Ensuring Responsible Development at the Brucker Site: What Can We Do
By Marc Johnson - as seen in UH News May 2025
In “The Brucker Site: Past, Present, and Future” on the front page, Kristin Harms and Bill Ellig have given us a comprehensive (and excellent) summary of how we got to this point today. This project is scheduled to move extremely fast with developers submitting proposals by August and a final decision scheduled for the December Board of Trustees meeting.
For over 7 years, our community has engaged with SDUSD on redeveloping the Brucker site. This included 4 community workshops and various smaller meetings to survey, vision, debate, review, and revise plans. The latest result is the AVRP/Community Consensus Plan, presented by SDUSD in November 2023.
The SDUSD has spent hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars, as calculated from data obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request by the Community Coalition of University Heights (CCUH). This included hiring AVRP Skyport for their work in drafting multiple site plans, conducting the community outreach workshops, and meeting with CCUH members on multiple revisions. After that work was concluded, SDUSD then hired LeSar Development Consultants for their December 2024 workshop. Details can be viewed at www.uhsd.org/edcenterworkshopdec24. LeSar, who is both highly-regarded and well-connected politically and with the development community, influenced Trustees to restart the process by “going out to the market” with a Request for Proposal (RFP), disregarding existing plans and community input.
It’s important to understand that SDUSD’s primary goal in redeveloping the Brucker site is to provide affordable housing to District teachers and staff, not the broader community. In fact, since this is SDUSD property, they are legally constrained in what they can do with it- the requirements are that it be used for direct educational activities or workforce housing. As such, SDUSD is not responsible for providing any community amenities such as open space, dog parks, and libraries. Those all fall 100% under City of San Diego responsibility. However, the AVRP/Community Consensus Plan, after many years of negotiation and expense, included some of these amenities as they will be utilized by the new residents.
From the survey results that we have collected in just over 10 days since we launched it – UH residents have spoken loudly and clearly that 77% support the current AVRP/Community Consensus Plan.
Do you support the Community Consensus/AVRP Site Plan in its entirety for redevelop-ment of the Brucker site at 4100 Normal Street in University Heights? 163 responses as of 4/17/25
Themes emerged from the comments in the 163 survey responses to date around: worries about cars and parking impact to the surrounding neighborhoods, strong support for the existing work on the AVRP Community Consensus Plan, need for parks and a larger dog park, concerns over density, support for affordable housing for teachers, as well as a larger library, more commercial (retail, restaurants), and support for protecting trees, historic buildings. There were also comments for increased density, 11-12 stories, 1,000+ units, and elimination of most/all parking.
It is critical that our community rally behind the AVRP site plan for the Brucker site developed after 7 years of collaboration with hundreds of UH community members. Rest assured that we expect many others from outside of UH to attend the Brucker Site Community Workshop and advocate for increased height and density with no parking at the expense of hard-fought community amenities.
Here’s what you can do now to advocate for the AVRP site plan:
Indicate your support of the AVRP Site Plan via the survey at www.uhsd.org/edcentersurvey1
Attend the Brucker Site community workshop on Monday April 28 at 6:30pm at the Birney Auditorium, and voice your support the AVRP/Community Consensus Plan for the Brucker site
Write letters/emails to the Board of Education in support of the AVRP Site Plan for the Brucker site, The contact information for each of the trustees is:
District D (covering most of UH): Richard Barrera, rbarrera1@sandi.net
District B (covering UH North of Madison Ave.): shazan@sandi.net
District A: Sabrina Bazzo, sbazzo@sandi.net
District C: Cody Petterson (Board President), cpetterson@sandi.net
District E: Sharon Whitehurst-Payne, swhitehurst-payne@sandi.net
Letters may be addressed to each board member at the District headquarters: SDUSD Board of Trustees, 4100 Normal Street, Room 2231, San Diego CA 92116
Sign up for email updates on the Brucker site and for further advocacy opportunities by indicating you want to stay updated via the survey at www.uhsd.org/edcentersurvey1
This newspaper has published at least 25 articles about this issue since 2017. From the aborted “land swap” deal to numerous meetings and revisions, UH residents believed there was a plan. Starting from scratch wastes time and resources, especially with reduced funding from both State and Federal sources. It disregards the efforts of those who spent hours crafting a reasonable plan that addressed affordable workforce housing for SDUSD and provided amenities without over-stressing our infrastructure.
Does the current consensus plan meet everyone’s desires and needs? Far from it. Some would like to see more open space, a library, and a larger dog park, for example. It’s important to remember that SDUSD is not responsible for providing and libraries to our community—the City of San Diego is. If the site was privately owned and developed, chances are that our community would never even have the opportunity to provide input and all of this would be happening in the dark.
The survey responses mirror our own UHCA board member’s views. I believe that just about everyone in our community agrees that we are in a housing crisis, and most folks believe that building more affordable housing should be a priority. According to all research I’ve read, the housing shortage is especially acute for affordable workforce housing designed for mid-to-lower income working families, “the missing middle.” Where I believe there are differences is in the where and how fast to build.
So far this year, the city has permitted more than 25,000 new homes, yet according to the Regional Housing Needs Assessment, San Diego must build more than 82,000 new homes by 2029. That’s a huge deficit and it took decades to get that bad. We can’t fix it immediately, and we can’t fix it by putting all of the increased density into a small number of already overburdened communities like UH, which already lacks the infrastructure to support the existing massive building that has already happened.
I hope that we can find common ground in our agreement about our current housing situation, that building affordable housing is a priority, but also find a way to agree that UH should not - and cannot - bear the bulk of the burden to address the entire region’s lack of affordable housing development.
UH will have, if the AVRP/Community Consensus Plan is built as described with 500 units, over 1,550 new or planned units (a 25% increase) in just the last few years. And this doesn’t include other possible large-scale developments that may come up or the hundreds of smaller projects or ADUs. It isn’t fair to expect UH absorb a disproportionate share of high-density projects that will overwhelm our already deficient infrastructure of parks, library, streets, transit, water, and power. It’s time for all areas of San Diego to step up to meet this critical need equitably and fairly.
Let’s find ways to work together to not only keep our neighborhood the charming, wonderful place it already is - but support a reasonable project that helps more of our neighbors enjoy this awesome place without destroying what makes it so special.
That’s what we came to consensus on already after many years of meetings together- let’s move forward and try to make UH better with a reasonable project.