SAN DIEGO — San Diego city council members voted unanimously on Tuesday to approve the Mission Valley Community Plan Update. The plan serves as a blueprint for the future development of the community.
Nancy Graham has been working on the plan for years and says it is long overdue. She told News 8, “Mission Valley is known as a large sea of parking lots and we really see it as an opportunity. Those parking lots could be revitalized and really be a place where we could put homes.”
The new Mission Valley Community Plan will add high density housing to accommodate 50,000 more residents. There will also be 7 million more square feet of commercial development. The goal of the plan is to create a live/work/play neighborhood where everything residents need is right there.
However, not everyone is on board with the new plan. The biggest concern that has been raised is traffic. Opponents say there will be a 43 percent jump in total vehicle miles traveled through the area by 2050.
After the vote, News 8 spoke with council member Chris Ward about the plan. His district starts at Interstate 8 and goes south, so his constituents will certainly be affected. He said the growing trolley system is a key to the project’s success. “You want to make sure that you are aligning this with your transportation investments to be able to make that housing-jobs-transit balance work.”
This is the first big change to the Mission Valley plan since 1985.