The San Diego Community College District is seeking to raze San Diego’s Golden Hall and replace it with a five-story museum and educational building that centers around the district’s growing collection of African art. The redevelopment proposal is expected to be solidified during a formal negot iation period with the city that could commence this spring, and it will likely include hundreds of rent-restricted residential units for students and faculty members. Last week, Mayor Todd Gloria, in his annual State of the City address, committed to bringing forward to the City Council a proposal to enter into an exclusive negotiating agreement with the community college district for the Golden Hall property, framing the decision as a way to resume efforts to revitalize the city’s aging Civic Center complex in the heart of downtown San Diego. “This kicks off the five blocks for a real plan that has real legs,” Stephen Cushman, who is Gloria’s real estate consultant said, told the Union-Tribune. The negotiation contract with the community college district, he said, could be ready for council consideration in 90 days and is expected to give the parties between six months and two years to finalize a development deal. The city’s relationship with the district, forged over a few recent working lunches, marks a potential turning point for the forlorn Civic Center blocks, with redevelopment efforts so far stymied by market forces and the city’s budget crisis. It also presents the community college district, flush with bond money, with a way to elevate its esteemed, 1,300-piece Mesa College World Art Collection. “Mesa College, over the last 50 years, has been curating one of the largest collections of African and now also Southeast Asian art … but this collection, unfortunately, is housed in the center of campus, in our library building, where very few people outside of Mesa College students get to experience it,” Gregory Smith, the community college district’s chancellor, told the Union-Tribune. “This would be an ideal way to bring the collection out into the community.” The idea, which has been taking shape without the city’s involvement for more than a year, centers around creating a 20,000-square-foot exhibition gallery as the focal point of a $200 million, 50,000-square-foot facility. The building, as currently envisioned, would also include classrooms for visiting faculty and students, storage space, an auditorium for lectures and collection-related performances, and a retail and cafe venue. The facility may also be the permanent home of Mesa College’s museum studies program, Smith said. The district is also in the early stages of thinking about erecting residential units alongside the arts-and-education building on the Golden Hall site, he said. “We’re opening our first affordable student housing development at City College in the fall of 2028. That will be at least 800 beds,” Smith said. “So if we could do something similar, or ideally even at a larger scale (at the Golden Hall site), that would be excellent.” Built in 1964, Golden Hall served as a convention, event and concert venue before more recently being used as a homeless shelter. The aging facility takes up roughly one block of San Diego’s Civic Center complex, bounded by A Street and C Street to the north and south, and First Avenue and Third Avenue to the east and west. Golden Hall shares the municipal quad with the City Administration Building (aka City Hall), the Civic Center Plaza office tower, the Evan V. Jones Parkade parking garage and the Civic Theatre. The city’s real estate holdings extend across the street to a fifth block at 1222 First Ave., which is home to the City Operations Building. The Mesa College World Art Collection includes more than 1,300 pieces from Africa, the Pacific Islands, Mesoamerica and the continent of Asia. (Mesa College) In May 2023, San Diego put the Civic Center complex on the market, following the requirements spelled out in California’s updated Surplus Land Act, as part of Gloria’s plan to lease or sell the real estate to fund the construction or purchase of a brand-new City Hall. The solicitation failed to attract developer interest, likely because the state housing law requires developers to set aside 25% of proposed residential units for low-income families. Gloria intended to put the assets back on the market, but ultimately tabled the two-part plan, called the Civic Center Revitalization plan, in December 2024 because of a substantial structural budget deficit. In his stead, San Diego’s Prebys Foundation hired its own urban planning firm, U3 Advisors, to create a vision for the blocks, teamed with the San Diego Downtown Partnership to help facilitate the work and began conversations with the college district. The effort culminated with the May 2025 release of a conceptual plan that envisioned a phased approach to redevelopment, starting with a cultural hub on the Golden Hall site. The future-looking plan appeared at the time to be theoretical in nature, as the mayor had publicly committed to maximizing the city’s continued use of the Civic Center compound to save money. Gloria’s State of the City speech suggests that his thinking has shifted on the subject. “My office will continue to work diligently with the community and the Prebys Foundation on advancing the broader vision for this (Civic Center) property this year, which will ultimately allow for housing, public spaces and the revitalization of our civic core,” he said last week. The renewed push to reevaluate the city’s downtown real estate assets appears to have started in the weeks leading up to Gloria’s speech, although Cushman said that the mayor never walked away from the revitalization plan. “At one point, there was a big discussion about the city moving (City Hall). … And the mayor said, ‘Hey, we just can’t afford it. We’re not doing it.’ And it was misunderstood at the time that he was calling a halt to (the Civic Center Revitalization) program as well. He wasn’t,” Cushman said. “Todd made it abundantly clear to me that, ‘The reason you’re here is, I want progress.’ So I’ve been working with the Prebys Foundation, and had a couple of lunches with the chancellor of the community college district, and I saw a real opportunity for us to all work together.” The partnership is, however, still in its infancy. Smith, the district chancellor, said that the anticipated exclusive negotiation period with the city will allow the community college district to review site infrastructure complications — a 1960s-era underground power plant currently serves the entire complex — and study the overall project feasibility. He also plans to talk to additional potential partners. “It would be great if we could use this facility, if we build it, to expand dual enrollment opportunities with San Diego Unified,” he said. “Would San Diego State or UC San Diego or the University of San Diego, or other regional partners in higher education be interested in working with us?” Other variables include identifying lease or sale terms, with the district’s preference to own the land. The district also wants to know who its neighbors will be, and may insist on having a voice in how and when the city offloads the other blocks. “We would be very interested in who our potential neighbors would be, and the idea of not having any neighbors for some extended period of time,” Smith said. “If we’re going to be able to partner with bringing in high school students, that means we have to be very concerned about health and safety and their ability to safely navigate in and out of those spaces. So that’ll be an important part of this conversation, and coming up with parameters around which we can have some say or influence on who can come into that space and how. “(We also want to make) sure this is all aligned with the vision of an arts- and culture-centric space for the community. We can be great partners in that. If it needs to be something else, then perhaps we’re not the partners for it.” But, should all go smoothly, the proposed facility could open in 2031 or 2032, he said. Currently, the chancellor believes he can fund the arts-and-education facility primarily with philanthropic dollars. Bond proceeds from Measure HH, a property tax approved by voters in 2024, would be a secondary source of capital for the gallery project, he said. However, the residential component would most likely be funded by Measure HH proceeds. The mayor’s push to make a deal with the community college district is brilliant — but only if it is part of a plan for the entire compound, said Gary London, a principal of local firm London Moeder Advisors and an expert on downtown San Diego. “I’m encouraged, because this is the first indication that we’ve gotten that the mayor is even thinking about ways to better utilize the entire Civic Center complex. So that’s a step in the right direction. But the mayor is thinking small when this is a moment to be thinking big,” London said. “The best approach possible is to use this moment to achieve two things. One is to maximize the value of the Civic Center site by large development opportunities. The second idea is … moving City Hall off campus, using the valuation that can be achieved by a sale of Civic Center complex, to lease or own space somewhere else.” London is finalizing a report that identifies the current cost of housing the city’s downtown workforce in different locations versus the cost of consolidating into one space. The report, he said, should demonstrate the overall value of moving City Hall. ...read more read less