feel we're five years into it with three blocks under construction. All five blocks of this 2.5-million-square-foot project could happen as soon as 2021-2022. It's an economic-development approach.
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Carrie Rossenfeld
Carrie Rossenfeld is a reporter for the San Diego and Orange County markets on GlobeSt.com and a contributor to Real Estate Forum. She was a trade-magazine and newsletter editor in New York City before moving to Southern California to become a freelance writer and editor for magazines, books and websites. Rossenfeld has written extensively on topics including commercial real estate, running a medical practice, intellectual-property licensing and giftware. She has edited books about profiting from real estate and has ghostwritten a book about starting a home-based business.
