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San Diego is moving forward with five of the seven teams who submitted bids to lease — and completely redo — the 48 acres of city-owned land around the sports arena in Midway District.
Thursday, the city said it will enter into negotiations with development teams Discover Midway, Midway Village+, Midway Rising, HomeTownSD and Neighborhood Next. Proposals from the Panacea Group and Cotterkey Investments were deemed not responsive and have been eliminated from the field.
Teams are vying to win a longterm ground lease for the city’s real estate holdings at 3500, 3250, 3220 and 3240 Sports Arena Blvd.
The property includes San Diego’s sports arena, which was built in 1966 and has served as the long-time home of the San Diego Gulls. Bidders were instructed to submit site redevelopment plans with a new or improved sports arena, and told to set aside at least 25 percent of proposed housing units for lower-income families.
“This project will bring much needed affordable housing for San Diegans and will serve as a catalyst for revitalizing a neighborhood that has waited years for transformation,” San Diego Mayor Todd Gloria said in a statement. “With multiple responses to consider, we have confidence that this process will result in a success for the Midway community and for our entire city.”
The qualified applicants are now participating in a 90-day negotiation period that ends on March 4. The end date, however, is just the starting point for a selection process that will likely include community input and council member feedback, as well as require additional months of back-and-forth to hammer out lease terms.
The city, in a press release, said it will use the negotiation period to “garner the greatest return to the community.”
The current disposition process is the city’s second attempt to offload the land, with local leaders this time strictly following the state’s new rulebook for leasing or selling surplus land. That’s because San Diego was forced to abort the original solicitation process after the California Department of Housing and Community Development notified local leaders that the municipality was operating outside the lines of the Surplus Land Act.
The law, which dates to the 1980s and was amended in 2019, requires local agencies to give priority to affordable housing builders when disposing of their excess land — or risk hefty fines. The city of Anaheim is, for instance, facing a $96 million penalty if it doesn’t unwind the sale of Angel Stadium and its surrounding parking lots to a company controlled by team owner Arte Moreno.
In San Diego’s second go-around, qualified applicants are proposing dense, masterplanned communities with housing, retail, office, park space and, in some instances, additional sports facilities or hotels. Each team is tackling the affordable housing and arena components in different ways, but all envision building a destination neighborhood for families at various income levels.
The groups are led by a who’s-who list of luxury home builders, affordable housing developers and sports venue specialists.
The Discover Midway consortium includes Brookfield Properties and existing arena operator ASM Global. Midway Village+ is led by Toll Brothers Housing and sports real estate firm Revitate. Midway Rising combines San Diego-based Zephyr with well-known arena operator Legends. HomeTownSD hails from local firms Monarch Group and JMI Sports. And Neighborhood Next pairs The ConAm Group with Wakeland and Community Housing Works.
Bidders are aligned in drafting visions that include buildings that tower over the Midway District’s 30-foot height limit. San Diego voters last year struck down the restriction, but a legal challenge threatens to void the ballot-box victory and could be an obstacle for development teams.
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