Decaying parks across San Diego could soon get major upgrades funded by volunteers and private supporters under a new collaboration model that aims to prevent bureaucracy from scuttling public-private partnerships.
Volunteers in La Jolla who successfully fought through city bureaucracy and raised private money for key projects say their efforts can become a citywide model. And they’ve created a website to show other neighborhoods how.
City Council President Joe LaCava is enthusiastically endorsing the idea and plans to propose this fall a new policy to slash through bureaucracy so that groups in other neighborhoods will have an easier time than in La Jolla.
Volunteers in Sunset Cliffs are already embracing the new model, hoping it will help them tackle crucial anti-erosion projects that have become more time-sensitive with heavy El Niño rains predicted this winter.
The new model and proposed new policy come as San Diego’s parks face a steadily growing backlog of needed upgrades and maintenance projects that the cash-strapped city simply can’t afford.
Many city parks were created during the city’s building boom of the 1960s and 1970s, making the structures in them well past the end of their roughly 50-year lifespans.
Some concerns have been raised that relying on private donations from residents will create an uneven playing field, where parks in wealthier areas get more upgrades than in lower-income areas.
But local volunteers and city officials say San Diego’s policy funneling developer fees into low-income areas will prevent that. They also note that many donors to coastal groups live elsewhere in the city.
Seeing broken swing sets and disintegrating fences in neighborhood parks often prompts nearby residents to offer their time and money to help — but those offers often get abandoned because of bureaucracy, officials say.
“I’ve seen too many examples where somebody was interested and got so discouraged by the red tape and the bureaucracy that they just threw up their hands and went away,” LaCava said.
The city requires multiple types of permits depending on the project, and volunteer groups often must get sign-off from several city departments: parks, development services, transportation or economic development.
That’s a daunting process — but La Jolla community leader Brenda Fake fought through it, because she was determined to use money from private donors to upgrade La Jolla’s Coast Walk Trail despite obstacles.
She patiently learned the process, suffered through some trial and error, got help from a particularly patient and friendly bureaucrat, secured the needed permits and got to work raising money.
La Jolla’s Coast Walk Bridge on Friday, May 29, 2026. (Luke Johnson / The San Diego Union-Tribune)
Since she began her efforts in 2010, her organization has evolved from the small Friends of Coast Walk into the much larger La Jolla Coastal Conservancy, and has raised more than $1.2 million.
The group has also completed dozens of projects, including upgrades to the Coast Walk bridge and the South Case Beach staircase, a new fence at Whale View Point and volunteer weeding efforts that removed 16 tons of weeds just this year.
And they have $5 million in capital projects they are planning to complete in the next three to five years.
“It is doable and repeatable,” Fake said. “It’s not as bureaucratic as it seems. The city makes it relatively easy, but you’ve got to do what you said you would do and then follow up.”
Fake said there are also some delays waiting for post-work city inspections, but that they always eventually happen.
“This model can be done anywhere,” she said. “It can be just a slide getting fixed. This is a clever way the city can close some of these deferred maintenance gaps.”
Fake’s group recently posted online what it calls a white paper describing how they overcame city bureaucracy, and how other neighborhoods can follow suit.
Called “Stewardship by Design,” the website offers a step-by-step explainer with more context than any fledgling volunteer group could hope for.
It contends that naming rights on projects is a good idea, but that raising money by allowing private concessionaires into a park is a bad one.
It also explains the crucial role that momentum can play.
“A repaired fence, a cleared trail, or a restored planting turn curious neighbors into supporters and skeptical city officials into partners,” the website says. “LJCC maintains an active project pipeline across all five of its permitted zones at all times, some immediate and visible, others multi-phase capital efforts requiring years of planning. The credibility earned from the former makes the latter possible.”
Patrick Hadley, the patient and friendly city bureaucrat whom Fake credits with much of her success, agrees with her about momentum.
“As that group started getting some momentum and started doing some projects, people started noticing things getting done,” Hadley said.
And he’s there to help.
“It’s about taking groups that really want to do well in their community and trying to get them navigated through the bureaucracy and get some eyes on the improvements they are doing out there,” he said.
La Jolla’s Coast Walk Bridge on Friday, May 29, 2026, in La Jolla. (Luke Johnson / The San Diego Union-Tribune)
Hadley conceded that the process facing neighborhood groups — especially groups with limited experience dealing with cities and government — is not easy.
“This permitting system is complex — it’s intimidating,” Hadley said.
But city officials are trying to help, he said. “There’s a willingness and a push from leadership to make it more accessible.”
Hadley is trying to do that as a city liaison for parks groups on the coast.
“It’s about finding a hub where you can link up all those experts in the city, so Brenda is not dealing with Development Services and then dealing with Economic Development and then on another project with Parks and Rec and Transportation,” he said.
City officials say they hope to soon have liaisons for parks groups in other parts of the city.
LaCava, who was a prominent neighborhood leader for many years before he was elected to the council in 2020, wants to make things easier with a policy he plans to propose to the City Council’s Rules Committee this fall.
“The policy will outline a process that directs city staff to say, ‘If we have private money, we should cooperate with them and help them understand our process and encourage this kind of thing,’” LaCava said. “There has to be a better way.”
LaCava stressed that the new policy won’t soften any rules or retreat from any city standards.
“The policy kind of gives a guidebook,” said LaCava, praising Mayor Todd Gloria and his department heads for showing enthusiasm instead of resistance to LaCava’s ideas. “It’s several pages of basically saying, ‘Work with these people.’”
LaCava said it’s particularly crucial for San Diego, with a nearly $8 billion backlog of infrastructure projects, to take any private money it can get for upgrades.
“Why wouldn’t we want to encourage this, when we know we can’t do everything ourselves?” he said.
A volunteer group called Friends of Sunset Cliffs is embracing Fake’s blueprint as it tries to preserve the vulnerable cliffs and other standout features of Sunset Cliffs Natural Park in Point Loma.
“We toured what Brenda has done and we were terribly impressed,” said Leon Scales, treasurer for Friends of Sunset Cliffs and chair of the Sunset Cliffs Natural Park Council.
He said private money is absolutely essential to accomplishing all the upgrades envisioned for Sunset Cliffs in the city’s parks master plan. And he said those upgrades are urgent.
Sunset Cliffs is quickly becoming a much more popular destination for tourists and local residents. And the heavy El Niño rains predicted for this winter could be a big problem for cliffs that are vulnerable to erosion.
Friends of Sunset Cliffs gather at Sunset Cliffs on Wednesday, Sept. 2, 2026, in San Diego. (Luke Johnson / The San Diego Union-Tribune)
The group also would like to revamp the park entrance off Adair Street, where there is only a run-down kiosk. And they’d like to add benches for lectures.
Scales noted that the city can provide more than just permitting help. He said city officials can also provide needed expertise to the volunteer groups about such things as soil erosion and cliff stabilization.
Fake’s model for collaboration can work alongside other more formal city models for public-private partnerships like the Mission Trails Regional Park Foundation, Forever Balboa Park and San Diego Canyonlands, said Andy Field, the city’s parks director.
Field said he’s not worried about low-income areas suffering from more private money being spent on park upgrades.
“The parks master plan reminds us we have an inequitable parks system and tells us we need to invest more in historically underserved communities,” he said.
In addition, the 7-year-old San Diego Parks Foundation is focused almost entirely on low-income areas, funding many projects and programming there like Parks After Dark.
LaCava noted that San Diego Canyonlands is focused on making creeks that run through older, lower-income neighborhoods in the southern part of the city more of a community asset.
Fake acknowledged income concerns are worth discussing.
“There’s no doubt La Jolla has more resources for donations,” she said. “But we get just $10 from lots of people, and we get many, many donations from outside of La Jolla.”
Fake’s website explains why private contributions are so crucial to the future of San Diego’s parks.
“Residents notice when the fences lean, when the stairs crack and when the invasive plants reclaim a hillside,” the site says.