Hillcrest Community Braces For Next Step in Growth Battle
Ever since Arnold Saron and his father opened their jewelry store in Hillcrest in 1937, Saron has gazed through the quiet bustle of 5th Avenue to the same four buildings on the four corners of the intersection at University Avenue.
Now developers have big plans for two of those familiar corners. If they have their way, they will build two large complexes of shops, offices and high-rise condominium and apartment towers that will embrace and accelerate the changes altering Saron’s world.
“When they go to tear those buildings down, they’re going to find out they are put together,” Saron mused last week, with a skeptic’s relish in the face of something he’s not sure is progress. “The guys that go to wreck them are going to lose money. They figure they can take ‘em down in two days. It’s going to take two months.”
Hillcrest, San Diego’s tiny pocket of late-night book stores, foreign films, cappuccino machines and urban funk, is metamorphosing once again--this time into a higher, deeper, denser place with sleeker surfaces and a sharper edge.
Land costs and rents are on the rise. Designer ice cream and burger franchises are rumored to be eyeing space. Urban pioneers who once made the neighborhood safe for gift shops are looking for new frontiers--the victims, some say ruefully, of their own success.
Some business owners along the narrow, leafy streets welcome the change; they say it’s an expression of an economic energy they hope to harness. But others wonder whether the high-rises signal a war they inevitably will lose.
“The little neighborhood associations made of everyday residents aren’t going to be able to win battles against multimillion-dollar developers,” said Chris Kehoe, editor of the Hillcrest-based newspaper for homosexuals, the Gayzette. “When those big buildings go up on University, people here will know once and for all that the battle is on.”
On the northeast corner, SEG--Southwest Estate Group has proposed Hillcrest Square--a $70-million mix of shops and restaurants, office buildings, and a condominium tower, filling most of the block bounded by 5th and 6th avenues, Washington Street and University.
Across 5th, Ledford Enterprises hopes to build Hillcrest Galleria--a mix of low-rise retail stores, service shops and offices, sloping back under a big copper roof to a 120-foot apartment tower deep in the block.
Nearby, to the north on Washington, Construction Management Services is building four stories of 81 furnished apartments, complete with swimming pool and Jacuzzi. They are to cater to a growing group--corporate transfers, mobile medical professionals, the newly divorced.
Elsewhere, there is smaller-scale flux--plans for a block of stores at 4th and Robinson avenues, a drive-up flower shop in place of a gas station at 5th and Washington. Old houses are being transformed into office space. Others are being displaced by condominiums.
“Because of what land costs are, you have to look for the highest and best use of your capital,” reasoned Lucille Ledford Green, hoping to build Hillcrest Galleria on land her family has owned since the 1930s. “That’s what they call capitalism, I do believe. You’re looking for a return on your investment. It’s very simple.”
Perched on the mesa between downtown and Mission Valley, with bay views and some of the highest elevations in the city, Hillcrest is one of San Diego’s oldest communities, its narrow streets laid out before there were automobiles to ride them.
It grew strongly in the 1930s, a quiet residential neighborhood with easy access to downtown. Later, Mercy and University hospitals made it a focus of medical activity. Public transportation linked it directly to downtown.
But during the 1960s and 1970s, longtime residents say, Hillcrest’s business center stagnated. As Mission Valley and San Diego’s periphery and suburbs grew, storefronts sat empty along Hillcrest’s streets. The average age of its residents crept up.
“If you look at Hillcrest 10 years ago, it was much different,” said Neil Good, a longtime resident who started the newspaper Uptown in March. “You had the remnants of old neighborhood shops. The neighborhood wasn’t decaying, but it was standing still.”
Many trace the current transformation to the late 1970s, when the Guild Theater gave up pornography in favor of art and foreign films. Moviegoers began coming to Hillcrest in the evening. Lines formed. Bookstores took to staying open to catch the late-show crowd.
Ethnic restaurants opened in the neighborhood. Others already there laid down white tablecloths and expanded their menus for the new clientele. Bars catering to gays, a late-night deli and a coffee house added to the night life. Boutiques and card shops moved in.
Clown Town, a clown-supply store, gave way to Greek salads and baklava. A hobby shop turned into a yogurt bar, then a balloon boutique. Pink plastic flamingoes and vintage clothing turned up in shops. Wigs and used vacuum cleaners vanished.
“Your button-down-the-front, cotton-print house dress has disappeared from the store window,” Lucille Green said last week, surveying the results of the changes. “Your old-lady dress shops are gone, because the old ladies are gone.”
“It’s becoming increasingly gay, increasingly yuppie, if people want to use that term,” said Bob Walker, whose Gallery Store was one of the pioneers. “One of the reasons we like the area is that it’s cosmopolitan. We have . . . a mix of gay and straight, rich and poor, young and old.”
Which is precisely why developers like it, too.
Michael Galasso, general manager of SEG-Southwest Estate Group, said Hillcrest is ideal for the higher-density development envisioned in the city’s growth management plan. It is urban and is well-served by public transportation. And it has an ambitious business community and “upscale potential.”
Colin Seid, president of Construction Management Services, says Hillcrest offers a ready market for his 81-unit project: Doctors on six-month grants, professionals in transition, singles and the newly divorced--people looking for a foothold more than a household.
Lucille Green says a well-known ice cream chain called her weekly for 10 months looking for space at 5th and University. She says it had a study that showed that foot traffic on that corner was second in the county only to Prospect Street in La Jolla.
“She would kill to get on that corner,” Green said. “And there was just no space.”
Land prices are higher than anywhere but downtown, said Bud Marsh, a sales agent with C.W. Clark, the commercial real estate brokerage. He said land sells for $12 to $15 a square foot in Mission Valley, $40 to $60 in Hillcrest, and $80 to $100 downtown.
“There’s only so much of it, and it’s being monopolized,” Marsh said of the land in Hillcrest. “There’s a lot of people buying, and buying more and more contiguous parcels. In an area like that, you can’t go wrong owning as much property as you can.”
The fears are the ones that infect every “transitional neighborhood.”
What will happen to rents? Will longtime residents be edged out? Will the additional traffic cause arterial sclerosis? Where will people park? And what will happen to the neighborhood’s soul?
Richard F. Ontiveros, who owns That Man Casual Clothes, is optimistic. He anticipates more people, which to him means more social and economic life. Stronger businesses will benefit, he predicts. Outdated buildings will be upgraded or replaced.
Robin Giese, who grooms whippets and bichons and other exotic pets at Robin’s Menagerie, fully intends to stay even though she will lose her building to Hillcrest Square. She’s already looking around for new space--in Hillcrest, of course.
But Bob Walker has seen the boom lowered.
After eight years, he said, his landlord told him The Gallery Store’s rent would jump from $763 to $5,000 a month when his lease expires in January. He is negotiating and may keep the store open if the rent drops, but he has also accepted an offer of space downtown.
“It’s because we were successful in what we attempted to do,” said Walker, who opened his store months before the Guild abandoned porn. “You come into a neighborhood and you try very hard to improve it. You in effect create your own monster, or your demise.”
“All of our value systems say that a person can maximize the profit on their property,” Walker added. “. . . But obviously I’m hurt. We’ve tried very hard and have improved the property a great deal. And we have a very strong attachment to the community.”
Those who favor the development of Hillcrest are sensitive to the possibility of commercial, aesthetic, and perhaps spiritual casualties. They are aware of the fears expressed in neighborhood argot as, “We don’t want to end up like La Jolla.”
For that reason, developers like Galasso and Seid have worked for months with the city planning department, the community planning group, and the Hillcrest business association to try to adapt their plans to the community’s character.
Galasso and Green intend to set their high-rises deep in their blocks, leaving low-rise shops and restaurants on the street to preserve Hillcrest’s “human scale.” Galasso’s project would have tile roofs, arches, stucco walls and wood-frame windows. Seid’s is pyramidal, reflecting the slopes of the nearby canyons.
Inside, Galasso said, he hopes to offer some space to longtime Hillcrest businesses at less than the market rate, until they can pay the full rate. Eight hundred parking spaces would be provided on three underground levels, at considerable effort and expense.
Meanwhile, the business association’s urban design committee is meeting weekly to draw up design criteria for future development. It is talking about parking and traffic, pedestrian and urban amenities, and ways of getting city officials’ attention.
“We know that change is inevitable,” said Green, who is not only a potential developer but also a former president of the business association. “We would like to be in a position to manage that change, instead of react.”
The association is intent on preserving the neighborhood’s pedestrian orientation by encouraging underground parking and ground-floor shops with windows. It is discouraging driveways that break up the sidewalk, said Joyce Beers, its executive director.
She said the committee is promoting varied storefront design, evening hours and good nighttime lighting, and is discouraging buildings with glass fronts and monolithic ground-floor garages. Open-air parking lots should be at the sides or behind buildings, rather than in front, where they intimidate walkers.
Traffic congestion might be eased by encouraging the use of public transportation through better information, bus shelters and signs, Beers said. A shuttle bus between the shopping area and the hospitals is under discussion to bring visitors and employees into Hillcrest to eat and shop.
“The community really wants to retain its variety,” said Michael A. Theilacker, a landscape architect heading the design committee. “We don’t want to be over-planned and we don’t want to lose the excitement of having variety in the Hillcrest area.”
“It can be avoided when the entire community is involved in how the community grows,” he added. “The one thing that makes Hillcrest a very special place is that there are a lot of people that are interested and involved in the direction that Hillcrest is going.”
But there are no guarantees, Green points out.
“You see, there’s no muscle here at all, no coercion. Because private property is private property,” she said. “It’s just trying to create a consensus. I can’t tell you we’ll succeed, but we’re trying. With a great deal of cooperation.”
There are those in Hillcrest who doubt it can be done.
“I think it’s a larger issue than Hillcrest,” said Bob Walker. “It deals with our values as a society. . . . We sometimes need to say certain things are important to our lives, and structure the economics so those things are allowed to exist. If you always have Social Darwinism, you will get change everywhere, and those things will not be preserved.”
Chris Kehoe, in the office of the Gayzette, said: “I know San Diego is under a lot of pressure to develop and there is a lot of money to be made. But I think the quality of life will suffer, and it will change for the worse for the people already here.”
