Brucker Ed Center Site: 7 years and $500,000 Later... and We're Starting Over

The SDUSD will hold a “listening session” with the UH community on April 28 at 6:30pm at the Birney Auditorium to “begin the visioning process for the redevelopment of the site.”

SDUSD and the UH community have had large-scale visioning meetings at the Brucker Auditorium four times already since 2018, with the final one on November 8, 2023. This is not the beginning - this is a complete restart.

Community members – several hundred attendees over 4 meetings – listened, commented, and actively participated in a design charette to help guide SDUSD on what was needed, and what wouldn’t be acceptable to the Community.

The Community Coalition of University Heights Ed Center Task Force has had no fewer than 9 additional meetings with SDUSD. And SDUSD presented to the UHCA on 5 occasions. Our community has gone through several proposals, refined them, and ultimately came to a consensus that we call the AVRP/Community Consensus Plan.

Do you support the Community Consensus/AVRP Site Plan in its entirety for redevelopment of the Brucker site at 4100 Normal Street in University Heights? 173 responses (April 22)

The AVRP/Community Consensus Plan was not 100% satisfactory to everyone, but it was widely agreed that it represented the best outcome considering the workforce housing needs of SDUSD and the impacts to the UH community. In other words, a compromise.

As of April 22 with over 173 responses, UH residents spoke overwhelmingly in support of the existing AVRP/Community Consensus Plan.

The SDUSD board then hired – at a cost of at least $150,000(*1) - a highly regarded (and politically well-connected) consultant who encouraged the board at a December 2024 workshop to “go big” and “let the market tell you what they can do.”(*2) 

And at the March 25 Board meeting, the SDUSD Board of Trustees voted to put out a request for proposal on this (and 4 other) sites.

SDUSD is disregarding 7 years of hard work and at least $500,000(*3) of taxpayer money spent with AVRP/Skyport, the architect hired to help craft the AVRP/Community Consensus Plan. SDUSD cut the community out of this process and decided to, in the words of their new consultant, “let the market decide.”

This is starting to feel like our community is being sold out to developers yet again.

The potential result is that developers will now craft new plans that will maximize the good goals of the previous plan – affordable housing for SDUSD employees – while at the same time adding a new dimension to the equation: their own profits.

What could this mean for UH?

We don’t know yet – and we may not know until the Board votes on an approved plan as early as December. The SDUSD engaged a new consultant and held meetings without any input or communication with the community.

At the recent March 25 Board meeting, more than 20 public comments, many from people who came from outside of UH with talking points aligned with groups like Vibrant Uptown, expressed desires for much higher density and minimizing parking for the site.

Could a developer create a project with a mix of market-rate and subsidized housing? How many units of market-rate housing would be needed to subsidize the required 500 units of affordable housing for SDUSD employees? Given the current chaotic economic situation here and globally, with tarffs and rising costs for lumber, steel, and labor (as well as financing being extremely hard and expensive to secure), it’s a complete unknown. Several smart people have told me that nothing larger than the AVRP plan will pencil out and be feasible. But just to satisfy my own curiosity, I wanted to get a better idea of what 2,000 units in total could look like… and it would likely require 20 stories along Park/Normal and 15 along Campus- assuming a bare minimum of 1 parking space for each unit.  

AVRP/Community Consensus Plan - scaled to 2,000 units using existing design

What can we do?

Quite simply, we as a community need to stand up and be heard - and resist outside forces trying to impose unreasonable density requirements and a parking nightmare on our already dense community. University Heights is a very different neighborhood compared to Hillcrest, Bankers Hill, or Downtown which are already set-up for higher density. The AVRP/Community Consensus Plan, even with flaws, is our best hope to have a balance of housing with minimal negative impact to our neighborhood.

In just the last few years, UH has had over 750 units of housing come online in large scale projects- which will swell to over 1,000 in the next few years. And that doesn’t include scores more coming from smaller projects and ADUs. The Brucker Education Center project, at 500 units, would bring that total to over 1,500 - and that’s only counting projects we know of. There are likley another 1,000 units still in early stages of planning. And that doesn’t include what could happen should the few remaining large parcels like Sprouts- who is opening a new store just 1.3 miles away on El Cajon Blvd next year- are redeveloped.

The entire UH community had a total of 5,995 households as of 2022 according to Statistical Atlas using Census Bureau data - adding 2000 more units would be a growth of over 33%. Does anyone really believe our tiny community has the infrastructure to absorb that kind of massive growth in around five years?

We are in a severe housing crisis - San Diego has woefully under-built housing, especially affordable housing, for decades. That being said, it’s not fair to force a small community like University Heights to absorb a disproportionate number of high density projects. We lack the infrastructre - roads, parks, library, etc. - to support that kind of growth. Imagine what the Park/Normal/El Cajon intersection will be like with another 2,500-4,000 people living adjacent to it.

I encourage you to attend, be heard, and resist the SDUSD’s attempts to erase seven years of productive work. Demand that this process start from the AVRP/Community Consensus Plan with a reasonably sized project with adequeate parking - and work from there to identify ways to improve it - and not destroy UH in the process.

These are my observations and opinions, which are informed by having been involved in discussions with SDUSD and our other community partners that make up the Community Coalition of University Heights since 2019. I’m pro-housing, especially when that housing is affordable, and even more so when it’s targeted as workforce housing and larger units that can accomodate families. I’m also a proponent and promoter of our community and I support smart planning decisions that include housing that enhances and doesn’t destroy our neighborhood. I’ve been advocating for more intelligent infrastructure decisions for years: we need more parks, a bigger library, and better planning for all modes of mobility. I’m also a pragmatist who knows that we are nowhere near ready to be a car-free community, and that a large project without adequate parking will have massive negative effects that will ripple across our entire neighborhood.

I truly believe that the consensus that our community reached in 2023 is the best possible path forward. It’s a reasonable size (a little bigger than Winslow) with adequate parking. It doesn’t give our community nearly enough additional green space or a significantly larger dog park… or a new library, or any of the many other sorely needed amenities our community deserves, but it’s an improvement from where we are at (and given the City’s fiscal state and backlog of capital improvement projects, unlikely anytime soon). In the current housing crisis we are living in, the consensus plan is a compromise that makes sense. The alternatives could be significantly worse.

Three quarters of our community appears to agree with this. I respect the opinions of folks who want to see more housing as much as I respect the opinions of those who want to see slower growth. Somewhere between extreme density and zero-growth we have to find a place where we can all settle on, as a community, and more importantly, as friends and neighbors who will have to live with this and each other for years to come.

UHCA - and I - welcome everyone’s viewpoints and will attempt to add submissions (news@uhsd.org) both to the UH News and this site.

-Marc (president@uhsd.org)

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(1) and (3) according to purchase orders, statements of work, and payments reviewed through Public Records Act Request FY20242025.272 , (2) Quotes from speakers at the December 3 SDUSD Board Real Estate Workshop (video online)