Walk down Normal Street on a Sunday morning and you will still find the same construction fencing that has lined the block for a year and a half. Behind it, the trees are taller than they were in spring. The concrete seat walls are poured. Somewhere under the pavement, city crews finally solved a hundred-year-old plumbing problem that used to flood the intersection every time it rained. None of it is open yet. All of it is already changing how people use the neighborhood around it.
That gap between what is finished and what is officially finished is the real story here. Hillcrest was promised a public square years ago, then handed a moving completion date that has slid from early 2026 to late 2026 to, depending on who you ask, sometime in 2027. Instead of waiting for a ribbon to be cut, the neighborhood built its actual routines around the fence line: a farmers market that quietly started performing better in its "temporary" spot, restaurants opening onto the construction zone as if it were already a finished plaza, and a 42-year-old street festival that closed down University Avenue this month like the future had already arrived.
Two Completion Dates, Three Weeks Apart
The Pride Promenade broke ground in February 2025 as a joint city and SANDAG project to convert the west side of Normal Street into a pedestrian corridor with a rainbow bike lane, a children's play area, and a restored trolley car serving as a concession stand. City officials at the groundbreaking put the price around $27.5 million and set a target of late 2026.
That target has not held steady. In late June 2026, Times of San Diego reported that full completion was now expected in 2027, citing the project's jump from an original $28 million estimate and the sheer scope of underground work still underway. Three weeks later, following a media walkthrough of the site, KPBS reported that Hillcrest Business Association executive director Ben Nicholls expected the promenade "complete by the end of this year." Both statements came from people close to the project within a single month. Neither has been walked back publicly since.
Nicholls has been candid about why the timeline keeps moving. "It's never going to be convenient to dig up blocks and blocks of the neighborhood," he told Times of San Diego in February 2026, adding that most Hillcrest residents and business owners "see the horizon" even as the process drags. The horizon, for now, still doesn't have a fixed arrival time.
What's Already Done, Even Though the Plaza Isn't
The reason the deadline keeps slipping is buried, literally. Hillcrest's storm drains under Normal Street and University Avenue were never connected to the rest of the city's system, which is why that intersection has flooded for decades during heavy rain, a problem locals nicknamed "Lake Hillcrest." Crews spent most of the past year widening those drain inlets and tying them into the citywide network, work that a July 2026 site tour confirmed is now finished. The visible parts came faster: contractor Griffith Company has planted 98 trees along the corridor, well on the way to the roughly 115 originally announced, and installed shade structures, historic-style lampposts, and open concrete seating modeled on North Park Mini Park and Piazza della Famiglia in Little Italy.
That seating choice is worth noticing on its own. Planners skipped the divided, slanted benches that show up in most new public spaces built to discourage lingering. Normal Street Promenade is doing the opposite, with wide seat walls around the new trees and no armrests breaking them up. It is a small design decision that says something about who the space is meant to serve.
The "Temporary" Farmers Market Is Outperforming the Plan
While the promenade waits on its own construction, the market that was supposed to move there once it opened has been running out of a parking-lot-adjacent stretch of University Avenue since January 2025, between Herbert Street and Park Boulevard. It was framed as a stopgap. It has not behaved like one.
Nicholls told Times of San Diego in February 2026 that attendance has grown, sales are up, and more vendors have joined since the move, crediting the wider footprint on University Avenue over the market's old, narrower home. The market still runs every Sunday from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m., rain or shine, with more than 175 vendors selling produce, prepared international food, flowers, and crafts. If you're looking for it, map to 1601 University Avenue rather than the Normal Street address that still shows up in older directories. Free parking is available at the DMV lot on Normal and Lincoln, along the streets south of University near Robinson Avenue, and at the post office lot on Cleveland Street.
The market's success in its supposedly temporary spot complicates the entire premise of the project. The promenade was designed in part to give the market a permanent home. The market didn't wait around to find out if that home would be better. It just started performing where it already was.
The Businesses That Didn't Wait Either
Not every business near the construction has had it easy. Hillcrest Brewing Company managing partner Joey Arruda told Times of San Diego his business dropped 20 percent last year, and Cellar Hand, in the same corner plaza off University and Normal, estimated a 25 to 30 percent revenue hit from the construction. Both have adapted rather than retreated. Arruda got city approval to extend his patio 15 feet and started a Wednesday two-for-one spaghetti special to bring people back. Cellar Hand has kept its rotating farm-to-table menu running through water outages and torn-up sidewalks out front.
A few blocks away, other operators are treating the same disruption as background noise rather than a reason to hold off. Origen, a coastal Mexican restaurant from Franco Mestre and Sebastian Berho, opened in March 2026 at 3831 Park Boulevard in the former XOXO Retro Neighborhood Diner space. Trust, a wood-fired New American spot at 3752 Park Boulevard, has picked up an Eater San Diego award for Best Neighborhood Trailblazer along with San Diego Magazine honors for Best Brunch, Best Service, and Best New Restaurant. And Saigon Alley Kitchen & Bar, the newest concept from the family behind Pho Ca Dao Vietnamese Kitchen, opened toward the end of July 2026 at 3687 5th Avenue, taking over the former Two Seven Eight and Tractor Room space with a menu that blends Pho Ca Dao's classic dishes with new Asian fusion plates and a full bar. None of these openings waited for construction fencing to come down first.
The Bill Nobody Mentions at the Ribbon Cutting
There's a detail about the promenade's future that hasn't gotten much attention outside of a July 2026 design walkthrough: once it's finished, running it will not be free. The city built the space, but maintaining it falls to the Hillcrest Business Association, which Nicholls has estimated will cost somewhere between $500,000 and $600,000 a year depending on which conversation you catch him in. There was no funding built in for public restrooms either. Portable trailers will be available, but as a cost that event organizers using the plaza will have to cover themselves.
That's a real shift from how the space has functioned informally for years, when using the block for a rally or a festival meant pulling a city traffic permit and closing the street. Once the promenade opens, hosting an event there should actually be cheaper for organizers, since the new configuration removes the need for police-managed road closures. The HBA is counting on that lower barrier, plus fundraising and bricks sold at Pride Plaza in the LGBTQ+ community's name, to cover the annual bill.
CityFest Already Acted Like the Plaza Was Real
Nothing made the gap between "under construction" and "already central to neighborhood life" clearer than this year's CityFest. The 42nd edition ran Sunday, August 9, from noon to 11 p.m., stretching seven city blocks from University Avenue under the Hillcrest sign down 5th Avenue to Pennsylvania Avenue. According to the Hillcrest Business Association, this year's free, all-ages festival drew an estimated 70,000 people, more than four times the neighborhood's population of roughly 16,000. University Avenue closed for the day specifically to mark the unveiling of a new Hillcrest sign, and organizers added a Mural Alley wine garden for the first time, with $10 to $40 tasting tickets redeemable at booths from Cork & Stem, Negociant Winery, and Pali Wine Co.
CityFest has run for more than four decades without needing a finished promenade to pull off a seven-block street party. This year's version, sitting a few hundred feet from active construction fencing, showed how much of what the plaza is supposed to deliver, a gathering space that draws people from across the region and anchors the neighborhood's identity, Hillcrest has already been generating on its own.
The promenade will eventually open. When it does, it will formalize something that's already true: Hillcrest didn't need a finished plaza to act like a neighborhood built around one. The market found its footing on University Avenue before anyone moved it back. The restaurants opened around the fencing instead of behind it. The festival closed the street it needed regardless of what was or wasn't done a block away.
If you're weighing whether now is the right moment to buy, sell, or simply understand what a specific Hillcrest block is actually like to live on, that's the kind of on-the-ground read that doesn't show up in a listing description. Trinton Hurt works this market block by block, including the ones still behind construction fencing. Let's Connect if you want a conversation grounded in what's actually happening here, not what a press release said it would look like.
