What the Midway Rising Vote Actually Means for Point Loma Homeowners

The 30 foot height limit is the first thing anyone tells you about living on this side of the city. It comes up at block parties, it comes up in escrow, and it is a large part of why the view out your kitchen window is still the view you paid for. When the Legislature voted on August 30 to clear the legal path for a project that includes a 165 foot arena a few miles up the road, people out here noticed.

What passed is narrower than the headlines suggest, and the gap between those two things is where the useful information lives.

What the Legislature actually passed

Senate Bill 344 was introduced by Senator Akilah Weber Pierson, with Senator Padilla and Assembly Member Chris Ward as coauthors, and Ward carried it on the Assembly floor. It adds a single section, 21080.77, to the Public Resources Code, and it is written for one project. The official title says so: California Environmental Quality Act: City of San Diego: mixed-use development project.

The California Environmental Quality Act, which everyone shortens to CEQA, is the state law that requires a large project to study its environmental effects before it can be approved, and it also gives opponents a way to sue if they believe that study was inadequate. Those lawsuits are the reason Midway has sat still. What SB 344 does is let the developers rely on the environmental review that has already been done rather than starting the whole process over, which removes the specific legal vulnerability that has been used to stop the project twice.

The Assembly passed it on August 30 with 72 of 80 votes and adopted the urgency clause, and the Senate concurred the same day, 39 to 0. Assembly Member Carl DeMaio voted no and Assembly Member Tasha Boerner did not vote. That urgency language matters more than it sounds: a normal bill takes effect the following January, but an urgency statute becomes law the moment it is signed.

It has not been signed. The bill's status on the Legislature's own status page reads Active Bill, Passed, which means it is sitting on the Governor's desk and not in the law books. He has until September 30 to sign it, veto it, or let it become law without a signature.

Voters already said yes twice, and it did not hold

This is the part that explains why the Legislature got involved at all. San Diego voters approved measures in 2020 and again in 2022 to let the Midway area build above the 30 foot coastal height cap, and courts threw out both results, ruling that planners had not adequately reviewed the effects on noise, air quality and nearby habitat. The votes happened, the votes were clear, and the votes did not survive contact with CEQA. SB 344 is aimed directly at that failure point.

Whatever you think of the project, that sequence is worth sitting with, because it is the same sequence that governs a lot of what does and does not get built in this county.

What is proposed on the site

The plan, as CalMatters reported it, is a 25 story arena, 4,250 homes with at least 2,000 of them designated affordable, and close to 15 acres of public parks. The tallest element reaches 165 feet against a neighborhood cap of 30. Stan Kroenke's company holds 95 percent of the equity and Brad Termini's firm Zephyr is leading the housing side.

The opposition is organized and it is local. Eric Law, who lives in Point Loma, chairs the neighborhood group leading the challenge, and the Audubon Society and former Assembly Member Lori Saldana have lined up against it as well. Their objections are traffic, coastal views and the precedent.

There is still no deal to build anything

The city and the developers have a deal to make a deal, with terms due by December 4, and that is a different thing from a signed agreement to put shovels in the ground. Nothing about August 30 guarantees that a single unit gets built, and most of the coverage this week has blurred that line.

What changed is that the largest legal obstacle was removed. That is real, and it is also not the same as a groundbreaking.

What this does to Point Loma home values, honestly

In the near term it moves expectations, not prices. There is no mechanism by which a bill signed in September changes what a buyer pays for a house on Chatsworth in October, and anyone telling you otherwise is selling something.

Over a longer horizon, 4,250 homes is a genuine supply event for a county that has been short on housing for a generation, and it is worth understanding what kind of supply it is. Those are apartments and condominiums in a dense mixed use district next to a sports arena. They are not competing with a three bedroom single family home in La Playa or on the hill above Sunset Cliffs, and the buyer who wants a yard and a garage is not going to be talked out of it by a tower on Sports Arena Boulevard. If you want to see what the single family side of this market has been doing, I broke the numbers down in what $1.5 million buys in Point Loma right now and in the most recent countywide update.

The thing that could touch value here is not inventory, it is the height limit itself and what happens to it next. A view is a priced feature in this neighborhood in a way it is not in most of the county, and the precedent question is the one homeowners are actually asking when they ask about Midway. On that, the honest answer is that this bill is written for one project and does not change the rules anywhere else, and that a future project would need its own fight.

There is also a version of this that helps. A funded arena district with parks and thousands of homes a few minutes from here is an amenity, and amenities that are near a neighborhood without being inside it have historically been good for that neighborhood. Which way it lands depends on execution and on traffic, and neither of those is knowable today.

If you are a military family, this is a different conversation

At least 2,000 of those homes are designated affordable, and the site sits between Liberty Station and Naval Base Point Loma. For enlisted families who have been priced into a long commute or into renting further out than they wanted, that is the most consequential number in the entire project, and it is the part of this story that has gotten the least attention. It is years out and it is not certain, but it belongs on the list of things to watch if you are planning a move here. I keep a fuller guide to the local picture on the military relocation and VA loan page.

What to watch between now and December

Three dates, and they are the only three that matter right now. The Governor has until September 30 to act on the bill. The city and the developers owe each other finalized deal terms by December 4. After that, the question becomes whether the opposition finds a new legal theory, because the old one has just been closed off.

If you own here and you have been wondering whether to sell into this, the Midway vote is not the reason to move and it is not the reason to wait either. The reasons that actually decide it are your equity position, your rate, and what you would be buying next, which is the same set of questions as last month. I wrote about how that math works when you are trading up in what moving up costs in Point Loma, and about what happens when sellers guess wrong on price in the 76 homes that did not sell here last year.

Frequently asked questions

Did Midway Rising get approved on August 30?
No. The Legislature passed SB 344, which removes a legal obstacle by letting the developers rely on environmental review already completed. The bill still needs the Governor's signature, and the city and the developers still have to finalize deal terms by December 4.

Does SB 344 change the 30 foot height limit in Point Loma?
No. The bill is written for one mixed-use project in the City of San Diego and its own title says so. It does not alter height rules in other neighborhoods.

Will Midway Rising lower Point Loma home prices?
Not in any timeframe that affects a sale this year. The 4,250 proposed homes are dense mixed-use housing rather than single family homes, so they address a different segment of the market, and nothing is built yet.

When would anything get built?
No construction date exists. The nearest real milestone is the December 4 deadline for the city and the developers to finalize terms, and construction of a project this size would run years past that.

Who is behind Midway Rising?
Stan Kroenke's company holds a 95 percent equity stake, and Brad Termini's firm Zephyr is leading the housing portion of the development.

The part worth sitting with

Two elections went one way and two courts went the other, and it took a bill written for one project to break the tie. That tells you something about how hard it is to build anything at scale in California, and it is worth remembering the next time someone explains our housing costs with a single sentence.

If you own in Point Loma and you want to talk through what any of this means for your specific situation, or you just want someone to tell you plainly whether it changes anything for you, call me at (858) 750-5753.