In its current condition, the Civic Center district faces significant costs from aging civic facilities, with more than $150 million in deferred maintenance and millions spent annually on inefficient leases. The Downtown San Diego Partnership and the Prebys Foundation unveiled a bold new vision for the Civic Center, developed in collaboration with nationally recognized urban planning firm U3 Advisors and local organizations. The coalition gathered extensive community input over the past year, including feedback from the Mayor, City Council, and key Downtown stakeholders.
This bold new direction reimagines the heart of Downtown San Diego as a vibrant, welcoming, cultural crossroads — a place where arts, education, civic life, and diverse housing come together to create a thriving urban neighborhood.
Culture and Education
More Housing for San Diego
Iconic Public Spaces
A True Downtown Neighborhood
The recommended strategy to implement the Downtown San Diego Civic Center vision is thoughtfully phased, flexible, and includes dedicated stewardship to navigate its complexities effectively. Each phase of this approach emphasizes flexibility, ensuring the city can adapt to evolving needs, challenges, and opportunities.
This vision is not a specific design or a prescriptive blueprint. It’s a direction with suggested ingredients, informed by everything we’ve heard from San Diegans about the kind of Downtown they want and deserve. This includes feedback from both this visioning process, the City’s Civic Center Working Group, and other historical explorations of this space. While this vision for the Civic Center acknowledges the district’s current challenges, its intended mostly as a guide for future decisions, with the goal of eventually creating a vibrant, connected, economically-regenerating place that future San Diegans will enjoy.
A strong Downtown will make the entire region healthier. All San Diegans benefit directly from investments that lead to an active, vibrant, safe, inclusive Downtown for several reasons:
A thriving Downtown generates substantially higher tax revenue per acre compared to other areas, making it exceptionally tax-productive; this revenue is critical as it helps fund essential citywide services like parks, libraries, road maintenance, and public safety. Secondly, a vibrant Downtown attracts businesses, jobs, and visitors. These sales tax revenues also directly support neighborhoods and small businesses throughout San Diego.
Lastly—and perhaps most importantly—investing in Downtown creates an inviting, vibrant, world-class heart for our region, offering residents pride and visitors a memorable experience that reflects the dynamic spirit of all of San Diego.
The total estimated investment is still to be worked out and will evolve as the vision continues to take shape. It will be funded through a mix of private development, public-private partnerships, philanthropic contributions, and potential support from local, state, and federal sources.
The vision was initiated by Mayor Todd Gloria and developed through leadership and funding by the Prebys Foundation and the Downtown San Diego Partnership.
This vision directly builds on the work of the Civic Center Revitalization Working Group, which engaged hundreds of San Diegans in late 2022 and early 2023 to reimagine the future of the Civic Center. The Working Group’s findings served as the foundation for this more detailed, phased development plan, ensuring continuity between community aspirations and real implementation steps.
While activation of some parts of the existing Civic Center will begin as soon as this summer, Implementation of the full vision will occur in carefully phased stages over several years. This approach allows for continued flexibility in the specifics of our plan and will allow each successive phase to build on the momentum of existing work.
Absolutely. To be clear, the vision in its current form has been shaped by extensive amounts of input from San Diegans over the course of several years. Next steps involve sharing these recommendations with the Mayor and City Council, who will then formally review, deliberate, and eventually vote to let us move forward with implementation. This public process will include multiple opportunities for resident comment and direct engagement at City Council hearings and community forums.
The initial planning phase has been funded by the Prebys Foundation. The broader implementation will involve private developers, public-private partnerships, philanthropic investments, and potentially public funding through municipal support or state and federal programs. The project leverages market-rate housing revenues to subsidize cultural, public, and affordable housing components.
This initiative already enjoys strong momentum and enthusiastic support from a dynamic coalition of leaders and organizations deeply invested in San Diego’s future. The Prebys Foundation and the Downtown San Diego Partnership have stepped up as principal funders and passionate advocates, highlighting the energy and potential behind this vision. Mayor Todd Gloria and key City Council members have provided important preliminary backing and direction. Importantly, local stakeholders—including businesses, arts groups, and educational institutions—are actively and optimistically engaged, reinforcing the shared enthusiasm for transforming Downtown into a thriving, vibrant heart of San Diego.
The vision is flexible by design, which will allow us to remain entirely adaptive and responsive to local government’s needs throughout the implementation phases. City Hall operations will remain in the current buildings (CAB, COB, CCP) during early phases. Over time, City Hall functions could gradually be consolidated into fewer buildings and/or eventually relocated to a new downtown site or City Hall could remain at its current location based. Again, all based on government need.
If no action is taken, the Civic Center will be a source of significant and mounting financial burdens for all San Diegans.
-The city currently spends $2 million annually to operate the aging Civic Center buildings.
-There is at least $150 million in deferred maintenance costs, which will continue to grow if no improvements or replacements occur. Moreover, the existing facilities are inadequate, as they can’t even accommodate the full city workforce.
-Additionally, the city is paying over $7 million every year to rent office space for city employees scattered in buildings outside of the Civic Center due to lack of sufficient workspace at the current site.
Unless a new vision can be realized in a timely manner, these financial liabilities will escalate. Spending money on an unsatisfying status quo drains resources that could fund other community priorities, better public services, and new infrastructure all over the city. Addressing these issues now is critical to establishing a financially responsible and sustainable path forward for San Diego’s downtown development in the years ahead.
As this effort moves from planning to action, the coalition is seeking new partners who share a belief in the Civic Center’s potential. Complete the form below if your organization could be a champion in this vision effort.
Building A Vision for San Diego’s Civic Center