A Different Downtown San Diego Is Taking Shape – Commercial Observer
Downtown San Diego looks a lot different than it did a year ago.
People who haven’t spent much time there recently may still picture the challenges that dominated conversations before: quiet streets, empty storefronts, concerns about safety, and office towers that have too much vacant space.
Some of those challenges remain. Office vacancy is still a real issue with recent estimates in the 20 percent range as employers rethink their space needs amid hybrid work models.
But some things have changed. Downtown increasingly feels like it has reached a turning point. The question isn’t whether it will recover, but how it will recover, and what progress is already underway.
One reason for the improvement is that momentum isn’t coming from a single source. Businesses, residents, visitors, universities, cultural institutions, philanthropy and new investment are all contributing to the area’s revival.
The Downtown San Diego Partnership, for example, has made cleaner, safer and more welcoming streets a priority. The Clean & Safe team serves six Downtown neighborhoods over 1.15 square miles, 280 blocks and more than 13,000 unique parcels within the Property and Business Improvement District.
Organizations like the Prebys Foundation are also making significant investments in downtown real estate and public life. Prebys recently acquired the long-vacant California Theater site for $6.3 million, purchased major office properties including Wells Fargo Plaza and a Little Italy headquarters, and partnered on a grand Civic Center redesign.
Its investment in the historic 24-story 401 B Street tower, for example, is particularly telling. The foundation described the acquisition as “a declaration of belief in what downtown can become: a vibrant hub of commerce, culture and civic life that welcomes all who call this region home and all who are drawn to its promise.”
Educational and cultural institutions are adding another layer of activity. The San Diego Symphony, for example, draws people into the urban core for performances at the Rady Shell at Jacobs Park and Copley Symphony Hall. UC San Diego operates Park & Market, a four-story hub for education, arts and community programming, while initiatives such as ArtsConnect are expanding the university’s cultural presence downtown.
Visitors are returning in significant numbers, too. According to the San Diego Tourism Authority, the San Diego Convention Center hosted 61 conventions with 550,000 attendees in 2025. That translates to 1.29 million of contracted hotel room nights as well as $884.5 million in attendee spending that year alone.
None of these investments can transform Downtown San Diego on their own, but together they change how a city feels. And that matters.
People experience cities at street level. They notice whether sidewalks are comfortable, parks are maintained, storefronts are open, if there are places to sit, and if other people are around. Those details shape whether someone enjoys spending time downtown and, just as importantly, whether they have a reason to return.
That is why investments in public space matter so much. East Village Green, an approximately 2.1-acre community park planned for the East Village neighborhood, is one example of how new public space can strengthen the surrounding area.
Horton Plaza Park offers another. The 1.8-acre public square at Fourth Avenue and Broadway is expected to reopen, restoring a prominent gathering place near the Gaslamp Quarter. Spaces like these give people reasons to spend time downtown that have nothing to do with reporting to an office.
Creating places where residents, workers, students and visitors can overlap is how healthy downtowns are built.
Even the struggling office market may create opportunities. Many downtown buildings have changed hands in recent years at prices well below their previous valuations. A lower cost basis can give new owners flexibility that previous investors lacked to offer more competitive rents, modernize buildings, improve amenities and rethink how older properties fit into a changing downtown.
Downtown also has something many other employment centers cannot easily replicate. Thousands of people already live within walking distance of offices, restaurants, transit, entertainment and cultural amenities, while trolley and bus connections link the urban core with the broader region.
That points to an even bigger opportunity. San Diego does not need to re-create the downtown of 2019, built primarily around the rhythms of the office workweek. It can build something stronger.
Resilient downtowns don’t depend on a single industry, population or schedule. They give people different reasons to be there at different times: to work, live, learn, eat, attend a concert, visit a park, go to a convention or simply spend an afternoon.
Downtown San Diego is not finished. It still needs more employers, retail and investment, along with sustained attention to cleanliness and safety. Office vacancy won’t disappear overnight, and neither will perceptions formed during more difficult years.
But a year ago, many of the pieces needed for recovery weren’t moving in the same direction. Today, they are. That doesn’t mean Downtown San Diego is going back to what it was, but it does create an opportunity to build toward something better.
David McCullough is principal landscape architect and founder of McCullough Landscape Architecture
