SDSU Redevelopment Plan Faces Hurdles on Campus, in Community

The redevelopment of San Diego State University is, almost everyone agrees, a necessity. With an enrollment of 36,000 students, this longtime commuter school has no place to grow--and a need to do so as fast as it can.

For years, SDSU has courted a nightmarish parking problem. Nearby residents, fearing a threat to their property values, are infuriated over “mini-dorms.” Many ask, can’t the school provide on-campus housing? Officials term this one of the main objectives of redevelopment.

Even so, when a redesign was first proposed in 1986, almost no one liked it. The reaction was nothing less than an outcry. Three years later, with a new design team and developer on board, and hundreds of meetings (public and private) having been conducted to try to smooth ruffled feelings and work out solutions, the school finally appears ready to move forward.

And yet, plenty of problems remain.

The SDSU Foundation, the private, nonprofit entity putting the machinery in motion, says the University Area Support Project, as it has come to be known, may cost as much as $1 billion, and, by the most optimistic estimate, will not be completed until the early 21st Century.

William D. Kennedy, a representative of McKellar Development of La Jolla, the group hired two years ago to bankroll and implement the plan, called redevelopment imperative to SDSU’s long-term survival.

“As the university has grown in size, it has also grown academically,” Kennedy said. “That side of its character has been enhanced tremendously. But, as the years have gone by, the university has run into problems physically. Some of those problems are significant.

“While it remains primarily a commuter college, it has not grown to meet the needs caused by thousands of new students. What we’re hoping to do is revamp the area physically and allow the university to catch up, in a sense, with its own growth.”

It won’t be easy.

One campus insider, who asked not to be identified, said the restructuring of Eastern Europe may be easier to accomplish than what the developer hopes to do at SDSU.

Redevelopment threatens to align longtime property owners against the developer and the foundation, the university’s fund-raising and grant-giving arm.

Land will have to be given up, but whose, and at what price?

Homeowners and others affected by redevelopment--fraternities and sororities, campus ministries, small business owners--demand to be fairly compensated for leaving longstanding properties.

Many scoff when told they will receive fair market value for their properties. How, they argue, will such prices cover the cost of new properties in the future?

While the foundation and the developer propose to double on-campus parking spaces (from 12,800 to 25,610) and build thousands of new housing units--for undergraduate and graduate students, faculty and staff--dozens of thorny issues remain.

Area residents, angered by mini-dorms--single-family homes in which as many as 15 collegiate tenants cram into three bedrooms or less--are not convinced that the university is sensitive to their concerns. And many complain they have been excluded from the redevelopment process.

As one college-area resident, who asked not to be identified, put it, “They decided to build a new (12,500-seat) Student Activity Center, but they didn’t consult the neighbors on parking or traffic or noise. Most of us don’t feel involved in the redevelopment process, either. But you can bet on one thing--whatever the foundation and the developer want, ultimately, they’re going to get.”

Doug Case is president of the College Area Community Council, an advisory body to the San Diego City Council. Although the advisory council has given tentative approval to the concept--it agrees, Case said, that redevelopment is imperative--he noted that potential roadblocks are as plentiful as the factions themselves.

“To a certain degree, the plan is being sold to the community as an answer to the mini-dorm problem,” Case said. “I, for one, don’t believe it for a minute. Students live in mini-dorms because they enjoy living in single-family homes with back yards, dogs, etc. I don’t think people who choose that life style will leave a mini-dorm one day and opt for living in a high-rise apartment building the next.”

Case said the latest plan--a joint effort among the foundation, the developer and the ROMA Design Group, an architectural interest--is constructive. He said the foundation and the developer “are making a concerted effort” to include all constituencies--residents, fraternities and sororities, and campus ministries, which were outraged over the 1986 plan. That plan sought to cram Catholics, Protestants and Jews into one building, an idea no more popular at SDSU in 1986 than it has been anywhere at any time in history.

Now, Case said, the developer and the foundation are listening to the ministries, which hope to move into new quarters on the campus’ western edge within the next 15 years. (However, as one campus minister, who asked not to be identified, said, “They weren’t listening until we hired an attorney. Then, they paid attention.”)

Case also represents SDSU’s 18 fraternities, few of which are happy about the plan, old or new.

Case said the new plan calls for the construction of 21 fraternity houses in a “fraternity zone.” Fraternities are now in five clusters near College Avenue and Montezuma Road. The new houses would line 55th Street on the western edge, not far from the ministries.

Case said the fraternities--like the ministries and sororities--own their buildings and do not believe fair market value will be enough to pay for elaborate new quarters. He said the alumni of the organizations, who control the property, also remain skeptical about square footage, fearing they may be shortchanged on land as well as money.

Kim Braun Padulo, SDSU Panhellenic adviser, said the 13 sororities are concerned that the new quarters, in an area called College Place (west of College Avenue, south of Montezuma Road), will mean a change but not an improvement.

“We have chapter houses that were built in the 1950s and house 40 women,” Padulo said. “They’re wonderful, gorgeous facilities, and they’re all paid off. We’re very concerned about parking. We don’t like the idea of women having to walk from parking garages, great distances to their (sorority) houses. I see this as a lengthy, time-consuming process, and not one of the financial concerns has yet to be addressed.”

If the fraternities, sororities and ministries can’t pay for new places, who, then, will make up the difference?

As Case pointed out, the developer, McKellar, has to make money, otherwise the project is charity. Therefore, McKellar is more apt to offer bounteous square footage to retail areas in the plan--a shopping district as well as a large hotel--than to the Greeks, Case said. (Or, for that matter, to the Lutherans, Episcopalians or Methodists.)

The only possible source of profit, as he put it--and McKellar’s Kennedy does not deny this--is in the retail phase.

“Land is at a real premium around here,” Case said. “McKellar will give the non-revenue generators as little space as possible, simply because they have to.”

Even so, Case doesn’t believe the developer is out to make “a killing,” as some skeptical parties insist. He believes they’ve been “fair and above board,” with one exception. He does not feel that area business owners have been properly briefed or heard, and many could be uprooted as College Avenue is widened, and redevelopment, finally, starts to materialize.

City Councilwoman Judy McCarty, who represents the college district, is an enthusiastic backer of the plan. She resents the foes’ notion that the developer’s motives are mainly financial.

“Yes, there will be money to be made,” she said. “But if money is not made--by someone, at least--then the project just won’t happen. These are reputable people. They’ve never been in jail, as far as I know. They’ve been honest every step of the way.”

When asked about the grim details of finance, Kennedy, the developer’s spokesman, is optimistic--and vague.

“It’s something we’ll have to work on, but, in the end, everyone will be happy. Some of the fraternities and sororities have considerable equity but nowhere near the number of beds they need,” Kennedy said, alluding to the need for more space. “We think, ultimately, they’ll be happier.”

Case said they better be, or they won’t go along.

Brian Bennett, vice president and immediate past president of the College Area Community Council, said residents in the area are tired of “just going along.”

“This sounds like a shot at university administration, but there has been in the last 20 years, and especially in the last 15, absolutely no sense of a coordinated plan for the campus or the area surrounding the campus,” Bennett said. “The administration went from 26,000 to 36,000 students without providing anything resembling adequate parking or housing.

“At this point, only 7% of the students attending SDSU could find housing on campus, even if they wanted to.”

Bennett said a sore spot is the administration’s decision to build the Student Activity Center, which will showcase basketball games as well as rock concerts. The center, scheduled for construction on the site of the Aztec Bowl, is the administration’s project, not the foundation’s. Although, as part of the school’s master plan, it has fostered its own share of controversy.

Bennett said that prior to planning the center, for which students are being taxed in the form of higher fees, community reaction to potential problems--parking, traffic, noise--was not sought. As a result, a group of irate homeowners has filed suit against the university, putting the project in limbo.

Rick Moore, a spokesman for SDSU, said the suit by the Alvarado Homeowners Assn. cites the university’s failure to consult area residents before filing an environmental impact report. Thus, residents are contending that the EIR, as it’s called, is inadequate and even illegal. He said the university is hoping for a settlement and that ground can be broken by summer.

“We hope to have the thing finished two years from now,” Moore said.

Case said another hot topic skirting the redevelopment issue is the fate of Hardy Elementary School, on Montezuma Road just west of campus. The developer’s plan calls for the closing of Hardy and the reopening of the now-defunct Montezuma Elementary School, east of College Avenue.

Case said this issue has the potential “for creating civil war.”

“All the parents west of College want Hardy to stay where it is,” he said. “All the parents east of College want Montezuma to be reopened. It won’t be pretty.”

McCarty, who favors the developer’s plan, said, “I hate to see Hardy blown up as a big issue right now. It may not happen for another 10 years. It’s a question of closing Hardy and putting a community park there and reopening Montezuma, which has a lot of land, and putting in not only a school but also a library and day-care center. A lot of people point out that Hardy is contiguous to the university and that it would help to have it closed.”

Project organizers say that, because Hardy is close to the university, the site would better serve SDSU in terms of parkland, open space and parking. And, they argue, the Montezuma site would be better used for community needs, such as a library and day-care center.

But in evaluating the pros and cons of SDSU’s redevelopment, McCarty sees no cons.

“It’s all pro,” she said. “It’s an effort to try to provide housing to students and get them out of the area’s neighborhoods. It’s not a panacea, but it’s a step in the right direction.

“Put it this way. Redevelopment will occur somehow, some way, but without a plan, only in a piecemeal way and in a way no one likes. We have to do something, and soon.”

PROPOSED SDSU EXPANSION

1. 55th Street Site: Housing for faculty, staff and graduate students. Will contain a maximum fo 600 units, either condominiums or townhomes. Faculty units will be for sale; graduate student units will be for rent of sale.

2. Lot A: Hotel. 300 rooms. 1,500 square feet of meeting space. 1,200 parking spaces (600 for the hotel, 600 for general university use).

3. Alvarado Site: 570,000 square feet of medical, office and research space.

4. Core Site: Fraternities will be relocated to area bordering 55th Street. Sororities will occupy southwest corner of site near College and Montezuma. Campus ministries will be relocated just north of core site, near new 12,500-seat Student Activity Center. Site will contain 2,500 apartment units for students (rentals) and retail complex, including bookstore, multiplex movie theater and health center.

Parking: Will increase from present maximum of 12,800 to 14,200 (upon opening of Student Activity Center) to 25,610 with completion of project.