A developer is invoking a recently amended state law to erect a hotel and apartment building that promises to tower over its neighbors.
The 970 Turquoise project takes up the four parcels between 954 and 980 Turquoise St., currently home to a gym, liquor store, shuttered bar and The French Gourmet restaurant. The project site falls within the city’s coastal zone but just outside the state’s coastal zone.
“We want to make this beach community accessible to a lot more San Diegans who otherwise wouldn’t have the ability to live here,” Matt Awbrey, a spokesperson for Kalonymus, told the Union-Tribune. “We’re talking about making hundreds of units available in a desirable community where the barrier to entry has historically been very high.”City leaders and community members contend the developer is improperly exploiting the state’s good intentions.
San Diego’s coastal zone, officially known as the Coastal Height Limit Overlay Zone, was established by a 1972 voter initiative, Proposition D. The local law prevents buildings over 30 feet west of Interstate 5, with carve-outs for downtown, National City and parts of Mission Bay. The entirety of the Midway-Pacific Highway Community Plan area no longer falls within the protected zone thanks to a 2022 voter-approved ballot measure that survived legal challenges.
The developer is entitled by the law to build 50 percent more units, or 16 additional market-rate units, because of the very-low-income units. The units will be permitted as hotel rooms, technically known as visitor accommodations, but the developer intends to rent them as market-rate apartments.
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