I hope, in January, you will strongly consider the Protea+Malick proposal. It maximizes housing units, the single most effective way to ensure more educators and staff can benefit - and your top priority. It provides more mixed-use space, community serving design and a stronger financial return over the life of the ground lease, revenue that you can reinvest in students and schools.

Ike Warner

Member, Uptown Community Planning Group

On behalf of the YIMBY Democrats of San Diego County and our hundreds of supporters, we ask that you prioritize the needs of working families over the aesthetic preferences of the affluent. Please do! And you can do that by selecting the proposal that will build the most homes for working people on his site - the proposal with 1,500 homes.

Manny Rodriguez

President, YIMBY Democrats San Diego County

Your goal here should be to support as many employees as possible. The current recommended proposal [from Affirmed] builds over 500 fewer homes than allowable and by choosing to move forward with this proposal, you are making the choice to leave 500 district employees and their families with more expensive and less connected housing options.

Aria Grossman

Policy Manager, Circulate San Diego

I'm here to urge the board to support the project with the highest number of homes…. I want to encourage the board to consider a bold vision for this site. The site is over 13 acres in one of San Diego's most walkable, centrally located neighborhoods with transit, schools and local businesses all within steps. Very few places in the city offer this combination, so if we design this properly with high quality public spaces and a mix of housing types, this site can become a real asset for both the District and the community.

Jordan Latchford

University Heights resident

The city has a rare opportunity to create a walkable, mixed-use urban neighborhood filled with parks, shops, and civic spaces that bring people together. Prioritizing vertical growth over sprawl, creates room for more public amenities, stronger infrastructure, and improved skyline.

Traci Knight-Cortez

Board Vice President, San Diego Architectural Foundation

I am a resident of University Heights and member of the North Park Community Planning Group, and today I am speaking in opposition to the redevelopment proposal by Affirmed. The proposal includes not one, but two above ground parking garages, totaling nearly 1,000 new parking spaces. … Doubling down on car dependency doesn't make sense, not for our neighborhood's history, not for the children next door, who will face more traffic, pollution, and potential collisions near dangerous intersections and not in the face of climate change. Let's plan for people, not for cars.

Edgar Ramirez Manriquez

Member, North Park Planning Committee

I want to urge you to adopt the most forward-looking plan for this Normal Street site. The proposal that delivers a maximum number, not just percentage, number of affordable homes, the most family-sized units and the strongest community integration should be the one that moves forward. Height is not a problem. Height is how you unlock parks, plazas, public space, and green quarters. Limiting height only faces more pavement and above ground parking garages, ingress, egress, parking lots like the current recommended proposal. We need an evaluation process that centers educators and regional needs - not the narrow preferences of a few long-term residents.

Wesley Morgan

Resident

I've been a resident of … a San Diego native for 30 years. … [W]e need the maximum height limit for more teachers to be closer to their workplace. The more teachers are at their workplace, the less they have to drive, eliminating traffic, which is a major contention in San Diego - everywhere.

Shaquille Adams

Resident

Projects that rely primarily on low-income housing tax credits could take decades to get financed. Our housing and climate crisis are urgent, and a proposal that can be delivered faster should be scored higher.

Anthony Dang

Policy and Community Outreach Manager, Climate Action Campaign

If the district is serious about tackling the housing crisis for both the city and for its educators, the obvious choice is to choose the plan that maximizes housing and thus maximizes community benefit.

Anisha Agarwal

Resident

Some of these plans accommodate hundreds fewer people and families in our community. We cannot claim to care about affordability, housing our educators, our children and our community, and then also decide to pass up the opportunity to build homes for them in our neighborhood.

Josie

Resident

I'm excited to take my family and friends to hang out at Keystone to use the pool, shop and chill in the plaza. This project has all the features of quality urban placemaking in its design. We don't want to spend another 100 years imagining what could have been at this site. We deserve Keystone.

Josh Clark

SD Unified parent / Uptown resident

I think we have a moral obligation to do as much as we can to help solve this housing crisis and provide homes for us teachers. I ask that the Board prioritize the plan with the most number of homes in the January workshop and not the current plan. The scale of the crisis, and especially among teachers like myself, means we can't afford to leave 500 homes on the table. Ultimately maximizing the number of homes provides the most benefit for the district staff, the district's finances, and the city's housing stock.

Justin Schiffer

Teacher at San Diego Unified

I'm calling in to oppose the current recommended project by Affirmed housing and support the Keystone proposal. This location is along a major transit corridor, and this proposal best takes advantage of this location by improving pedestrian connectivity to major transit hubs and understanding that the proximity to transit presents a great opportunity to prioritize building denser housing over wasting valuable land on excessive parking. This proposal is also the proposal that generates the most long-term revenue for San Diego Unified and is the most sustainable.

Zach Sturgeon

Resident

I'm a student who just graduated from high school in San Diego. I'm speaking in opposition with the Affirmed plan and instead support the Keystone Education District. There will be a lot more homes under the Keystone Education District plan, and it'll be a far more transit-oriented development project, which is crucial in this housing crisis.

Sam Borinsky

Graduate

I would like the Board to consider the long-term benefits of the Keystone proposal to the District's finances. Right now, the District is facing financial troubles, and while short-term gain might be attractive, I think the long-term outlook … over 4 billion dollars more in revenue than the current recommended proposal should be considered.

Adian Chowdhury [sic] 

Resident

We advocate for the Keystone project that has the highest number of residences. … We need to focus on dense residency with public transit nearby.

Leif Gensert

RideSD