San Diego is dragging global engineering giant AECOM into court, accusing the firm of botching the design of a concrete channel under the Hazard Center Drive underpass in Mission Valley. City officials say early cracking and groundwater seepage in that channel could drive up maintenance bills and cut short the life of the long-awaited road connector.
City says AECOM downplayed the cracks
In a lawsuit filed this week, the city accuses AECOM of negligence and misrepresentation tied to its design of the Hazard Center Drive Westerly Extension. The complaint says the company played down red flags that surfaced during its own review of the work.
According to the city, AECOM wrapped up a two-year internal investigation by telling officials that what they were seeing was nothing to panic about. The suit quotes from the firm's report, which stated, "It is in the very nature of concrete that it cracks," and characterized the issues as shrinkage cracks that would not compromise the channel's integrity.
City lawyers say those reassurances do not match what an outside 2023 study later found. That independent review concluded the cracking pattern pointed to engineering problems rather than routine shrinkage, as reported by the Times of San Diego.
AECOM's ties to City Hall
AECOM has not been some bit player in San Diego's infrastructure world. The firm has held multiple consultant and task-order agreements with the city and has taken on planning and design duties for several local projects, according to public contract files.
Those agreements spell out who is responsible for investigation, monitoring and indemnity, terms the city now points to as it demands that AECOM pick up the tab for repairs and long-term upkeep tied to the cracked channel. The company's obligations are detailed in publicly available contract documents, according to City of San Diego records.
Decades-long project, messy backstory
The Hazard Center Drive westerly extension - the underpass meant to finally stitch together Hazard Center and Fashion Valley - has been in the works for decades, with more plot twists than some TV dramas. Reporting has traced the project back to redevelopment plans from the 1980s and documented how ownership changes, permitting questions and earlier lawsuits repeatedly stalled progress.
Environmental and engineering complications have kept the connector in limbo for years, a history that helps explain why new structural concerns have sparked such a fast legal reaction from City Hall, as reported by KPBS.
Legal claims and what is on the line
The city is asking a court to hold AECOM financially responsible for what it calls design defects in the project. The complaint seeks damages that would cover current problems, future maintenance and operational costs, and other losses that city officials say would otherwise land on taxpayers.
According to the filing, AECOM spent two years investigating the cracking and then tried to persuade the city that the flaws were simply expected behavior for concrete. The 2023 outside review, by contrast, allegedly found the cracking serious enough to warrant deeper engineering concern. If a judge agrees with the city's reading of that record, San Diego could recover both repair costs and ongoing monitoring expenses, as reported by the Times of San Diego.
What comes next
The fight now moves into the legal trenches, where technical experts are likely to play a starring role. The outcome will hinge on engineering reports, price tags for repairs and how a judge interprets AECOM's contractual duties under its city agreements.
If the court ultimately finds the design defective and signs off on the city's damages calculations, AECOM could be ordered to pay for the maintenance and operational costs described in the lawsuit. For readers who want to see the fine print themselves, the city's contract with AECOM is available in public records, per City of San Diego records.
