The city of San Diego is refusing to accept defeat after a devastating appellate court ruling ordered reinstatement of the 30-foot height limit in the Midway District.
San Diego Mayor Todd Gloria said Monday that he will ask City Council to OK a petition to the state Supreme Court to review the case, which hinges on whether the city sufficiently studied the environmental impacts of taller buildings in the Midway District before asking voters to remove the region from its coastal zone.
“The city attorney and I disagree strongly with this ruling and will be asking the City Council to appeal it to the California Supreme Court,” Gloria said in a statement.
Friday, California’s Fourth District Court of Appeal said that the city violated California’s Environmental Quality Act, or CEQA, and abused its power in putting the ballot measure before voters without the proper analysis. The three-judge panel decision, in favor of plaintiff Save Our Access, directed the trial court to issue a writ of mandate, which would invalidate the 2022 ballot measure and restore the 30-foot height limit in the Midway District.
“The appellate court obviously spent time looking at this and did a good job of analyzing the issues,” Everett DeLano, a lawyer representing Save Our Access, told the Union-Tribune. “If the mayor thinks that he has a chance to overturn that on the Supreme Court level, that’s his right to seek that kind of review. But I think all he’s really doing is wasting time and wasting taxpayer dollars.”
The mayor also said he won’t let the appellate court ruling stand in the way of the Midway Rising project, which has sought for three years to remake San Diego’s sports arena real estate with thousands of apartments and a new entertainment center.
“In addition to the appeal, city staff have identified multiple paths to keep the redevelopment of the city’s sports arena property moving forward,” Gloria said in the statement. “I will not allow San Diego to miss out on an opportunity that holds massive benefits for San Diegans, including thousands of permanent new jobs, affordable homes, a new entertainment center and billions in economic activity. Failure is simply not an option, and we will get this done.”
Despite the assurance, the mayor administratively pushed back the deadline to finalize a deal with the Midway Rising development team. The parties are tied together in an exclusive negotiation agreement that was set to expire on Dec. 4. They now have through Dec. 4, 2026, to negotiate a long-term ground lease for the 49.2 acre property.
At issue is the legality of Measure C, the do-over ballot measure that asked city of San Diego voters to strike the entirety of the 1,324-acre Midway-Pacific Highway Community Plan area from the city’s Coastal Height Limit Overlay Zone, or coastal zone for short. The ordinance was put before voters after the original measure was ruled illegal because the city failed to study the impacts of buildings taller than 30 feet.
Measure C passed with 51% approval, but environmental advocacy group Save Our Access sued the city for a second time. This time, the environmental advocacy group contended that San Diego’s supplemental analysis of the visual impacts of taller buildings, prepared in advance of the 2022 ballot measure, disregarded other consequential environmental factors.
The state appellate court agreed, with Justice Joan Irion identifying in her published opinion four areas where the city’s analysis was inadequate: noise, air quality, biological resources and geological conditions.
Amid the court battle, San Diego has continued forward with the Midway Rising project in anticipation of a total remake of its real estate at 3220, 3240, 3250 and 3500 Sports Arena Blvd. Until Friday, the city and the development team were preparing for an end-of-the-year decision on the project,
Midway Rising calls for 4,254 total residential units, a 16,000-seat replacement arena and 130,000 square feet of commercial space. The team has promised to construct 2,000 residential units for households earning 80% or less of the area median income, or what’s referred to as affordable housing in state law. The development proposal includes 105-foot-tall residential buildings and a 165-foot-tall entertainment center, although the land-use plan is written to allow for buildings as tall as 250 feet on 10% of the site.
The project’s extensive package of land-use documents were presented to San Diego’s Planning Commission last month. The package was passed on to City Council with the commission’s recommendation. To date, proposed lease terms have not been disclosed.
The city and the development team remain eager to complete the real estate transaction, but they are now noncommittal on a timeline.
“We’re fully aligned with the city in moving Midway Rising forward for prompt City Council approval, and we’re hopeful that this major milestone will be achieved as soon as possible,” a spokesperson for the development team said.
Midway Rising is composed of market-rate housing developer Zephyr, affordable housing builder Chelsea Investment Corp., and sports-and-entertainment venue operator Legends. The Kroenke Group, a subsidiary of billionaire Stan Kroenke’s real estate firm, is the entity’s lead investor and limited partner.
The team may be able to fall back on State Density Bonus Law to keep its height-limit-busting project alive.
Under the law, housing developments that deed-restrict a percentage of residential units for very-low, low- or middle-income families are eligible for both density bonuses and waivers to bypass local regulations like height restrictions. The Rose Creek Village project, now under construction in Pacific Beach, first used the law to breach the coastal zone height limit. The law is also being invoked by another developer seeking to build a 239-foot-tall skyscraper with 22 stories and a rooftop deck in Pacific Beach.
Originally Published: October 20, 2025 at 6:02 PM PDT