‘Community village’: La Jolla Shores group backs recommendations to alter University City plan

The La Jolla Shores Association is supporting the University Community Planning Group’s recommendations intended to preserve retail and housing in the city of San Diego’s update of the University Community Plan, a 30-year blueprint for the University City area.

The community plan contains portions in and adjacent to La Jolla: the area from Interstate 5 west to Gilman Drive, known as the “Nobel campus,” and the biotech neighborhood along North Torrey Pines Road known as Torrey Mesa.

“There’s some divergences between what the city is proposing and what the [local planning group’s] update committee would like to have happen,” said Janie Emerson, president of the La Jolla Shores Association, which voted unanimously Aug. 9 to back the group’s proposed changes.

The Nobel campus, described in the city’s plan as an “urban village,” includes the two La Jolla shopping plazas that are home to Whole Foods Market, Ralphs and Trader Joe’s.

Ralphs and Trader Joe’s are in La Jolla Village Square at 8657 Villa La Jolla Drive. Whole Foods is in The Shops at La Jolla Village, 8825 Villa La Jolla. The two plazas are separated by Nobel Drive.

“We have recommendations that differ significantly from the city’s here,” said Andy Wiese, chairman of the update subcommittee of the University Community Planning Group, the officially recognized organization representing the University City area in San Diego’s planning process. The committee has held more than 30 public meetings about the University Community Plan since January 2019.

The city’s current plan includes “the potential for displacement of both existing housing and also the community-serving retail and services in the area of the shopping plazas,” Wiese said.

The plan, an update to one adopted in 1987, “will provide guidance on the community planning area’s land use, mobility, infrastructure, urban design, public facilities and services, natural resources, historic and cultural resources and economic development for the next several decades,” according to planuniversity.org.

The portions of the University Community Plan circled in red are of most concern to La Jolla, says Andy Wiese, chairman of the University Community Planning Group’s update subcommittee.

(Screenshot by Elisabeth Frausto)

The update “proposes very minimal change” to the Torrey Mesa area, Wiese said. “Future development there can be expected to mirror the development that’s taking place there now, on both scale and focus on the life sciences and biotech industries.”

But, he said, “if the UC Plan is going to indeed provide housing for tens of thousands of new residents, they’re going to need places to shop” beyond what exists now.

The entire community plan update includes room for 32,000 new housing units and 59,000 new jobs in the University City area, Wiese said. The local planning group would like to reduce that to 22,000 new dwelling units and 55,000 jobs.

Those are in addition to ongoing or recently completed construction at UC San Diego to add several thousand more beds on campus.

The University Community Planning Group is particularly concerned about the city’s proposal for mixed-use zoning at the two shopping plazas, which “would allow for the construction of housing [and] retail services, but it wouldn’t require it.”

The group believes that language “unnecessarily puts housing and community-serving retail in competition with more competitive uses in our area,” such as biotech and high-tech businesses, he said. He noted the recent closure of the grocery and retail stores at the Costa Verde Center — a strip mall near the Westfield UTC shopping center — following its purchase in January 2022 by biotech office builder Alexandria Real Estate.

The University Community Plan update would affect The Shops at La Jolla Village in the “Nobel campus.”

(Elisabeth Frausto)

Instead of “urban village,” the planning group proposes the term “community village,” which Wiese said would “require a focus on community-serving businesses and retail and also allow housing, as opposed to mixed use.”

The community plan needs to ensure that the Nobel campus remains a center for commerce and housing, he said.

“We believe that office ... and biotech development should be [prohibited] in this area in order to ensure that this area remains a place that people can live and shop,” Wiese said.

The changes proposed by the University Community Planning Group are “really valuable,” said La Jolla Shores Association board member Kathleen Neil. “I can’t really emphasize how much I think trying to keep grocery and retail in that Nobel section is tremendously important for the livability of the area.”

Other recommendations for the area’s commercial plazas include “that parking for community-serving retail should be preserved, understanding that in spite of the trolley stop here, people are going to continue to shop using automobiles,” Wiese said.

The group also is arguing for neighborhood parks.

The updated community plan also includes “robust new bike and pedestrian infrastructure,” Wiese said, along with open space protections.

The city of San Diego will take the University Community Planning Group’s recommendations and prepare a revised draft of the community plan, which may be available next month. ◆