A San Diego hearing officer has approved plans for a roughly 70-foot seawall beneath a home on the 5300 block of Calumet Avenue in Bird Rock, clearing the way for a reinforced concrete barrier meant to stop a crumbling coastal bluff from swallowing the property. The decision, issued last Wednesday, allows the owner of 5360 Calumet Ave. to build a two-foot-thick shotcrete wall anchored into the rock face below the house, addressing what officials describe as a life-and-safety risk for the people who live there.
Hearing Officer Jeffrey Szymanski concluded the seawall was necessary, according to The San Diego Union-Tribune, which reported that the primary residence is susceptible to deformation and damage if the sensitive bluff slope beneath it fails. The property had a factor of safety of 1.16 when the project was brought forward in 2025 — a figure that measures a structure's stability and, per the paper's reporting, generally must drop below 1.2 before a jurisdiction will even consider emergency protective measures. A factor of safety of 1.0 might indicate a property has already failed or could fail overnight, while new construction near a bluff is required to reach 1.5, a level meant to keep a structure safe for 75 years without damaging the site.
The Union-Tribune, whose reporting anchors most of the record here, noted that the concrete deck separating the house from the bluff is nearing the edge itself, and that the San Diego Development Services Department did not state what the current factor of safety is for the property. The article was written by Ashley Mackin Solomon for the paper's La Jolla Light news section.
A Non-Emergency Filing Amid a Block of Emergencies
Unlike most of its neighbors, the 5360 Calumet project was processed as a non-emergency application in 2025, and city records show the case was first filed on August 21, 2024, as Project PRJ-1119583 on a 0.16-acre site zoned RS-1-7 in Council District 1, according to the City of San Diego. That stands in contrast to two other bluff-repair applications on the same block, which were fast-tracked as emergency repairs. A permit for emergency bluff repairs below 5322 Calumet was filed in March 2025, and a similar permit for 5316 Calumet followed three months later, in June 2025.
The 5360 Calumet seawall application is the third processed for the 5300 block of Calumet Street, underscoring how much of this stretch of Bird Rock coastline is now under some form of active repair or emergency review. A California Coastal Commission report from August 2025 found that erosion below the neighboring 5322 Calumet property had advanced to within eight feet of the primary residence there, pushing its factor of safety well below 1.2 and triggering the emergency permit, per the California Coastal Commission. The instability isn't new to this stretch, either: a San Diego Hearing Officer approved a separate Process Three permit back in February 2023 to infill a major bluff collapse beneath 5386 Calumet Avenue with erodible, textured concrete.
Patios Demolished as Erosion Outpaced Permits
The urgency on Calumet Avenue became visible to the public in April 2026, when escalating bluff erosion forced homeowners to demolish back patios after the ground beneath the outdoor structures began collapsing ahead of final seawall construction permits, as CBS 8 reported at the time. U.S. Geological Survey coastal assessments estimate that Southern California bluffs erode at an average rate of two to four inches per year, but major storm cycles can cause sudden, episodic collapse rather than steady wear, which helps explain why patios and decks can fail with little warning even as permits move slowly through the pipeline.
Engineering Details and Required Mitigation
The approved design calls for the wall to be hand-carved to match the color and texture of the surrounding bluffs, per the applicant team, and to contour to the existing bluff surfaces rather than simply flatten them. Shotcrete — concrete sprayed at high velocity onto a surface — will form the wall's two-foot-thick body, reinforced by 21 tieback anchors drilled into the rock face, according to lajolla.ca. The project does not change the house itself, and the seawall application requires that any sand or rocks removed from the beach below during construction be replenished, with the owner also required to pay a sand replenishment mitigation fee to the California Coastal Commission.
The La Jolla Development Permit Review Committee supported the seawall construction plans in July 2025, ahead of the hearing officer's formal decision. Applicant Bob Trettin, whose firm is carrying out the seawall project, said the work would comply with city noise requirements for construction projects and that the team would do its best to keep construction noise down. Project biologist Vincent Scheidt said the work would cause no net loss of beach.
Neighbors Raise Concerns, Engineer Flags Seismic Risk
Not everyone at the hearing was fully reassured. James Kinsey expressed concern about construction noise and potential impacts to the beach during the build. Separately, Mark Lopez said the current factor of safety is below what's adequate to withstand seismic activity for long-term or permanent structures, a warning that echoes the broader engineering logic behind the project: factor of safety tends to decrease as both structures and bluffs age, narrowing the margin before intervention becomes urgent.
The hearing officer's decision is final unless it is appealed to the city Planning Commission. Redfin data show the home at 5360 Calumet Ave. is a 2,061-square-foot house built in 1985 on a 7,300-square-foot lot that last sold in January 1997 for $925,000, with an estimated market value now between roughly $3.9 million and $5.3 million — a reminder of the financial stakes riding on the bluff beneath it.
Tighter Rules, Tougher Legal Questions Ahead
The case also sits at the center of a shifting regulatory landscape. San Diego Municipal Code Section 143.0143(f) has long mandated a baseline 40-foot setback from coastal bluff edges, but updated city guidelines that took effect July 1, 2026, increased total required setbacks to 63 to 64 feet, according to SD Cash Buyer. Because the 5360 Calumet home was built in 1985, it also faces a stricter legal standard than older properties: under Section 30235 of the California Coastal Act, shoreline armoring is legally mandated only to protect existing structures built before the law's 1977 enactment, or public beaches, a distinction that has fueled ongoing legal disputes over armoring homes built after 1976, per Nossaman LLP. For now, the approval gives the Calumet Avenue property owner a path forward — but it also adds one more data point to a block where the ground itself seems to be setting the timeline.
