With San Diego Pride roughly two weeks away, businesses and residents in Hillcrest say they’re growing increasingly frustrated as construction on the long-awaited Pride Promenade continues with no clear end in sight.<\/p>\n
The nearly $28 million project is transforming Normal Street into a pedestrian-friendly promenade surrounding Hillcrest’s iconic Pride Flag. Construction began in January 2025<\/a> and was originally expected to take about 18 months, with work wrapping up in time for this year’s Pride celebrations.<\/p>\n Now, city officials say the earliest anticipated completion date is September, leaving many who live and work along Normal Street wondering how much longer they’ll have to wait.<\/p>\n For Fernando Mesto, who has lived on Normal Street for the past six years, the project has become part of his daily routine \u2014 whether he likes it or not.<\/p>\n “It is affecting my sleep,” Mesto said. “I wake up at six in the morning every day to put in earplugs. It’s just automatic now for me.”<\/p>\n He said the near-constant construction noise has taken a toll.<\/p>\n “It’s just this constant floor drilling. It’s just out of control, really,” he said.<\/p>\n Mesto said he received emails suggesting construction would be finished before Pride but doesn’t believe that’s realistic.<\/p>\n “They said something about [there’s] supposed to be [a] deadline for Pride, but I don’t see it happening,” he said.<\/p>\n Despite his frustrations, Mesto said he’s looking forward to one simple milestone.<\/p>\n “I just can’t wait until they open the street so we can just be able to walk across the street,” he said.<\/p>\n Businesses report steep losses<\/p>\n Businesses along Normal Street say the prolonged construction has dramatically reduced customer traffic.<\/p>\n At Mostra Coffee, Area Manager Titus Sowe said sales have fallen sharply since construction began.<\/p>\n “Our lowest numbers are like $300, $400 in revenue a day,” Sowe said. “We used to do like $3,000 a day.”<\/p>\n He said dust, road closures and limited access have made it difficult to stay open and adequately staff the caf\u00e9.<\/p>\n “Depending on if it’s a day where they’re moving dirt or breaking concrete up, there would just be clouds of dust and we’d have to close the doors,” Sowe said.<\/p>\n The drop in revenue has also affected staffing.<\/p>\n “Not being able to have a location fully staffed is really hard,” he said.<\/p>\n Sowe said the business once benefited from commuters traveling along Normal Street.<\/p>\n “The highway’s right over there, so we’d get a ton of people coming through, stopping in, grabbing their coffee and cruising on to their job,” he said. “Not anymore.”<\/p>\n Although the city now estimates construction could finish as early as September, Sowe worries it could take even longer.<\/p>\n “I’m honestly worried that it’s not going to be done until next year,” he said.<\/p>\n Just down the street at Salon Symmetry, contractor Erran Andrews said he’s also seen business decline significantly.<\/p>\n “I have probably 15 clients now. I had about 40,” Andrews said.<\/p>\n He has since taken on a second job to compensate for that loss.<\/p>\n “Now I’m working two jobs,” Andrews said. “I’m working a second job just to kind of make ends meet.”<\/p>\n When asked whether the construction was directly responsible for losing clients, Andrews didn’t hesitate.<\/p>\n “Oh, yeah,” he said. “Because even people that I’ve worked with have lost clients.”<\/p>\n One of the salon owners, who declined an on-camera interview, told NBC 7 the construction has cost the business thousands of dollars in lost revenue because fewer customers are visiting the area.<\/p>\n Hope remains for the finished project<\/p>\n Despite months of disruptions, many residents and business owners said they still believe the completed Pride Promenade will ultimately benefit Hillcrest.<\/p>\n “I think it’s going to look really beautiful,” Andrews said. “But a lot of businesses have suffered because it took up all of our parking.”<\/p>\n Sowe agreed.<\/p>\n “Normal Street has needed a makeover for a long time,” he said.<\/p>\n He said he understands the project will eventually create a more vibrant neighborhood gathering place.<\/p>\n “There’s a lot of hope, and it’d be really cool to be a part of it,” Sowe said. “I just really want it to happen.”<\/p>\n The city of San Diego referred NBC 7 to a statement<\/a> from Mayor Todd Gloria from back in May, regarding some of the questions over funding and more details about the overall project. <\/p>\n NBC 7 also reached out to the Hillcrest Business Association<\/a>, San Diego Pride and SANDAG<\/a> for comment on the project’s delays but had not received responses by publication.<\/p>\n This story was originally reported for broadcast by NBC San Diego. AI tools helped convert the story to a digital article, and an NBC San Diego journalist edited the article for publication.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"With San Diego Pride roughly two weeks away, businesses and residents in Hillcrest say they’re growing increasingly frustrated…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":897575,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5134],"tags":[5229,1582,276,7720,9863,3549,3550,7264,67,586,132,5230,68,2969],"class_list":["post-897574","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-diego","tag-america","tag-ca","tag-california","tag-hillcrest","tag-pride-month","tag-san-diego","tag-san-diego-county","tag-sandiego","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-of-america","tag-unitedstates","tag-unitedstatesofamerica","tag-us","tag-usa"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/116824945926263322","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/897574","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=897574"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/897574\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/897575"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=897574"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=897574"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=897574"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}