Civic leaders in National City and Southeast San Diego have been working with residents this summer to reimagine 57 acres of land that were once planned for a freeway.
An unusually long Interstate-805 offramp bisecting the Southcrest neighborhood is all that remains of Highway 252, a project the state began planning in the 1960s but abandoned in the 1980s amid neighborhood opposition.
Most of the freeway’s right-of-way has already been redeveloped into housing, parks, a shopping center and an elementary school. But the very start of the freeway — an interchange with I-805 that is currently used as the 43rd Street on- and off-ramps — remains standing…