Putting Racial Equity at the Center of Neighborhood Investment in San Diego

Many attendees of the ULI Spring Meeting in San Diego got an up-close look at what happens when a resident-led, community-based organization puts racial equity at the center of neighborhood investment.

For more than 25 years, the nonprofit Jacobs Center for Neighborhood Innovation has focused its efforts on revitalizing a small cluster of struggling urban neighborhoods with great potential, rich cultural heritage, untapped economic development opportunities and hardworking community members looking to build generational wealth.

The results have been transformational for the Diamond District neighborhoods, home to more than 100,0000 residents—mostly Black and Latino living at or below poverty levels.

The executive staff and board of directors at the Jacobs Center were eager to welcome ULI members and conference guests to the Joe & Vi Jacobs Center for a variety of events and activities, as well as share the story of uplifting lives and creating economic opportunity without displacing locals or fueling inequities.

Walking tours of part of the 60-acre (24.3 hectare) redevelopment area in Southeast San Diego showcased some of the major results of the decades-long effort to turn historically underinvested urban neighborhoods into a vibrant, diverse and inclusive community where local residents now work, shop, learn, dine and gather together for civic celebrations and a wide array of arts and cultural experiences.

There’s the town center that includes the area’s first major retail center and grocery store. Next door, there is a 72,000-square-foot (6,689 sq m) conference/office building with community center and nonprofit headquarters, outdoor amphitheater and festival area for performing arts and civic events. Close by is a tuition-free, college prep charter public middle school, a no-cost academy for youth squash, and a restored creekside park with trails, public art and native plant life.

In addition, ULI members learned about a LEED-certified, 52-unit affordable housing development, the graded site for the County of San Diego’s 65,000-square-foot (6,039 sq m) Live Well Center for health and human services and saw the ongoing improvements and upgrades to the neighborhoods’ streets, sidewalks, bike lanes and landscaped medians.

All of this is the result of the unwavering commitment of a family foundation formed by Joe and Vi Jacobs, founders of Jacobs Engineering, and its partners that pioneered one of the first projects in the United States to be designed, built and partly owned by neighborhood residents.

To their credit, in 1994, the forward-thinking Jacobs family recognized the lack of resources in the area, along with the opportunity for job growth and ample land available to develop much-needed housing, retail and educational facilities. It was always their vision to give a hand up, not a handout, and they’ve invested $150 million to ensure that residents were the driving force and primary beneficiaries of development in their neighborhood.

Pioneering Place-based Redevelopment

The Jacobs Center has been doing what’s called place-based redevelopment, which means its work is rooted in a specific area, in this case several Diamond District neighborhoods, just five miles east of downtown San Diego.

From an urban design and redevelopment standpoint, this type of work comes with added challenges. The nonprofit has listened and responded to what the community members want and need, instead of invoking more top-down, profit-driven decisions.

Jacobs Center had to be patient and stand firm in its belief in a resident-driven process, including turning down multiple offers from housing and other commercial developers who wanted to buy up the land.

That also has meant finding partners and funders who are interested in paying for what the community wants to do – but also being very mindful of minimizing gentrification and keeping local residents in the community. That’s been a precarious balancing act between eliminating blight and creating wealth, and at the same time not displacing community members who might be pushed out as land values and home prices start responding to successful revitalization.

To that end, specific efforts have included attracting much-needed retail and commercial projects that serve local residents and also attract other consumer-spending San Diegans and tourists; seeking out integrated housing with both affordable and market-rate development; supporting homegrown groups and organizations to empower and embolden racial and economic justice; and developing the region’s first business accelerator focused on low-to-moderate income and diverse founders with both public and private partners.

Philanthropy alone can’t uplift underinvested communities in Southeast San Diego, and while we’ve always sought private funding partners to come into this work with us, it’s been essential to engage very heavily with the city and state as well as federal sources.

Public and Private Partnerships

Jacobs Center has community support (including more than 300 resident investors who participated in an early-funding IPO), as well as government agencies that afforded it to tap into the benefits of Promise Zone and Opportunity Zone designations. Support has included city paid Community Plan Updates that eliminated costs for Environmental Impact Reports, inclusionary housing fees and other development impact fees that often made it difficult for projects to pencil out.

With support and backing from county and state agencies, the community and its development partners also have been able to tap resources such as a $4.5 million Caltrans grant for a Complete Streets project to improve infrastructure.

Equitable and Resilient Community

The history of redevelopment authorities and other kinds of large-scale, government-led urban renewal plans has been discriminatory and disastrous if not viewed through a racial equity lens.

In contract, the Jacobs Center steadfastly works toward designing new strategies that will turn the corner on outdated public policy and open doors for more equitable redevelopment.

Jacobs Center’s task now is to leverage the family’s initial investment with other funders, both locally, regionally and on a national level, to continue the evolution of a strong, stable, sustainable community-guided organization that will carry on with this important work.

Transitioning from a family foundation to a nonprofit public charity and having majority community leadership on the board—and as envisioned by Joe and Vi Jacobs—Jacobs Center continues to work to reflect the diversity of area and continue to be laser-focused on equitable, inclusive growth and development by providing programming and resources to businesses, developing essential housing and retail projects, and working with the local residents and partners throughout the process.

That’s how you put racial equity at the center of neighborhood investment.

Reginald Jones is president and CEO of the Jacobs Center for Neighborhood Innovation.