[Streamliner]

Story on the Pinnacle Pacific Heights project on the front page of the Union-Tribune website today:

San Diego apartment complex with separate low-income building denied approval

July 25, 2019

An East Village apartment complex that calls for housing low-income renters in a separate building was not approved Wednesday by a downtown planning agency amid concerns that it felt like segregation.

The proposal from Vancouver-based Pinnacle International is a complex known as Pinnacle Pacific Heights that includes a 32-story building for market-rate renters and an adjacent eight-story building for 58 rent-restricted units. Poorer renters would not have access to a 32nd floor roofdeck or pool on the market-rate side, and would have to enter the building in a separate entrance. The market-rate tower, which would be located between A and B streets on 11th Avenue, proposes a total of 387 housing units.

Board members of Civic San Diego, which considered the project Wednesday, were critical of Pinnacle’s plan for separating the two classes of residents. The board stopped short of denying the project outright and instead sent it back to a lower committee to be heard in September, opening the door to reconsideration by the full board in the fall.

“This is segregation at its finest,” said board member Robert Robinson. “The design is bad. This is wrong. Who is paying who to do this kind of stuff?” Robinson, who is African-American, said he knows what it is like to feel segregated against and that the Pinnacle project reminded him of the old Jim Crow laws in the South.

...

Pinnacle’s proposal for low-income housing was crafted as part of a “density bonus” program that allows it to build more units within three separate towers it wants to construct downtown as long as it builds the affordable units within one mile of its project. Pinnacle has proposed constructing one building in the Columbia district and two others in East Village.

https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com...enied-approval

Hopefully they resubmit with a better design. This one never wowed me.