Project Info

Timeline

January 2024
San Diego City Council Vote
All Peoples met with the San Diego City Council and after hearing much public support and opposition, the City Council denied the project on a split vote, 6 - 2.

September 2023
City of San Diego Planning Commission Vote
All Peoples met with the Planning Commission of San Diego and after hearing much public support and opposition, the Planning Commission voted unanimously in favor of the project, stating that the project and the traffic light will likely improve the traffic at the location.

August 2023
Navajo Community Planners Meeting
All Peoples met with the Navajo Community Planners. After much public support and opposition, the Planners voted unanimously against the project.

July 2023
Final Environmental Impact Report
After years of technical review, public input, and hard work, the Final Environmental Impact Report for the Light Project was published! This was an important milestone as it moved the project one step closer to the vote by the City of San Diego. The next steps in the approval process would be a presentation to the Navajo Community Planners and public hearings before the City of San Diego Planning Commission and City Council. Many people showed their support at this time - attending a hearing, speaking in support, or sending an email to decision makers that demonstrated strong support of the project.

September 2022
After a three year technical review process and over 20 community meetings, All Peoples announced our Environmental Impact Report was available for community review.

October 2021
On October 22, 2021, the City of San Diego kicked off the environmental review process for The Light Project with the release of a Notice of Preparation of an Environmental Impact Report for the project. This was an important milestone in the project review process, as the environmental review was needed before the project could be considered by the Planning Commission and City Council.

The release of the Notice of Preparation began a 30-day public scoping process where members of the public could submit comments about issues they believed should be addressed in the environmental review.

March 2021
All Peoples Church submitted its revised project package to the City of San Diego for review on March 12, hopeful that this submittal addressed all outstanding issues, and that the City would move forward with the environmental review for the project. Over the last two years, All Peoples Church had worked with neighbors and community groups to share information about the project, answer questions, and listen to concerns. As a result, we made a number of changes to the project over time to address issues raised by neighbors and the community, including:

• Reduced height of the majority of the building from 33’ to 30’ (with exception of architectural elements)

• Property line screening on north end – enhanced landscaped buffer and assistance with fence upgrades

• Agreed to gate off surface parking at north entrance to the parking lot to eliminate activity except during church services

• Additional landscaping at the retaining wall near College Avenue

• Will replace trees in College Avenue median that are removed with construction of intersection

December 2020
All Peoples Church continued to communicate with the community and city officials as we moved through the project approval process. The team received comments from the city on the third project submission and was preparing a fourth submission. At the time, one issue of focus was the project sewer system, on which we found creative solutions. We also anticipated sign off by the city on the traffic study we prepared (traffic counts were conducted in April 2019, prior to the COVID-19 pandemic).

Fall 2020
All Peoples Church made what we hoped was our final submittal of plans to the City of San Diego over the summer and were expecting final comments. An environmental review of the project would then be conducted before the project could move forward to the Planning Commission and City Council for public hearings. The project would also be presented to the Navajo Community Planners, the official advisory group to the City of San Diego on community land use issues. We will ask the group for a recommendation of approval of the project, which will be forwarded to the City of San Diego.

May 2020
All Peoples Church submitted and received notes from the city of San Diego on our 2nd submittal regarding site plans. We dialogued with the community and state entities to develop the best plan possible for the site development.

January 2020
All Peoples Church was made aware of a new city ordinance in San Diego that allows churches to be built with considerably less parking than previously required. This was in order to allow churches to create housing in their parking lots to help those that experience homelessness. While All Peoples Church is committed to restoring the lives of those that are experiencing homelessness, we communicated to the community – specifically our new neighbors in the Del Cerro area – that we had no plans to reduce the size of our parking lot or to house homeless people on our property. All allotted parking spaces will be needed to support our worship services each weekend. Our parking facilities are important to ensure our congregants can park on site and not in the surrounding neighborhood.

October 2019
All Peoples Church and its project team worked to develop responses and revisions to project plans in response to the comments submitted by the City over the summer. A number of the issues addressed were technical and required input from both the City and Caltrans before responses could be finalized.

June 2019
The City of San Diego issued their first round of comments on the project plans submitted by All Peoples Church in May 2019. Called a “Cycle Issues Report,” these comments are the result of a review of the proposed plans by several City departments. The next step is for the All Peoples Church team to review the comments and make revisions to the plans and/or develop responses to address the City’s comments. It was anticipated that there would be about three rounds of project submittals and responses from the City before plans would be finalized.

May 2019
All Peoples Church formally submitted plans for The Light Project to the City of San Diego to begin the project review process. The church also conducted a number of community outreach activities to share plans with local community groups and neighbors of the project. Presentations were made to both the Del Cerro Action Council and the Navajo Community Planners. Church representatives also met with a subcommittee of the Navajo Community Planners tasked with working with the church to review and comment on the project. We also held a meeting with neighbors whose properties were adjacent to the church’s parcel.