Urban Hipster Coolness For a Price

Urban Hipster Coolness

This last Friday I took the day off and the GF and I went to downtown San Diego. We were seeing Crowded House at Humphrey's By the Bay which is on
Shelter Island so we figured we could kill some time by pretending to be a couple looking for a new lifestyle and shop for a Downtown San Diego East Village condo/townhouse/rowhouse. You know, moving out of suburbia and into the urban hipster lifestyle environment that the still-in-redevelopment downtown is supposed to provide.

First, here is a Google maps of the area we were in - "East Village", near the new Padres ball field PetCo Park. If you turn on satellite images you'll see they are at least 3 or 4 years old; they show an in-construction ball park and a bunch of vacant lots where new condo towers are now.

Here is an info page for a bunch of different developments. We went to "ICON" and walked around "The Mark San Diego."

We saw 3 floorplans at ICON, one was an 1100 sq ft (100 m^2) 2 bed 2 bath condo on the 17th floor for $850K and two lofts on the 3rd floor of a renovated warehouse with the original outside wall left intact. These were 1035 sq ft (92 m^2) and 825 sq ft (80 m^2) for $435K and $419K respectively. The 17th floor was nice, nice view of the harbor and the ball park but it was on the SE corner which also means you get to see the railroad yard. The lofts windows were right at street light level - the light would POUR in at night I'm sure, plus it is across the street from the vacant lot where the proposed (but probably never to be built) new downtown library is supposed to be. Because it is more important to build a baseball field than a library.

The salesman emphasized that the 1100 sq ft 2BR 2 BA condo was priced differently depending on the floor you're on. Higher is more expensive. He also commented multiple times of the availability of parking (1 or 2 spots). I thought nothing of it at the time but later the significance of that became clear.

Then we walked around the neighborhood. It's still not completely redeveloped and in fact the steam has gone out of the effort with the condo glut downtown and the flattening (at best) of the housing market here. Turns out that the nearest grocery store is 9 blocks away. There was no dry cleaners nearby and no pharmacy or convenience store, either. The streets seemed a little dead, too; it was 4 PM on Friday and you'd think people would be starting to move around but not really where we were. We saw lots of old empty buildings ready for demolition; old warehouses, garages, parking lots. No gas stations though, old or new. We ended up at 8th and Island and liked the condos/row houses along the street (part of The Mark's development) but couldn't find the sales office. Very few were occupied; maybe 25% and there weren't that many of them, maybe a dozen?

So, now the significance of the parking space comments became clear. Even though you are living a downtown urban hipster lifestyle you still need a car to GET ANYWHERE, even with the trolley since the trolley makes a big lap around the downtown district but doesn't actually enter the center of it. This is antithetical to the urban lifestyle, right? You don't NEED a car. Everything is RIGHT THERE for you.

Here's the thing for me. Back 100 years ago, even "pre-war", people from all walks of life lived like this. Rich people lived uptown in brick fronted row houses, middle class people lived in apartments above their shops and poor people lived in Hell's Kitchen in tenement housing. The point is there was lots of choices for all economic positions.

I have to wonder about this in downtown SD; East Village was a piece of crap neighborhood and has been for decades and decades. It couldn't have been THAT expensive to buy a bunch of non-earthquake safe 75 year old warehouses full of rats with leaky roofs, could it? $1.25M for 1900 sq ft row houses right on F Street? That's not an "upper class" housing style, that's middle class housing. That's housing for a guy like me. And I feel I can barely afford my current mortgage which is a fraction of some of these prices.

I fear this means a massive RE value collapse in order to let the next generation buy and they won't be buying out here in SuburbiaLand because those houses will be sky high and be passed down from parent to child, just like houses used to be 100 years ago. They'll be moving back to the urban areas because it's the only place anyone will be allowed by NIMBYs to build vertically.

The only other possibility is if we start being like native Europeans and have a lower than replacement birthrate, in which case the terrorists will have won.

It seems far more expensive to build a downtown area over the course of 50 years, say, let White Flight to the suburbs in the 60's devastate the urban core, allow it rot for 25 or 30 years and then say, "Hey, you know what would be great? If we dumped billions of dollars to tear down old crap and build new crap with no supportive infrastructure like a pharmacy or a fucking trolley car stop at the corner." And make no mistake, downtown San Diego in the 70's and early 80's was a very scary place. Very scary. The Gaslamp began a recovery in the mid 80's but even now there are blocks that are untouched by the evil hand of Eminent Domain. There is however a two story Hustler store on 6th Street which is considered an upscale addition to the neighborhood.

I like the downtown area; I enjoy the restaurants and the atmosphere but if I were to move to San Diego proper I'd buy a Craftsman-style bungalow in North Park and restore it from the ground up before I'd buy a downtown condo and still have to pay for a car.