A large package of new policies that aim to boost business districts in San Diego, spur ambitious housing development and clarify dozens of zoning rules will be presented to the City Council Monday for final approval.
The package would loosen rules for converting shopping malls into housing, simplify approval of sidewalk cafes and make it easier to open substance use and mental health clinics for homeless people.
It would also make it easier to open urgent care clinics in many neighborhoods and would require new arenas and stadiums to provide easy access to walkers, cyclists and mass transit users.
Other proposals include softening parking requirements for research facilities and loosening rules for electrified fences.
There are also two proposed policy changes that would make it easier to open child care facilities. To be eligible for the streamlined approvals, operators must agree to operate the businesses as child care facilities for at least 10 years.
The package includes 99 proposed policy changes, 72 that would apply citywide and 27 that would affect only downtown.
The changes proposed for downtown include incentives to develop underutilized sites like parking lots, build housing for middle-income residents and add public open spaces to large developments.
Another change proposed for downtown would create new incentives for development on C Street and for opening ground-floor commercial businesses on the street, which runs along a trolley line.
City planning officials said the 99 proposals were culled from more than 200 ideas they vetted.
San Diego is the only city in the region that updates its zoning code annually with a large batch of policy changes. Other cities handle such changes one at a time.
Critics say adjusting significant regulations in such a large batch can shield the changes from the scrutiny they might receive if the council debated them individually.
City officials say comprehensively updating the zoning code each year allows them quickly to make small modifications that streamline regulations and adjust policies that may have had unintended consequences.
Heidi Vonblum, the city’s planning director, said last winter when the proposals were unveiled that handling roughly 100 proposals individually would be a bureaucratic nightmare.
Each item would have to go to the Planning Commission, the City Council’s Land Use and Housing Committee and then the full City Council for final approval.
Councilmember Joe LaCava said last month, when the Land Use and Housing Committee unanimously endorsed the package, that San Diego should be praised for its approach.
“This is a city that’s actually paying attention and that recognizes that when we put ordinances together we don’t always get it right,” he said.
The Community Planners Committee, an umbrella organization for the city’s four dozen neighborhood planning groups, endorsed all of the changes this spring except one of the child care incentives.
Local business groups, including the San Diego Regional Chamber of Commerce and the Building Industry Association, are praising the entire package.
Public hearings on last year’s package were dominated by debate over a proposal to soften rules allowing taller apartment buildings and more backyard units when a property is near mass transit.
The City Council eventually voted 5-4 last February to approve the change, which extended the relaxed rules to properties as far as 1 mile away from a transit line, instead of the half-mile requirement previously been in place.
None of this year’s proposals have attracted that kind of attention.
The most significant change is probably streamlining approvals for substance use and mental health clinics, a move that aims to help San Diego cope with its ongoing homelessness crisis.
Some critics have expressed concern the clinics could damage the atmosphere of some neighborhoods, but Vonblum stressed that the changes don’t affect single-family neighborhoods.
While the proposal would widen the areas in which such facilities could be located, it stipulates that applicants must get a more rigorous conditional use permit if the site is within 500 feet of child care businesses, playgrounds or schools.
Another key change would let developers convert large shopping malls into mixed-use projects to make housing the primary use. Existing rules say the primary use must remain commercial. The change would apply only to malls of at least 500,000 square feet.
The proposal targeting new stadiums and arenas aims to boost the city’s efforts to comply with its climate action plan. In addition to requiring easy access for transit users, pedestrians and cyclists, the change would affect how parking structures could be built.
The change won’t apply to Snapdragon Stadium in Mission Valley because it’s already been completed. But it would apply to a proposal to redevelop the Midway area surrounding the city’s aging sports arena.
Sidewalk cafes could be created without a city permit if the outdoor seating wouldn’t block an entry-exit pathway into the restaurant.
The change related to urgent care clinics would allow them to open without a neighborhood use permit in commercial zones.
Research and development businesses would no longer be required to provide the same number of parking spots as other industrial businesses.
The changes would also loosen rules for single-room-occupancy hotels, which city officials call the lowest rung on the housing ladder above homelessness.
The council approved incentives to build such hotels last fall, but that legislation didn’t specify whether they were exempt from the 30-day minimum stay rule created to regulate short-term vacation rentals.
Another change would allow electrified fences at businesses as long as they are located within another non-electrified fence. City officials said salvage yards are the most likely businesses to take advantage of the change.
Monday’s council meeting starts at 2 p.m. at City Hall, 202 C St. It can also be watched online at sandiego.gov.
