Old Town San Diego Property Management, Where California Began

Old Town remained the heart of San Diego from its 1820s settlement until the 1860s, when developer Alonzo Horton began promoting his "New Town" at the site of present-day downtown. Government records moved to New Town in 1871, and Old Town has operated as a historic and tourist district ever since, one that today counts nine hotels, 32 restaurants, more than 100 specialty shops, and 12 art galleries within its 230 acres. That commercial density, unusual for a residential neighborhood, shapes what a Gibraltar-managed Old Town rental competes against and who it appeals to.

Old Town San Diego State Historic Park, established in 1968 on 29.08 acres, was ranked California's most-visited state park in both 2005 and 2006 and includes the 1827 Casa de Estudillo, a National Historic Landmark in its own right, along with the Wells Fargo History Museum and the Courthouse Museum. The neighborhood's identity is tied directly to this tourism base, and Gibraltar factors that visitor traffic, along with the neighborhood's limited residential housing stock relative to its commercial and cultural footprint, into how we price and market an Old Town property.

The Old Town Transit Center, an intermodal hub built in the early 1990s at Taylor Street, connects Amtrak's Pacific Surfliner, the COASTER commuter rail, and the San Diego Trolley's Blue and Green Lines, giving Old Town residents car-free access up the coast to Oceanside and south into downtown and beyond. Bounded by Interstate 8 to the north, Interstate 5 to the west, and Mission Hills to the east and south, the neighborhood's transit access is a genuine differentiator for tenants who commute without a car, and Gibraltar markets that access directly.