By Dave Schwab

The millennials are shaping our core

Millennials are taking over.

And that age group is driving what’s happening Downtown now and into the future, said Kris Michell, president/CEO of Downtown San Diego Partnership (DSDP), at a neighborhood mixer Oct. 20 celebrating Downtown’s newest exhibition, ReThink.

DSDP is a member-based nonprofit committed to creating a vital urban center benefiting all of San Diego.

Rethink Downtown is a major public exhibition, telling of San Diego’s urban development from its European-settler beginnings to its coming of age as a key American city.

The exhibit in the Rethink Gallery at 700 First Ave. is free to the public and reveals clues to the city’s next exciting chapter.

At the mixer, Michell shared recent demographic studies being done by the city and UC San Diego on the changing Downtown landscape during a glimpse ahead at the next 30 years of development before a roomful of local residents and merchants.

The millennial generation or “Generation Y,” are those born after 1980 and the first generation to attain adulthood in the 2000s. Noting millennials are “coming of age,” Michell said the first phase of an ongoing demographic study revealed that an “urban renaissance is truly in full swing in Downtown San Diego.”

Walking mixer guests through the early findings of the Downtown demographic study, Michell said 50 percent of San Diego’s population will be millennials by 2020. Millennials are currently about 34 percent of Downtown’s population, she added.

“In order for us to understand the next 30 years, we need to understand what’s happening today,” Michell said.

She explained that there are approximately 130,000 available jobs Downtown, with average incomes at $73,000, much higher than the county average of $53,000. In addition, there are currently 33,000 residents living Downtown in 24,000 homes, and millennials comprise about one-third of Downtown’s population.

“That’s the most populous demographic, even more than baby boomers [those born from 1946 to 1964],” she said.

“Millennials are very different from their older counterparts,” she continued, adding that the urban lifestyle is more amenable to the new generation and they are the catalysts for change we are seeing across the nation.

By 2050, Michell said it is projected that seven out of 10 Americans will be living in cities, while in 2010, only half of all Americans resided in urban areas.

There are numerous trends with millennials, one being that they are less apt to commute from suburbs, preferring to relocate closer to where they work and play.

“We want to get millennials and their talent in the future workforce Downtown,” Michell said. “We in Downtown are focusing on that talent, and spending lots of time thinking about how to get ‘critical mass’ attracting talent and companies Downtown.”

Discussing Downtown’s amenities, Michell spoke of its “24/7 lifestyle” and the need for improving mass transit and transportation “connectedness” in and around the Downtown area.

“In 2017 the trolley line going from UC San Diego into Downtown will be finished,” Michell said. “That will be a game-changer.”

The partnership’s president said a plan is currently in place now to improve transportation within Downtown itself.

“This January we [the city] negotiated to put together a free ride system involving six passenger golf carts that will be on-demand taking people to and from point A to point B,” she said. “Our goal is to have about 50 of these vehicles. That will be [another] game-changer: getting away from cars and into these alternative modes of transportation.”

Michell talked of other trends with millennials, including the fact that they not only delay getting married, but also delay purchasing their first home, until much later in life. She predicts this will translate into what she calls a “future millennial baby boom.”

“Hopefully, that will be in the urban center where the population is more dense where we’ll have more transportation to transit-oriented developments and attractive urban amenities, which are everything,” she said. “This generation wants to do things, not necessarily own things.”

Michell also predicted that Downtown’s job growth will outpace the rest of the region, with more millennials Downtown, creating a need for not only more schools near the urban core, but more ancillary facilities.

The big challenge, she said, will be keeping San Diego’s Downtown “vibrant,” so that children born there in the future will want to stay.

“If we figure out how to keep these kids Downtown — we’ve won,” Michell concluded.

The Rethink Downtown Exhibition is currently on display at 700 First Ave., near G Street, Downtown. It is open daily from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m.

For general questions about the exhibit, email [email protected]. To learn more about the Rethink Downtown project and see its calendar of events, visit its interactive website at rethinkdowntown.com. To learn more about the Downtown San Diego Partnership, visit downtownsandiego.org.

—Dave Schwab came to San Diego 30 years ago with a journalism degree from Michigan State University and has worked and free-lanced for numerous dailies, weeklies and other regional publications. He can be reached at [email protected].