Dear Neighbors,
On April 11th, the City issued a Community Discussion Draft Plan for the University City Community Plan Update. You can find a copy of the Draft Plan here: On-Screen Version | Print-Ready Version.
Members of Help Save UC have reviewed the Draft Plan and prepared a comment letter, which we submitted to the City on May 4th. Here is a link to the PDF of our letter to the city:
We hope you have time to review all of our comments in this letter. Most comments relate to commercial properties on Governor Drive, particularly the Vons and Sprouts shopping centers. We recommend the following changes to the Draft Plan with respect to those two centers:
The maximum density for Sprouts should be 29 dwelling units/acre and the maximum density for Vons should be 54 dwelling units/acre (not 73 dwelling units/acre as proposed by the City).
The height limit at Sprouts should be 40 feet and the height limit at Vons should be 50 feet (not 100 feet as stated by Ms. Graham at a recent subcommittee meeting).
The setbacks at both locations should be 30 feet from adjacent residential properties.
Community/neighborhood retail services such as grocery stores, pharmacies, post offices, restaurants, etc., must be retained. The Draft Plan only “encourages” these services to be retained.
The current number of commercial parking spaces at each location should be kept, and residential projects must require at least one residential parking space per dwelling unit. The Draft Plan does not currently discuss the number of spaces for commercial or residential use. Instead, it proposes “unbundled” residential parking, meaning that residential parking fees would be charged separately from housing, possibly leading to residents parking off site.
Our comment letter also reiterates that the proposed Plan allows for too much density and that the area cannot support doubling the community’s population. The comments also discuss the difficulty of understanding the Draft Plan, as colors in the Land Use Map are hard to differentiate and information such as height limits and parking requirements are not clear.
What can you do?
If you agree with our comments, please let the City, Planning Group and Subcommittee Members know:
You can cut and paste the points listed above into an email and ask that the University City Community Discussion Draft Plan be modified to make these changes.
If you support all of the changes in our letter, you can also say that you support all of the changes to the Community Discussion Draft Plan requested by Help Save UC in its letter dated May 4, 2023.
You may also communicate any concerns about the Community Discussion Draft not specifically articulated in our comment letter.
Please send comments to Nancy Graham (City Planner): planuniversity@sandiego.gov
And CC:
Chris Nielsen (chair of the UC Planning Group): cn@adsc-xray.com
Andy Wiese (chair of the UC Plan Update Subcommittee): awiese@sdsu.edu
Kent Lee (Our District 6 councilmember): KentLee@sandiego.gov
Dustin Nguyen (D6 Director of Community Engagement & UC rep): DVNguyen@sandiego.gov
San Diego Mayor Todd Gloria: MayorToddGloria@sandiego.gov
Joe LaCava (District 1 councilmember): JoeLaCava@sandiego.gov
Please also CC us at info@helpsaveuc.org so we can track how many comments are submitted.
Thank you for your ongoing attention and support on these issues.