Harvey Mini
Hillcrest // Tallest mass timber building in Southern California taking shape
Nehemiah Buenaventura, Business Manager
The tallest mass timber building in Southern California is quietly taking shape in San Diego: not as a showpiece tower, but as a slim infill project stitched into an already dense neighborhood.
Known as Harvey Mini, the nine-story building sits on a corner lot between Harvey Milk Street and Centre Street. It reaches just over 96 feet, edging past Niima Outpost, which previously held the local height record for mass timber construction.
What makes the project feel almost improbable is its dimensions. The site, formerly occupied by a nondescript single family house, measures 140 feet wide by just 25 feet long—a sliver of land most developments would struggle to use at all. Yet within that narrow envelope, Harvey Mini fits 65 residential units stacked across nine floors. From the sidewalk, it reads less like a typical apartment building and more like a vertical seam in the block—a reminder of how much density can be tucked into overlooked urban parcels.
The project sits a short walk from the Normal Street Promenade, the under-construction linear park running through Hillcrest. Once complete, the promenade is expected to link public space, greenery, and pedestrian corridors through a part of the neighborhood historically shaped by transit lines and wide rights-of-way—adding a softer, slower layer to an otherwise tight urban grid.
At the moment, no official project visuals have been released. The only glimpse available is a photograph of the building mid-construction—raw timber structure exposed, rising floor by floor. The design team has been contacted for renderings, but for now, the real thing is doing the storytelling.
Harvey Mini joins a rapidly growing list of mass timber projects across California, where the material is starting to move beyond small buildings and into true mid- and high-rise territory. One of the most prominent examples is 1510 Webster in Oakland. The tower rises 19 stories, with 16 levels built from mass timber, reaching roughly 187 feet tall. The mixed-use project includes housing, offices, ground-floor commercial space, and shared amenities—all within a relatively compact footprint.
Seen in that larger context, Harvey Mini feels less like a novelty and more like part of a quiet shift. Instead of wide lots and sprawling podiums, these projects are experimenting with height, tight footprints, and alternative structural systems—finding new ways to insert housing into cities where space is scarce and land costs are high.
SOURCES:
https://www.instagram.com/p/DP4g6VZkk2t/
https://frereswood.com/project/tallest-mass-timber-building-on-the-west-coast-rises-to-the-occasion/