"Our lowest numbers are like $300, $400 in revenue a day," Titus Sowe, an area manager at Mostra Coffee, told NBC 7 this summer, describing the slow stretches since construction tore up the block. Not long before that, he said, an ordinary day at that same address had routinely brought in something closer to $3,000. Mostra sits a few doors down from what has been, for the better part of a year and a half, the biggest active construction zone in central San Diego: the Pride Promenade on Normal Street.
If you live in Hillcrest, you already know the fencing, the dust, and the detour signs. What you may not know is how far off the actual finish line still sits, or why the trees going in this summer don't mean what they look like they mean.
A Market That Keeps Almost Coming Home
The Hillcrest Farmers Market left Normal Street on January 26, 2025, moving a few blocks over to University Avenue between Herbert Street and Park Boulevard so crews could start tearing up its old home. The market's own messaging at the time framed it as a short detour on the way to "a more beautiful, vibrant, welcoming forever home." A CBS 8 report from the move described a project expected to wrap "in early 2026," which would have put the market back on Normal Street by now.
It hasn't happened. The City of San Diego's own event calendar still lists the market at its University Avenue address for this past Sunday, August 9, and the roughly 175 to 180 vendors who show up rain or shine from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. are still setting up there, not on Normal Street. If you've been waiting for the "forever home" to open before you plan your Sunday, you're going to be waiting through at least one more holiday season.
That delay is worth understanding, because the story of why the date keeps moving tells you more about the neighborhood's near future than any single headline has.
The Dates That Kept Moving
Since the city broke ground in February 2025, officials have given the public several different finish lines. Here's how the promise has shifted over eighteen months:
| When it was said | What officials said | Reported by |
|---|---|---|
| February 2025 (groundbreaking) | Completion expected "late 2026" | City of San Diego / SANDAG announcement |
| June 28, 2026 | "Earliest anticipated completion date is September" | NBC 7 San Diego |
| June 30, 2026 | Completion pushed back to "2027" | Times of San Diego |
| July 8, 2026 | "Late 2026 or slightly after, in early 2027" | 10News / KGTV |
| July 21-22, 2026 | Underground work finished; first park segment could open "by the end of the year" | KPBS, following a site tour |
Read in order, that's a project that looked like it might miss Pride 2026 by a matter of weeks, then looked like it might slip into 2027 entirely, then quietly stabilized back toward "end of this year" once reporters got an actual tour of the site in late July. That whiplash isn't spin. It reflects something specific that changed underground, literally, a few weeks ago.
The Signal That Actually Matters
Here's the part that explains everything else: the surface work on Normal Street, the trees, the lighting, the mosaic, has looked close to finished for months. That visible progress is misleading, because it was never the bottleneck.
"It definitely takes a lot longer to do the underground than the surface improvements," Brad Olson, an area manager for the project's contractor, Griffith Company, said during the July tour. Crews found decades-old streetcar infrastructure and water lines that weren't on any city map once they started digging, which is a large part of why a project pitched as an 18-month job now looks set to take closer to two years. Brittany Bailey, who manages the project for Mayor Todd Gloria's office, said the underground fix corrects old piping that never properly connected storm drains under University Avenue to those under Normal Street, the same disconnect blamed for chronic flooding at that intersection.
That underground work is now done. It's the reason the July estimates read more confidently than the ones from June. If you want a reliable way to track this project instead of reacting to whichever headline crosses your feed, watch for updates about the surface finish work, not the underground story, because that chapter has closed.
What's Physically Finished Right Now
Walking or biking past the site today, here's what's actually in the ground:
- About 100 of the roughly 115 trees the final design calls for, according to the July site tour
- The lithomosaic beneath the Pride flag at Pride Plaza, largely complete
- Custom light poles with banner stanchions, flower basket mounts, and built-in speakers for the promenade's sound system
- Shade structures over the seating and cornhole areas, plus a fully enclosed canopy over the future children's playground that Bailey said lowers the temperature underneath it by about 10 degrees
- The rainbow-painted bike lane segment, which will eventually link existing lanes on University Avenue to Howard Street
Once complete, Normal Street will reopen to car traffic with just two lanes total, a deliberate trade that the city says nets the neighborhood more than a dozen new parking spaces once the promenade's dedicated lots come online.
Who Pays For It After the Ribbon Cutting
The promenade itself carries a price tag of close to $28 million, split between the City of San Diego and SANDAG. What happens after the ribbon cutting is its own open question. Running the finished space is expected to cost around $600,000 a year, and that bill won't fall to the city.
"The city is like, 'Okay, we'll build your park, but you've got to maintain it,'" Benjamin Nicholls, executive director of the Hillcrest Business Association, said. Three student teams from the University of San Diego's Knauss Business School have already been brought in to pitch funding models, and the HBA has started selling a membership program along with individual bricks for Pride Plaza to cover ongoing costs. If you're a Hillcrest resident who ends up asked to chip in for a paver or a membership at some point this year, that's the reason.
Finding Your Market and Supporting the Block This Fall
Until the handoff happens, here's what stays the same and what's worth knowing if you're planning a Sunday:
The market's University Avenue footprint has actually grown a bit while it's been temporary, now stretching to include Center Street between University and Harvey Milk, plus a stretch just south of University near the lot at 1717 University Ave. Free parking is available at the DMV lot at Normal and Lincoln, at the post office lot on Cleveland Street, and on residential streets off Robinson Avenue.
A handful of businesses closest to the active construction zone have taken the brunt of the disruption. Sowe's Mostra Coffee is one. Erran Andrews, a contractor at nearby Salon Symmetry, told NBC 7 his client list had dropped from around 40 to about 15 during the worst stretches, prompting him to pick up a second job. Not every business on the block has struggled the same way. Cellar Hand, right at Pride Plaza's corner, opened early for Pride weekend brunch this July and paired with neighboring Hillcrest Brewing Company for a post-parade party, treating the construction-adjacent plaza as a destination rather than an obstacle.
If your Sunday routine already runs through University Avenue for the market, a short walk in either direction covers most of what's been affected. It's a good season to make that walk a habit rather than an occasional stop, both for the vendors who followed the market to its temporary spot and for the storefronts riding out construction a block away.
For a broader sense of how Hillcrest's daily errands work without a car, our walkable Hillcrest guide covers the rest of the neighborhood's routine. And if you want the full picture of the neighborhood beyond this one project, our Hillcrest neighborhood guide is a good starting point.
The most useful thing to take from all of this: don't set your calendar by the next press release about Normal Street. Set it by whether the surface work, the part that's visibly almost done, actually gets finished. Based on where things stood in late July, that's a fall and winter story, not a next-year one.
Emerson Group pays attention to this kind of ground-level change because it shapes how Hillcrest actually lives day to day, not just what shows up in a listing photo. If you're curious about the neighborhood beyond the farmers market, or thinking ahead to what comes next for your own address here, reach out to Nick Emerson for a conversation.
