Pro-Business Legislation Drives Development in San Diego

For the last several years, San Diego has focused on supporting real estate development and investment with pro-business initiatives. The strategy has worked, helping to drive new development in the market. The revitalization of Downtown San Diego has been the prime beneficiary of this legislation.

“It has absolutely accelerated the revitalization of downtown San Diego. Their forward-thinking planning framework targeted investments, incentives and business friendly permitting process has helped make development opportunities more viable and often provided the final piece necessary to get a development off the ground,” Bob Hunt, managing director of public institutions at JLL, tells GlobeSt.com. “There activates have facilitated catalytic developments that have transformed underserved neighborhoods into vibrant components of the city’s fabric.”

Hunt says that PetCo Park, which is home of the San Diego Padres baseball team, is the best example. The property would not have been built without city support. “This stadium was developed in blighted area of San Diego, and to build the park, the City of San Diego paid $301 million of the $474 million cost for the ballpark,” says Hunt. “Because of this investment the park was built.”

The city made a good investment. The stadium helped to drive the investment of several other redevelopment projects valued at $4.3 billion. These have either already been completed or are currently under development. “Of these, $4 billion was privately funded and this previously blighted area was well on its way to a dramatic redevelopment to the benefit of the citizens and also increasing the tax base to the city to generate a return on its initial investment,” says Hunt.

San Diego’s business-friendly environment is unusual in a state known for just the opposite. Many investors are announcing plans to leave the state in response to challenging regulations, high taxes and new restrictive legislation. “Having a city that takes a sophisticated real estate approach derives results,” says Hunt. “What San Diego did—which I think has allowed it to continue to do what it’s done—is maintain an investment-friendly approach and some of the supportive development contained within a very forward thinking and active development agency in Civic San Diego. They continue to find ways to cobble together consortiums to do a variety of different things allows for positive development that otherwise may not have occurred. They’ve streamlined the land use and entitle process to help projects off the ground faster and a lot of little things to remove the barriers to private sector.”