San Diego’s long-stalled Midway Rising project just got a major green light. On Tuesday, Governor Gavin Newsom signed Senate Bill 344, legislation that certifies the project’s environmental review as legally sound and shields it from further litigation — clearing a roadblock that has held up redevelopment of the old Sports Arena site in the Midway District for months.
The bill matters because it resolves a fight that began when the group Save Our Access successfully sued the city over the project’s height, which exceeds San Diego’s long-standing 30-foot coastal building limit. SB 344 effectively settles that dispute by tying the project’s environmental approval to its inclusion of 2,000 deed-restricted affordable housing units out of 4,250 planned total.
For San Diego business owners, the retail piece is the part worth watching. Developer Brad Termini, whose Zephyr company is leading the project alongside majority owner and sports mogul Stan Kroenke, has described Midway Rising as a full mixed-use district rather than a single building: 4,250 housing units, a rebuilt 16,000-seat Pechanga Arena, roughly 130,000 square feet of new retail space, and 14.5 acres of parks woven through the site. That’s a sizable new commercial footprint landing just minutes from downtown, Point Loma, and the airport — the kind of foot traffic that tends to draw restaurants, fitness studios, and service businesses looking for a first-mover advantage in a growing corridor.
The project still needs final sign-off from the San Diego City Council, but with the legal cloud lifted, Termini has said construction could begin as soon as 2027. That timeline gives local business owners and commercial brokers a real window to start planning rather than speculating — whether that means scouting retail space early or simply watching how the Midway District’s identity shifts over the next few years as one of the city’s biggest redevelopment sites finally moves forward.
It’s a reminder that San Diego’s commercial landscape keeps evolving, and staying visible as new corridors take shape is part of staying competitive.
Source: Times of San Diego
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