Ride your bike along Sunset Cliffs Boulevard these days and you will notice the same thing regular users have been noticing since spring: a long stretch of orange fencing between Adair Street and Osprey Street, right near the Sunset Cliffs sign, blocking off what used to be the pedestrian path. Most people duck under the tape anyway to get a closer look at the crumbling edge. Everyone else gets pushed into the bike lane, which pushes cyclists into the road, which makes an already tight stretch of the Boulevard feel like a shared negotiation every single time.
If you assumed this was a quick repair job, you are not alone. It is not. What's actually underway is a $32.59 million municipal construction project that has been in some form of planning since 2018, and the tape is likely to stay up through most of a permitting process that will not wrap until at least summer 2027.
The stretch everyone already knows
The section in question sits between two existing concrete seawalls near Spalding Point, and it is the same segment where a chunk of bluff broke away in January 2026, taking a length of protective railing down with it. City engineer Kimberly Wender of Dokken Engineering described the moment plainly at a community meeting in May: the railing "that's gone today" was one of several recent signs that the bluff here is moving faster than the road above it can tolerate.
A separate collapse happened three months later, in April, near the Arch further south, unrelated to this particular project but a reminder that the whole park is an active geological system, not a static backdrop. City assessments have found as little as 12 feet of bluff left between the cliff edge and the roadway in the most vulnerable spots along this stretch, which is the reason the caution tape went up before any design was finalized.
The mechanism the seawall doesn't actually fix
Here is the detail that changes how you should read every headline about this project. The proposed seawall is designed to slow wave-driven erosion. But by one local account of the project, most of the erosion along this stretch is actually attributed to stormwater runoff draining off the bluff top, not to waves hitting the base. Runoff is being handled through a separate initiative, the Coastal Resilience Master Plan, adopted in 2023, which covers drainage improvements along Sunset Cliffs on its own timeline.
That split matters if you live nearby and are wondering when things settle down. The seawall, even once built, addresses one driver of the erosion and leaves the other running on a different clock. It is entirely possible to finish the wall and still be dealing with runoff-driven bluff loss a few years later, just a few feet inland from where the concrete ends.
What the number actually buys
The project as proposed is a combined tieback wall and secant pile wall, 335 linear feet total, drilled to depths of 60 feet. At an estimated $32.59 million, that works out to nearly $100,000 per linear foot, a figure resident Virginia Wilson highlighted after the May meeting to make the scale legible. For context, that price tag also covers a fresh layer of asphalt on the roadway between Adair and Osprey and a choice of cliff edge barrier, post and rail or post and chain, so the wall itself is only part of what the number represents.
Here is where the current design stands and what still has to happen before a shovel goes in the ground.
Milestone | Status as of 2026 |
|---|---|
Design completion | 60 percent complete as of spring 2026 |
Final design and permitting | Targeted for completion summer 2027 |
Permits required | Mitigated Negative Declaration, Site Development Permit, Coastal Development Permit from the California Coastal Commission, plus federal and state sign-off from the Army Corps of Engineers, Regional Water Quality Control Board, and State Lands Commission |
Construction start | Not before late winter 2027, pending funding and permits |
That permit stack is not a formality. The California Coastal Commission has already pushed back on the use of riprap at the base of any wall and asked the city to study nature-based alternatives more closely, which is part of why the design phase has stretched across multiple years rather than one budget cycle.
A park whose own charter argues against this
The tension underneath all of this is not just cost or timeline. Sunset Cliffs Natural Park has a Master Plan vision statement that describes the park as a place to enjoy the coast "free from the effects of man," and long-time community members have pointed out that a poured concrete wall sits uneasily against that language. At the May meeting, resident Nat Giraud raised an alternative worth knowing about even if it never gets built: an artificial reef positioned between two of the surf breaks here, which he argued could reduce wave action by 75 to 95 percent and, in his view, work with the water instead of against it at a lower cost.
The city's own analysis considered doing nothing at all, the so-called No Build Alternative, and concluded that without intervention, the existing rate of erosion puts both the roadway and the linear park at meaningful risk of closure in the near term, since sea caves are already undercutting the bluff within that same 12-foot margin from the road. That finding is the strongest argument for the wall. The vision statement is the strongest argument against building it inside park boundaries. Both are true at the same time, which is why the room at the Point Loma library was, by most accounts, full and pointed.
What actually changes for you this year
If your relationship with this stretch is a daily dog walk, a weekly bike commute, or a standing sunset habit, here is the honest read on what is likely to shift and what is not.
- The caution-taped section between Adair and Osprey will probably stay closed to pedestrian traffic through the design and permitting window, which runs at minimum into 2027.
- The city has floated converting the section of Sunset Cliffs Boulevard past Monaco Street to one-way traffic, a change that could eventually free up more room for pedestrians even before construction starts.
- Nothing about this project touches the park's existing dog rules, which still restrict off-leash and on-leash access to before 9 a.m. and after 6 p.m.
- Tide pool access at the Ladera Street stairs and sea cave routes near Froude Street are unaffected by this particular stretch of fencing, since they sit outside the project boundary.
- Luscomb Point, named for local surfing figure Happy Luscomb, and the wedding-permit areas at Ladera and Osprey remain open and bookable as they always have.
- The April collapse near the Arch is a separate incident from this project. If you photograph or walk near that spot, stay behind the posted fencing regardless of what this seawall timeline does.
None of that is a small consolation dressed up as good news. It is simply an accurate map of where the disruption actually sits versus where the park continues to function exactly as it always has.
The long view from someone who lives here too
I have watched this stretch of the Boulevard change seasons for years now, and what strikes me most about this particular moment is how unresolved it still is. The city has spent eight years getting to a 60 percent design. The community has spent one very full evening at a library asking whether that design is even the right question. Both things can be genuine progress and neither guarantees an ending anytime soon.
If you live on the Peninsula, the practical move is patience with a plan attached: expect the tape to outlast this year, watch for the one-way proposal to surface again at a future planning board meeting, and keep using the tide pools, the caves, and the sunset lookouts that were never part of the fenced section to begin with. The park is not disappearing. It is negotiating with the ocean in real time, and for once, the paperwork is trying to keep pace with the water.
If you ever want to talk through what any of this means for a specific address near the cliffs, from setback considerations to how a property relates to the boundary lines discussed above, I am always glad to walk through it with you. Point of View Properties is built around exactly this kind of on-the-ground, Point Loma-specific perspective. Let's Connect.
