San Diego's long-stalled plan to remake nearly 500 acres of northeastern Mission Bay just cleared its biggest regulatory hurdle. The California Coastal Commission voted unanimously to approve the De Anza Natural plan on Friday, though only after requiring the city to make several changes, including rerouting a planned bike path away from marshland and relocating a nature center out of an area vulnerable to rising seas.
The vote caps more than two years of delay for a project that the San Diego City Council originally approved unanimously back in May 2024, according to The San Diego Union-Tribune.
Because the Coastal Commission certified the plan with modifications, San Diego's own rules now require the City Council to formally adopt those state-mandated changes before the Parks and Recreation Department can even start the General Development Plan process, according to the City of San Diego. That design phase, which includes public workshops to hammer out conceptual site plans and firm cost estimates, is still ahead. The Union-Tribune reports the full transformation of Mission Bay could take 20 to 30 years and cost as much as $1 billion.
What Changes at De Anza Point
The De Anza Natural plan covers roughly 500 acres in Mission Bay's northeast corner, an area that today includes the Mission Bay Golf Course, De Anza Cove, Campland on the Bay, the Kendall-Frost Marsh Reserve, Rose Creek, sports fields, a tennis complex, parking lots and beaches. Under the adopted plan, the site will eventually include 262 acres of habitat — 140 of it brand-new marsh — alongside 67 acres of recreation space, 49 acres of tent and RV camping, and 23 acres of parkland, per the Union-Tribune's reporting.
San Diego plans to cut through De Anza Point itself to create new dunes and marshland, with the principal marsh area generally located west of the Rose Creek outfall. Smaller marshes are proposed at the Tecolote Creek outfall and at East Shores, south of the visitor center. The city's Kelly Stanco said the adopted plan balances competing uses for the region's future.
Why the Coastal Commission Pushed Back
The commission's sign-off came with strings attached. Regulators required San Diego to redesign the cycling and pedestrian path so it no longer travels through wetlands, and to relocate a planned nature center out of zones exposed to rising seas. The city also had to build in regulatory language making the plan enforceable under the state Coastal Act, and to account for sea-level-rise risk affecting the tent-camping footprint. Andrew Meyer said the required changes support tidal wetlands, water quality, carbon sequestration, recreation and public access.
Not every advocacy push succeeded. The commission rejected some proposals from the ReWild coalition that sought stronger requirements guaranteeing marshland survival through the year 2100, along with firmer progress deadlines. The ReWild Mission Bay coalition, which includes more than 100 environmental and civic groups, had championed a “Wildest” alternative calling for 227 to 277 acres of restored tidal wetlands — well beyond the 140 new acres the city ultimately adopted.
A Bay Built From What It Used to Be
The scale of that gap becomes clearer against Mission Bay's history. The bay was once a 4,000-acre estuarine marshland complex before post-World War II dredging and filling in the late 1940s and 1950s turned it into the man-made aquatic park it is today, according to the UC San Diego Guardian. What survived that transformation is preserved today within the 40-acre Kendall-Frost Marsh complex — a 16-acre University of California Natural Reserve System site established in 1965, plus an adjacent 24-acre city-owned preserve, per the UC San Diego Natural Reserve System.
The land at De Anza Point carries its own recent history of conflict. The project footprint once held a 76-acre mobile home park on public tidelands, where 169 abandoned mobile homes were removed under a Coastal Commission permit approved in July 2022, according to Mission Bay For All. The De Anza Natural planning effort was also undertaken in part to satisfy a settlement tied to an enforcement action by the San Diego Regional Water Quality Control Board, reflecting long-standing water-quality problems in northeastern Mission Bay tied to urban runoff and Rose Creek discharges.
The Climate and Economic Case
City officials and advocates frame the wetlands expansion as central to climate resilience, since marshes capture carbon and buffer low-lying shorelines against sea-level rise. San Diego's updated Climate Action Plan sets a citywide target of restoring 700 acres of tidal wetlands by 2035, a goal the ReWild coalition has cited in pushing for a larger Mission Bay footprint.
The economic case is also on the table. A 2023 socioeconomic valuation led by researchers at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography estimated that restoring 227 acres of wetlands in northern Mission Bay would generate more than $1.6 million a year in economic value, driven by carbon storage and nursery habitat for commercial fisheries.
With state approval now in hand, the Coastal Commission's action allows San Diego to begin applying for the state and federal grants that will be needed to actually build the project. Implementation will also require sign-off from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the California Department of Fish and Wildlife before shovels can move on what officials describe as one of the most significant coastal restoration efforts in the region's history.
