Fashion Valley Scales Back, Olive Young Moves In, and an Era Ends at the SRO Lounge
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Simon Property Group, one of the country's largest mall operators, has revived its redevelopment plans for the JCPenney end of Fashion Valley — but with a residential footprint less than half the size of its 2024 concept. Representatives presented the revised plan to the Mission Valley Planning Group on Wednesday, November 4th. Where the earlier proposal called for 850 apartments, the new concept brings that figure down to 410 units in a five-story building near the Nordstrom parking garage. The plan also calls for demolishing the JCPenney building, a Firestone Tire building, and a vacant strip mall, then replacing them with four smaller two-story commercial buildings arranged around a courtyard, with a 10 percent affordable housing set-aside and residential parking at 1.5 spaces per unit.
The project still requires a Neighborhood Development Permit and a public hearing, and Simon representative Stephen Shea told the planning group it was too early to identify committed restaurant tenants. No JCPenney closure date has been established. The scale reduction from 850 to 410 units likely reflects neighborhood resistance and city feedback, but housing advocates note the direction runs counter to the city's own planning documents, which envision Mission Valley as a major housing corridor. A transit-adjacent site cutting its residential component nearly in half represents a meaningful step away from the density the region has identified as a priority.
In a genuinely new market-entry announcement, CJ Olive Young — the South Korean health and beauty retailer described as South Korea's answer to Ulta or CVS Beauty — announced November 9th that it plans to add five U.S. stores by the first half of 2027, expanding from two current U.S. locations to seven, with San Diego identified as one of the new markets. No San Diego street address, opening date, investment figure, or hiring count has been announced. The backdrop for both projects is an apartment rental market running effectively flat, with average county rents around $2,587 a month, up just over one percent year-over-year, while San Diego home prices are up 2.29 percent year-over-year as of August.
One closure deserves acknowledgment beyond a headline: the SRO Lounge, described by Times of San Diego as a longstanding safe haven for San Diego's transgender community, has closed after 44 years. Verified reporting confirms the closure but does not establish a final service date or the financial details behind it.