San Diego halts Pacific Beach’s proposed 23-story Vela tower over disputed hotel-versus-housing unit classification

City review stops on Project Vela pending corrections

San Diego has halted approval of a proposed 23-story tower in North Pacific Beach after city planners concluded the application, as currently submitted, lacks necessary information and contains inconsistencies that prevent a full code-compliance review.

The project, known as Vela and sometimes referred to by opponents as the “Turquoise Tower,” is proposed for 970 Turquoise St. on a roughly 0.8-acre site in an area characterized largely by lower-scale residential development. The plan describes a mixed-use building with 213 total units, including a combination of hotel rooms and residential apartments. The proposal also includes 10 deed-restricted affordable units.

The core dispute: what the units are, and which rules apply

City officials have centered their objection on how the project classifies and counts units between visitor accommodations and housing. The city’s position is that a project cannot treat units as hotel rooms for one purpose and as apartments for another, because the classification determines which standards and calculations apply under local regulations and state housing law.

In the city’s review, the plans have contained conflicting information about which units are residential versus commercial/visitor-serving. City staff also identified problems in the project’s floor-area-ratio statements, and said the inconsistencies have impeded evaluation of requested incentives, waivers, and other development standards that may be sought under California’s Density Bonus Law.

How density bonus rules intersect with mixed-use proposals

California’s Density Bonus Law provides a framework that can allow housing developments offering specified levels of affordable units to receive additional density and, in certain cases, concessions or waivers from local development standards. The law also includes provisions addressing whether local jurisdictions are required to grant concessions or waivers to hotel or transient-lodging components within mixed-use projects, with specific exceptions such as “residential hotels” under state definitions.

In practice, the city must determine what portion of a mixed-use proposal is residential housing versus transient lodging to apply the correct legal standards and to determine what benefits, if any, are available under state law.

Developer’s next steps and the timing conflict

The developer, Kalonymus, may revise the application to address the city’s corrections and resubmit for continued review. Separately, the developer has argued the project should be treated as “automatically approved” based on state timelines intended to speed housing permitting, asserting that the city did not act within required deadlines.

City officials dispute that characterization and have pointed to multiple rounds of submissions that they say were incomplete or contained errors, requiring additional cycles of correction and review.

Key facts about the Vela proposal

• Location: 970 Turquoise St., North Pacific Beach
• Scale: 23-story tower proposed
• Program: 213 total units described as a mix of housing and hotel rooms, including 10 affordable housing units
• Status: City approval halted pending corrected and consistent plans

The city’s current determination does not cancel the project; it pauses approval until the application is made internally consistent and reviewable under the applicable standards.