Grand Opening for Horton Plaza Park; New Website Promises to Help Prevent Parking Tickets

Word on the Street

Horton Plaza Park unveils next week

After months of delays and financing issues, the $17 million overhaul of Horton Plaza is finally complete, and the city will unveil the new park to the public on Wednesday, May 4.

Spanning almost two acres in the heart of downtown, the plaza now has an amphitheater, interactive fountain, light sculptures that change color, and a mural by street artist Kelsey Montague (who can claim Taylor Swift as a big fan of her work). The plaza’s landmark fountain, built by Irving Gill in 1910, has been restored and will be turned on for the first time in almost a decade. There’s also free Wi-Fi, Sloan’s Ice Cream, Starbucks, and a ticket booth for the San Diego Performing Arts League.

Marking the grand opening is a party with two beer gardens, a DJ and performance artists, food trucks, and live music. Festivities start at 6:30 p.m.

The end of street sweeping parking tickets?

Leave your car parked overnight on a city street, and chances are you’ll be greeted with a $50 parking ticket on your windshield in the morning, usually thanks to street sweeping. For residents of Mission Beach and Uptown, the tickets are such a common occurrence it’s considered an added “tax” for living in these neighborhoods.

A programmer who moved to San Diego from Holland was tired of amassing these parking tickets, so he created Sweeping Alerts, a website that helps warns users when street sweeping is scheduled for their block. Log onto the site and enter your street and phone number, and you’ll receive a text alert the day before street sweeping is scheduled. Getting the text alerts is way easier than wading through the confusing street sweeping schedule posted on the city’s website.

Show goes on for Little Italy night club (for now)

Just months after making an entrance in Little Italy, Entrada Taqueria and Speakeasy became surrounded by controversy and litigation. The Reader has been following the saga of the new India Street nightlife spot and its Conditional Use Permit for live music, which was revoked by Civic San Diego because of noise complaints and later appealed—leading to Entrada’s owners filing a suit against the city. A public hearing on the fate of the club’s permit was originally scheduled for Wednesday, but has been moved to the end of May. In the meantime, Entrada’s permit is active and it’s hosting live music and an upcoming event for Cinco de Mayo.

SD: More bang for your buck?

We often talk about the high cost of living here in San Diego, but looking at rent and home prices in San Francisco, New York, and Honolulu can put things into perspective.

A new study echoes this sentiment and suggests San Diego should sell itself as a cheaper alternative to San Francisco and L.A., as a more practical reason (besides the weather) to convince people and companies to move here.

Put together by the Downtown San Diego Partnership and UCSD, the study is the first to examine the full scope of who’s living and working downtown, and the city’s growth potential. It found that rent in San Diego is 50 percent less expensive than in Santa Monica and San Francisco’s Mission District, and the median home price was 70 percent cheaper than these cities. On the commercial side, office space in this town is about 50 percent less.

The complete study should be posted online soon.

House Hunting

Here’s a few cool homes that were just put on the market. They’re all open this weekend, go take a look!

A cozy house and garden in Linda Vista. | Photo by Keller Williams Carmel Valley/Screenshot from Redfin

This three-bedroom, three-bath home in Linda Vista has nice backyard and patio. Priced at $569,000, it’s close to Mesa College and Tecolote Canyon. See it Saturday, April 30, at noon.

The brick exterior on this North Park home stands out in the neighborhood. | Photo by Coldwell Banker/ Screenshot from Redfin

Once you get over the price per square foot ($650K for 1,000 square feet?!), this little North Park bungalow is actually offering quite a lot for the money. Lots of outdoor space already landscaped, and plenty of upgrades inside (they did gut any remnants of the old built-in character, though). Yes, it seems 92104 is officially a $600K and up neighborhood, now.

See a home in Mission Hills that’s going for more than $2 million. | Photo by Coldwell Banker/ Screenshot from Redfin

This week’s dream listing is a $2.15 million home in Mission Hills. It has Colonial Revival architecture, five bedrooms, four bathrooms and spans more than 3,500 square feet. If that’s not enough space, there’s a studio over the three-car garage that has its own kitchenette and bathroom. See it on Sunday, May 1, at 1 p.m.