San Diego’s Civic Center Re-Centered

U3 Advisors was enlisted to help locals reimagine an underperforming district in the middle of downtown San Diego and transform it from a dismal, disconnected municipal government zone into the beating heart of the city’s civic life.

When you hear the word “civic,” what comes to mind? A civics class: children in school, learning about what it means to be a citizen? Municipal buildings where local leaders debate decisions about the community’s future? Or maybe an entire plaza of these types of buildings – a place that serves as a testament to the value of civic life, and how it is meant to include and empower everyone?

This is the kind of Civic Center that San Diegans deserved – but this was far from the reality of what they had.

A Legacy of Underinvestment and Poor Utilization

San Diego’s six-block Civic Center campus was a patchwork, both disconnected and monotonous. Physically, the site was mostly hardscaped concrete, which contributed to a daunting, lifeless feeling, especially late in the day when local government workers were gone. Despite being at the crossroads of the region’s most exciting districts – in between the San Diego Bayfront and the Gaslamp, Little Italy, and East Village – the Civic Center was an underwhelming and uninviting eyesore.

It was also expensive: taxpayers were spending around $2 million every year just to operate these municipal buildings, which did address the deferred maintenance backlog of approximately $150 million. Left unaddressed, these financial liabilities will escalate, draining resources that could fund other community priorities.

A new vision for the Civic Center’s future, however, could lead to a financially responsible and sustainable path to something much greater. A transformed Civic Center could and should meet the needs of not just tourists, conference-goers, government employees, or weekend shoppers, but everyone who lives, works, and plays in San Diego.

In other words, it means returning a sense of what is truly civic to the center of the city.

The Prebys Foundation and the Downtown San Diego Partnership understood clearly not only what was at stake if the Civic Center continued to decline, but also the kinds of broad community benefits that its reinvention could create. Their unique ability to act as conveners and catalysts is responsible for much of San Diego’s progress in recent years, which made them perfectly positioned to initiate the process for a new Civic Center vision.

The Civic Center Reimagined

In 2024 U3 Advisors accepted their invitation to lead this process by reviewing Mayor Todd Gloria’s 2023 Civic Center Revitalization Working Group. This foundational report offered a number of bold ideas about what the district needed and could become. U3 spent nine additional months gathering input from community members, stakeholders, and civic leaders. Four clear priorities emerged for the future of the Civic Center:

The first is to integrate arts, culture, and education into the Civic Center. This includes a new collaborative model for culture and education, with at least 60,000 square feet dedicated to instruction, arts, and community use and more than 200,000 square feet for performing arts. Critical partners like the San Diego Community College District and the Civic Theatre will collaborate on new learning spaces, performing arts venues, and programmatic partnerships.

The second priority is housing. The site may accommodate almost 3,000 new housing units and at least 15% of them will be designated affordable. A strategically designed mix of housing – from deeply affordable to workforce to market‑rate – will generate more demand for all kinds of supporting retail uses like grocery stores, shops, and restaurants.

The third priority is an iconic world-class public space. A new, 3-acre plaza will be San Diego’s living room— a true downtown crossroads that is activated year‑round with concerts, night markets, and celebrations. By removing blank walls and dead ends, this new plaza will be reconnected to the street grid and help stitch together downtown, from the Bayfront to Balboa Park.

The fourth priority is to ensure that downtown becomes a true neighborhood.  Child‑care centers, dog runs, grocery space, and supporting retail will convert a Monday‑through‑Friday municipal government zone into a place that hums with activity morning to midnight. By focusing on active and attractive ground floor uses that meet clear resident needs, the Civic Center will become a place where people will want to linger, explore, and remain.

Performing arts, education, housing, retail, and public spaces – most people would say that some mix of these things are the basic ingredients in a thriving urban area. What makes the Civic Center vision distinct is how they come together and how this alchemy can achieve more than the sum of their parts.

This catalytic approach was tested through an activation of the San Diego Civic Plaza that seeks to shift the perception of the Civic Center from an uninviting and vacant public space to a vibrant destination for the downtown community. By enhancing this plaza with art, food, and cultural programming over the course of several weeks, this activation demonstrates the long-term possibilities for the space while quickly generating foot traffic, public participation, and goodwill.

While the Downtown San Diego Partnership will be stewarding this plan forward in the near term, a new special-purpose entity is being developed that can guide the Civic Center’s future, potentially taking on roles related to fundraising, real estate development, partner recruitment and placemaking. An entity of this kind will ease the burden on local government while allowing partners to respond more efficiently to evolving market dynamics and civic needs.

This vision for the future of the Civic Center was publicly unveiled at a major conference in San Diego in May 2025 and immediately generated strong momentum and enthusiastic public support. The Prebys Foundation and the Downtown San Diego Partnership continue to serve as the vision’s champions while Mayor Gloria and members of the City Council have provided important preliminary backing and direction.

A dynamic coalition of local leaders and organizations—including businesses, arts groups, and educational institutions—remain actively and optimistically engaged, reinforcing the shared enthusiasm for transforming Downtown into a thriving, vibrant heart of San Diego.