Conceived by Los Angeles–based developer JPI and designed by Carrier Johnson + CULTURE, Jefferson Pacific Beach, a mixed-use bay-front community in San Diego, has broken ground. Promoted as “a new gateway to [the city's] Mission Bay,” the 3-acre property, formerly home to a Cadillac dealership, will be transformed into a three-level complex with 172 luxury apartments and 14,000 square feet of ground retail and office space in what JPI calls an “innovative, leading-edge design.”

Jefferson Pacific Beach is directly adjacent to San Diego’s popular Mission Bay Park, the largest aquatic park of its kind in the U.S. In addition to its bay-front views, the development will afford easy access to the park’s 27 miles of shoreline as well as aquatic sports storage and a surf-repair station.

Developed from the 1940s to the 1960s, Mission Bay Park comprises over 4,600 acres of land and water, with miles of sandy beach, eight designated swimming areas, and an estimated 15 million visitors annually.

Jefferson Pacific Beach will also include implementation of an “adaptive traffic signalization” system along the bustling Mission Bay Drive corridor, to streamline the flow of traffic.

The project comes as a welcome development to the area, says San Diego City Council member Lorie Zampf. “Jefferson Pacific Beach will be the catalyst for great improvements to the Mission Bay corridor," she says. "I look forward to watching this project … offer much-needed housing in Pacific Beach.”

The construction loan for Jefferson Pacific Beach was provided by Los Angeles real estate finance and investment management firm PCCP.