Chula Vista wants to carve out 20 acres of the nearly 400-acre undeveloped land it has long envisioned turning into South County’s nexus for education and business. At the moment, the massive piece of real estate east of the Cota Vera development is vacant, rugged and in need of hundreds of millions of dollars worth of roads, sewers and power lines.
’s expansion to Chula Vista as the beginning of a migration of four-year institutions to South County. The city spent about $4 million developing plans to build a state-of-the-art complex that would house a massive new public library, office space and production studios for the university. In September, Chula Vista broke ground on the 168,000-square-foot building but it will not include the production studios.
said the building’s design could not accommodate the studios, which are central to expanding its program. The city and university negotiated until the end of last year to figure out if an adjacent building could be built for the studios but to no avail. Both parties are now eyeing the University and Innovation District as a potential site for
programming, which could include film production. The 20 acres or a portion of it may be negotiated with . But the city will not be able to formally negotiate the land with the university or any other potential tenant until it completes the Surplus Land Act exemption process, said Kachadoorian. Last year, Gov. Gavin Newsom signed legislation, brokered by Assemblymember David Alvarez and Senator Steve Padilla, that exempts the city from the Surplus Land Act, which requires local governments to offer excess land for sale or lease to affordable housing developers first before allowing other uses.