101 Ash Street Conversion
07.02.2026 // A vacant downtown office tower’s future comes into light
Grey Crawford, Contributing Writer
101 Ash Street is a vacant office building in downtown San Diego planned for conversion into a residential tower. It was first built in 1967, and used as an office tower by Sempra Energy until 2015.
In 2016, San Diego mayor Kevin Faulconer acquired the building for the City of San Diego to use as office space under a 20-year lease-to-own agreement. When city employees began moving into the 101 Ash building following the 2017 lease-to-own deal, it was discovered that the property was unsafe for human occupation due to asbestos. The building has now not been in use since January 2020, creating a flurry of litigation and an intense political flashpoint. After lawsuits, the city agreed to buy the building outright, furthering a substantial burden on the city’s budget for years.
The City of San Diego advanced a plan to convert the vacant office tower into 247 affordable homes (studio, one-, two-, and three-bedroom apartments), targeting households earning between 30% and 80% of the area median income (AMI). The city is providing a 60 year ground lease to the developer, 101 Ash Venture LP, a limited partnership between MRK Partners and Create Dev LLC. The city will loan the value of the building at 4% interest to finance the project and will receive $15,000 per year in base rent in addition to loan repayments.
As of June 2026, the redevelopment team is working to close a roughly $8 million gap in remaining project financing due to tax credit policy changes, delaying the closing of the project deal until Fall 2026.
Sources:
https://www.sandiego.gov/sites/default/files/2025-07/2025-7-29-101-ash-st-affordable-housing.pdf
https://www.sandiego.gov/economic-development/real-estate/101-ash