Proposed 23-story Pacific Beach tower a ‘La Jolla problem,’ locals say

Last Updated on May 1, 2025

Worried about setting a precedent and impacts to traffic, La Jollans voice concern.

A proposed 23-story tower in Pacific Beach just south of the La Jolla border is raising alarm among La Jolla residents, whose worries include precedent-setting and traffic impacts.

The La Jolla Shores Association voted unanimously Nov 13 to send an official objection to the project, while discussions at the La Jolla Community Planning Association’s Nov 7 meeting and the Bird Rock Community Council meeting Nov 12 garnered opposition as well.

Local Pacific Beach leaders urged those at all three meetings to join the growing list of project opponents.

The “Vela” project is a 23-story, privately-funded high rise planned that combines four lots at 970 Turquoise Street in Pacific Beach, said Marcella Bothwell, chair of the Pacific Beach Planning Group and member of Neighbors for a Better California, a newly-formed group aimed at advocating for “responsible zoning, legislation and community planning,” according to the website.

The new proposal by real estate developer Kalonymus would stand at a height just over 238 feet, encompassing 139 units of hotel rooms and 74 residential units.

There is currently no building in the immediate vicinity more than 30 feet tall except for a few constructed before Proposition D, a 1972 initiative approved by San Diego voters that restricts new buildings west of Interstate 5 to a 30-foot limit.

Five of Vela’s residential units would be reserved for very low income people, while another five would be for people of moderate income, resulting in about five percent affordable housing, Bothwell said.

The inclusion of the five affordable housing units, along with other components, are used to waive the local height restrictions through a newer state law aimed at increasing housing density.

The build would also include 292 parking spaces over seven stories of a garage.

Render by Provisions Media.

Representatives from Kalonymus did not answer lajolla.ca requests for comment.

The newer state law supersedes local regulations, Bothwell said, adding that the project’s application, due to the developer’s use of density bonus, is ministerial, meaning it does not have to go through community planning group review nor does it require San Diego City Council approval.

The project will have to undergo a city Development Services Department review, however, which will determine its compliance with current water and sewer capacity, traffic congestion, fire safety and other regulations.

The impacts to Pacific Beach and surrounding communities worry Bothwell.

For one, Turquoise Street leads to Foothill Boulevard, “a major feeder street that goes to Ingraham [Street],” she said. “These areas are a major feeder to [Interstate] 5 for a lot of La Jolla people.”

Turquoise is already at 400 percent of its traffic capacity, she said, a problem that would be compounded by the additional cars from the Vela building.

Neighbors for a Better California is also concerned about impacts on water and sewer systems and whether the building is on a seismic fault line, among other worries.

“This is a real La Jolla problem, not just for us,” Bothwell said.

Neighbors for a Better California has retained attorney Josh Chatten-Brown to help draft a letter to the city as well as California’s Housing and Community Development Department imploring them to deny the project on legal grounds, as Bothwell and others maintain the development “ does not meet the intent of the density bonus Law for the intended affordable housing crisis,” Bothwell said.

Neighbors for a Better California is also working on a “legislative fix” to prevent future struggles like this one, she said.

Nobody at any of the three La Jolla meetings spoke in favor of the project.

If the project is allowed to proceed, “it’s opening Pandora’s Box. It’s going to come to La Jolla,” La Jolla resident Chris Connolly said at LJCPA.

Community objection is “really important,” said La Jolla resident and CPA member Janie Emerson Nov 7. “This is a San Diego issue. … It’s about greed.”

“It’s not a coastal issue,” she continued. “It’s our entire community, and everybody needs to step forward and … discuss it, because once it gets started, we aren’t going to be able to stop it.”

The Vela project “demonstrates what happens when the state and the city take an affordable housing position,” said BRCC President Joe Terry Nov 12. “Development standards exist so a developer can [build] something in his or her own interest that would be devastating to a community.”

Several Shores Association board members spoke out against the Vela project before the board voted to authorize President John Pierce to write a letter of objection.

Local and state officials have also raised objections to the Vela project.

San Diego Mayor Todd Gloria and San Diego City Council President Pro Tem Joe LaCava have signed a joint letter expressing “deep concerns” with the proposal.

“This project does not align with state or city policies intended to build more affordable homes,” the letter stated.

Vela, the letter continued, “would mostly function as a hotel, and will not help address the affordable housing crisis in San Diego’s coastal communities.”

“We’re currently waiting to hear back on their interpretation of the project,” Gloria’s policy advisor Emily Piatanesi said at BRCC.

California State Senator Catherine Blakespear, whose District 38 includes La Jolla, “is very concerned and in opposition about this unreasonable project that was proposed under the guise of adding affordable housing using state density bonus law,” her representative Aurora Livingston said.

California Senator Toni Atkins has also written a letter opposing the project, saying she supports affordable housing but “it should not be pursued by twisting public benefit housing laws to provide incentives for predominantly non-housing developments that primarily serve commercial purposes.”

California Rep. Tasha Boerner has also written a letter, Bothwell said.

Gloria and LaCava have requested technical guidance from the state’s Housing and Community Development Agency, which “is the appropriate next step,” Livingston said.

Moving forward, “we’re either going to have to work on changing state law or consider an initiative,” Bothwell said. “But our main goal right now is [to] get this thing taken down.”