The San Diego City Planning Department is preparing to rezone Hillcrest for a lot more high-density housing. And with the neighborhood already short on open space, some are looking to state Route 163 for a new park.
A decade ago, the Hillcrest Business Association began exploring the concept of covering parts of the freeway to create new public gathering spaces. San Diego already has one park over a freeway — Teralta Park in City Heights, built over one block of state Route 15. Cities including Seattle, Dallas and Washington, D.C. have also built parks, even convention centers, over freeways.
Glenn Younger, owner of Grah Safe & Lock and vice president of the Hillcrest Business Association, said the idea never took off. Freeway lids are complex and expensive, and the neighborhood opted to focus its energy on creating a new pedestrian promenade along Normal Street instead.
But Younger said now that the city is preparing to add tens of thousands of new homes to Hillcrest, the concept of capping parts of the freeway is worth revisiting. He said from a bird's eye view, state Route 163 takes up about five acres of prime Hillcrest real estate.
"If I had a magic wand and I talked to anybody in Hillcrest: 'If I could give you five acres, would you take it?' — everybody would say, ‘Absolutely, please give me five acres!’" Younger said. "Well, we've got it here. It's just being used for air right now."
Tait Galloway is the deputy city planning director overseeing the update to Hillcrest's community plan — officially called the Hillcrest Focused Plan Amendment.
Galloway said he wasn't aware of anyone asking for a freeway lid as part of the official planning process. But he said the city would be open to including the concept in the Hillcrest plan — if people ask for it in their comments to the city by the April 29 deadline.
"Any sort of freeway lid would be a major capital investment," Galloway said. "But certainly it's an interesting idea. And that's what plans are, it's really to establish a future vision and get a discussion started."
Mentioning a freeway lid in the Hillcrest planning document does not guarantee the project would get built. The Downtown Community Plan has called for freeway lids over Interstate 5 in Balboa Park and several city blocks since 1989, yet none has been built.
A group called San Diego Commons formed in 2019 to advocate for completing the vision. Michael Singleton, a retired landscape architect who volunteers with the group, said they are now exploring less costly alternatives such as narrower bike and pedestrian bridges over the freeway.
Freeway lids are also being studied in Barrio Logan and Logan Heights, which were divided by the construction of I-5 in the 1950s and 60s. The regional planning agency SANDAG recently received $3.3 million in grants and congressional earmarks for studying the project's feasibility.
Younger acknowledged a freeway lid in Hillcrest is unlikely to happen anytime soon. But he said a necessary first step would be to include it in the official city plans for Hillcrest.
"I think you start with something simple, and then that opens up the possibilities of what else you can do," Younger said.
Comments on the draft Hillcrest Focused Plan Amendment can be emailed to PlanHillcrest@SanDiego.gov. The plan is expected to go before the City Council this summer.
