Turquoise Tower is not just one project

It is a 23 story luxury high rise at the border of North Pacific Beach and La Jolla that would:
• Pack hundreds of new units into an already congested coastal corridor
• Add heavy traffic to neighborhood streets that are already gridlocked on weekends and in summer
• Strain aging water, sewer, and storm drain systems
• Set a height and density precedent that every other coastal speculator will try to copy

If this tower goes up, it sends a clear message to corporate developers: “You can stack luxury towers along San Diego’s coast, as long as you throw in a token number of ‘affordable’ units and set up enough shell companies.” We are drawing the line here, at the first tower.

What happens if we do nothing

If Turquoise Tower is approved without serious pushback, here is what comes next:
• Other landowners and funds point to it and say, “You allowed 23 stories here, now you must allow similar towers down the coast.”
• More high rise proposals appear in Mission Beach, Ocean Beach, and other coastal neighborhoods, marketed as “transit oriented” but priced for investors and high income tenants.
• A handful of corporate conglomerates end up controlling much of our coastal housing stock, deciding who gets to live by the ocean and on what terms.

San Diego is one of the last places in Southern California where regular people can still walk or drive near the coast and see the ocean without a wall of towers. If we let this first tower become the new normal, we will not get that coastline back.

We want housing, done right for San Diegans

Neighbors for a Better California is not opposed to housing. We want:
• Real affordable homes for San Diegans, including low and moderate income workers, seniors, and young families
• Smaller scale infill that respects existing infrastructure and safety limits
• Mixed income, community controlled models like nonprofit housing, community land trusts, and co-ops that keep homes as homes, not trading chips

What we do not want is:
• High density luxury towers with a thin slice of “affordable” units used as cover for the rest of the project
• Corporate conglomerates buying up land, building investment products, and cashing out, while locals get congestion, higher rents, and risk
• A coastal skyline decided in boardrooms and back rooms instead of in open public planning

Stopping Turquoise Tower is how we say “yes” to housing done right and “no” to turning our coastline into a financial asset strip.

What the Turquoise Tower Legal Fund will do

We are building a focused legal campaign because polite objections are not enough against a developer with corporate backing.
Your donation helps us:
• Retain experienced land use and environmental attorneys to review the record, challenge bad interpretations of state law, and file in court if necessary
• Hire traffic, safety, and infrastructure experts who can show how much strain this project would add to already stressed systems
• Enforce transparency and public process through document preservation letters and public records requests, so decisions are not made in the shadows

Our near term goal is to raise enough to confidently retain counsel team and continue serious legal work on Turquoise Tower. Every contribution moves that line.

This is about all of San Diego, not just one neighborhood

North Pacific Beach and La Jolla may be the front line, but this fight is about the whole region.
• Inland families drive to this stretch of coast for relief from heat and a chance to see the ocean
• Workers from across San Diego rely on these corridors to reach jobs, service work, and small businesses
• The decisions made here will shape how state housing laws are interpreted all along our coastline

If we allow the first wave of corporate towers with negligible affordability to plant themselves at the water’s edge, we lock in a future where:
• More of our housing is controlled by distant investors
• Fewer San Diegans can afford to live near their jobs and schools
• Coastal access looks more like a private amenity and less like a shared public resource

Standing up to Turquoise Tower is a stand for a different vision: affordable housing, planned with infrastructure and safety in mind, built for the people who live and work here.