AGC San Diego CONSTRUCTOR Magazine 2018 - Volume 1 AGCSD CONSTRUCTOR 2018 Volume 1 | Seite 12

SPRECCO'S FIRST TAKE
AGC in 2028
By Eddie Sprecco, AGC San Diego Chief Executive Officer
You may have heard
the old saying “the
only
constant
is
change,” but did you
know that the original
quote is roughly 2500
years old? A lot has
changed in that time -
but the rate of change
isn’t always constant.
Bursts of innovation
due
to
shifting
political
structures,
technologies
and
economies periodically
converge to create
periods of dramatic change. The construction
industry in San Diego is currently in a time of flux.
In three major areas – housing, transportation,
and labor unions – the industry of 2028 will look
little like the industry of 2008.
Housing –
California passed Senate Bill 375 in 2008 to
change the way cities are built in an effort to
reduce greenhouse gas emissions. In short,
this bill kicked off the switch from “Greenfield” to
“Infill.” No longer would new single-family housing
developments stretch into natural landscapes.
Instead, projects would have to be built next to
existing development, transportation corridors,
and be higher density. Local jurisdictions have
since updated their zoning to favor the multi-
family, transit-oriented approach to housing. AGC
San Diego contractors can benefit from this shift in
many ways, since our members traditionally aren’t
in the single-family home market, but do build
most of the large condo projects seen popping up
downtown.
This major shift hasn’t been without pain. Land in
suburbs and rural areas have been “down zoned”
meaning fewer units per acre can be built, while
land near existing developments have been “up
zoned” to accommodate higher density multi-
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family housing. Good news if you own some of
the city properties, bad news if you owned a ranch
that you thought might be a nice neighborhood
someday. What all of this planning doesn’t take
into account is the economics of home building.
The cost to provide supporting infrastructure –
roads, water, utilities – to housing at one house
per half acre, is cheaper than providing it to one
house every five acres. Put another way, it’s
easier to spread the costs of a $1 million road into
the 20 acre “Rancho Del Sprecco” neighborhood
if it were split 40 ways, instead of four. More likely,
the project will never be built – though, on paper,
those are available to be housing units in the
regional plan.
The infill projects, on the other hand, have troubles
of their own. “Up zoning” expensive land near
existing developments means you are impacting
– existing developments! This includes existing
neighborhoods full of voters that might like their
single-family home existence. Just because a
planner downtown put a map overlay on their
property showing a 30-unit “low rise” is possible,
doesn’t mean it will be built anytime soon. Those
units also show up as available on regional
housing plans.
It comes as no surprise then, the jurisdictions in
San Diego County are falling behind in housing
production. Despite all of the planning, or because
of it, the combined region would need to triple its
housing production each year through 2028 just
to catch up. In response, SB 827 was introduced
this year to further remove planning decisions
from local residents, and allow four to eight-story
buildings within certain distance to transit and bus
stops. While this bill may spur more infill, it could
also kill any local support for public transit within a
“certain distance” of ones on quaint single family
home neighborhoods.
Transportation –
And, on that note, transportation planning and
construction is undergoing a major change. There
has been a great push by public transportation
advocates to prioritize light rail and bike lanes
over new and improved roads. Their goals are
to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by forcing
new housing to be clustered around existing
transportation and new mass transit. Senate Bill
375 also waives major environmental rules for
mass transit projects, greatly tilting the scale away
from other modes of transportation. The change
is also impacting how these get funded with the
California legislature moving further away from
connecting funds to uses – but instead, uses
taxes and subsidies to encourage behavior. Mass
transportation advocates have been much better
organized than the solo drivers on the road, that
like to remain… solo… Policy makers and contractors should be looking
at technologies and transportation systems to
facilitate the preferences that consumers have
already expressed. So, while “Urbanist” and
mass transit advocates continue to push for
radical change from the “solo driver in an internal
combustion