When Latitude 33 talks about the project that changed everything, the conversation always comes back to the County Operations Center in Kearny Mesa. The sprawling, multi phase campus, finished at the end of 2025, pulled dozens of county services onto one site and delivered the kind of steady, long term work that helped the San Diego planning and engineering firm ride out the Great Recession years and push into new markets.
How One Job Kept a Small Firm Afloat
Matt Semic joined Latitude 33 in 2009 to lead planning, design and permitting for the county campus, a role that would eventually lead to his becoming the firm's president. Company leaders say the multi phase contract provided reliable revenue at a time when private development had largely hit the brakes, which let the firm keep people on payroll and quietly build capacity instead of shedding staff, as detailed by The Registry.
What the Kearny Mesa Campus Holds
The County Operations Center occupies roughly 47 acres at 5520 Overland Ave and was delivered as a public private partnership that teamed the county with developer Lowe and a large design build crew. Project materials describe a campus of LEED rated office buildings wrapped around a conference and campus center, with a public health lab and a sheriff technology and information center among the key pieces, according to Lowe.
The Scale And Price Tag
The numbers behind the site are what really underline its size. Industry reporting puts the footprint in the hundreds of thousands of square feet: four office buildings that total about 600,000 square feet, a 156,000 square foot regional crime lab and a 52,000 square foot public health lab. The San Diego Business Journal has also noted a 227,823 square foot garage built to serve the lab complex and other large buildings on site, and reports that the total project cost cleared the $1 billion mark. The San Diego Business Journal provided the reporting on those figures.
Off site Work, Big Local Payoff
The build did more than reshuffle county office space. It helped trigger an estimated $30 million to $50 million in off site infrastructure upgrades within about five miles of the campus, including widened streets, new traffic signals and ramp improvements tied to I 15 and State Route 52. County leaders framed those improvements as part of a broader strategy to centralize operations that the Board of Supervisors signed off on in the late 2000s, according to The Registry.
Latitude 33 Today
Founded in 1993, Latitude 33 lists its San Diego headquarters at 10731 Treena Street and notes that it has since pushed into other Western markets while taking on major civic, life science and infrastructure projects. The firm describes a steady climb in headcount, with staff at roughly 80 employees in 2026, up from fewer than 20 when work on the operations center kicked off, a growth arc executives directly tie to the long running county engagement, according to Latitude 33. The San Diego Business Journal has also chronicled the firm's regional expansion.
The campus has picked up design and sustainability awards over the years and now doubles as a civic front porch, hosting county meetings and services in its campus center in a pattern reflected in county scheduling and meeting records, according to the County Board docket. The Overland Avenue complex has effectively become a case study in long term public private collaboration and a go to reference point for how large civic projects get planned and delivered in San Diego, based on County Board docket listings.
