San Diego's Tallest Buildings

Newest San Diego residential towers rival city's tallest buildings

Courtesy of the UT  
Phillip Molnar

An entire city block in downtown San Diego off Broadway is now a massive hole that echos with the sound of grinding gears.

Rising at least 15 stories out of the ground is a massive crane that is the only real indication that something big is coming at the fenced-off site.

Canadian-based Bosa Development is constructing a roughly 490-foot tall apartment building that will eventually join a group of the city’s tallest buildings, which include One America Plaza, Symphony Towers, Manchester Grand Hyatt Hotel and Pinnacle on the Park.

Since 2003, downtown’s changing skyline has been led by the construction of high-rise residential buildings — reversing the trend of mainly office buildings reaching new heights in the early 1990s — and increased in earnest since the end of the Great Recession. 

Rachel Parsons, first vice president of CBRE for capital markets and multifamily, said the trend began modestly in 2014 with the construction of the six-story Broadstone Little Italy. She said that was the first project coming out of the recession that really opened everyone’s eyes to what was possible with high rents. Today, rents there are still some of the highest in the region, averaging $3,308 a month.

“It became the high water mark for best in class for multifamily apartments,” she said. “They achieved the highest rents per square foot that we had ever seen at that point.”

From there, developers started pushing ahead with a litany of new rental projects, including Broadstone Balboa Park (completed in 2015), Pinnacle on the Park (2016), The Rey (2017) and Park 12 (this summer).

Parsons said high-rise buildings are the most expensive to build, with their mix of steel, concrete and glass, so construction is based on where developers think they can get the highest rents. At the same time as developers were beginning to realize higher rents were possible, downtown planning agency Civic San Diego began pursuing higher density projects as a way to fulfill the city’s growing housing needs.

For example, original plans for downtown’s newest high-rise Shift called for a five-story building. Based on guidance from the planning agency for higher density, it eventually morphed into a 21-story building with an orange 240-foot tower on its side.

Vancouver, British Columbia-based Bosa Development has led the charge in new residential construction. It is set to finish Savina condo tower (414 feet) on Kettner Boulevard in spring 2019 and recently completed the Pacific Gate condo tower (450 feet) on E Street.

President Nat Bosa said it just makes sense to build taller if a developer has the funds.

“There is a lot of density on these buildings,” he said, “and you can spread it out among more floors and you get a better unit.”

Downtown’s skyline is capped at 500 feet because of the airport, limiting heights reached in Los Angeles and other major cities.

San Diego has many hills that can complicate arguments about how tall buildings are. One America Plaza on Broadway is the tallest building in the city at 500 feet, followed by Symphony Towers on B Street at 499 feet. However, Symphony Towers was built on land that is about 70 feet above sea level, so it technically is only 429 feet from the ground.

Regardless, most skyscraper buffs — and airline officials — focus on what is often called pinnacle height, which is how high a building is in the air.

The third tallest tower in the city is the Manchester Grand Hyatt San Diego’s Harbor Tower at 495.8 feet. The next is Pinnacle on the Park apartment building in East Village that reaches 479 feet.

Government agencies rarely keep a record of how tall buildings are, instead just making sure during the approval process that building heights don’t interfere with airplane traffic. The San Diego Fire-Rescue Department records the number of the stories in a building and multiples that figure by 10 feet to get an approximate height.

However, a German-based company called Emporis maintains a database of the tallest buildings in most cities and much of the information for this article comes from their records.

Parsons said construction on high-rise towers may slow down after the current crop of new buildings are completed because of rent stabilization, as well as increasing costs of materials and labor.

A growing world

It is an exciting time to be alive for skyscraper aficionados with several towers in the Middle East and China reaching baffling heights.

The tallest building in history is under construction in Saudi Arabia. The planned Jeddah Tower will be 3,281 feet tall and is scheduled to be completed in 2020. For context, the building is about 6 ½ Symphony Towers stacked on top of each other.

Jeddah Tower will unseat Dubai’s Burj Khalifa, the current tallest building in the world at 2,717 feet. The other tallest towers are Shanghai Tower in China at 2,073 feet, Makkah Clock Royal Tower in Saudi Arabia at 1,918 feet and Ping An International Finance Center in China at 1,965 feet.

The tallest building in the United States is the One World Trade Center in New York at 1,776 feet and the tallest in Mexico is Torre KOI in San Pedro Garza Garcia (near Monterrey) at 920 feet.

San Diego County’s tallest buildings

1. One America Plaza, 500 feet

2. Symphony Towers, 499 feet

3. Manchester Grand Hyatt Hotel, 495.8 feet

4. Pinnacle on the Park, 479 feet

5. Manchester Grand Hyatt Seaport, 476.1 feet

6. Electra, 476 feet

7. (tie) Emerald Plaza, 450 feet

8. (tie) Pinnacle Marina Tower, 450 feet

9. (tie) Pacific Gate, 450 feet

10. The Harbor Club West and East (Two towers, but same height), 424 feet