SAN DIEGO (KGTV) — A year ago, we showed you the empty lot along 29th Street and 32nd Street off Boston Avenue in Barrio Logan.
Back then, it looked like an empty lot. And today, it still does.
This space was supposed to become one of the neighborhood’s largest parks. So what happened?
To understand that, we have to go back to September 2024.
That’s when the Environmental Health Coalition, a group focused on environmental justice in San Diego and Tijuana, received a $20 million federal grant through the Environmental Protection Agency.
By January 2025, they had access to the funding. But just weeks later, everything changed.
“We got access to our funds, and within two weeks, we noticed that our account became suspended within the payment portal,” Amy Castañeda, Policy Director with the EHC, said back in April of 2025.
The federal funding was suddenly frozen, putting this project and several others on hold.
At the time, Castañeda said they were staying hopeful.
“We’ve seen battles like this time and time again,” Castañeda said in 2025. “We’re going to continue fighting so that the community can actually enjoy this space.”
Now, one year later, there’s finally some good news.
The park will be built after all.
Not because the federal funding returned, but because they found another way to make it happen.
“We were getting creative. We were identifying rapid response grants from different foundations and other organizations that were making these funds available,” Castañeda said.
That new funding is coming from the state, through California’s Transformative Climate Communities program, which invests in projects in underserved neighborhoods.
The group had some of that funding before, but not enough. Now, the state has stepped in to help close the gap.
And with that, the project is moving forward again.
“We’re talking about 45 years to bring this park to Barrio Logan. So it’s exciting that we get to start the first phases of the park,” Castañeda says.
She says building the 3.2-acre park will still take a couple of years.
But now, there’s something the community hasn’t had in a long time, certainty.
“We’re in a better place than we were a year ago,” Castañeda says.
For now, it may still look like an empty lot.
But after decades of waiting, this space is finally on its way to becoming something more.
