A San Diego hearing officer has approved plans for a roughly 70-foot seawall beneath a home on the 5300 block of Calumet Avenue in Bird Rock, clearing the way for a reinforced concrete barrier meant to stop a crumbling coastal bluff from swallowing the property. The decision, issued last Wednesday, allows the owner of 5360 Calumet Ave. to build a two-foot-thick shotcrete wall anchored into the rock face below the house, addressing what officials describe as a life-and-safety risk for the people who live there.
Hearing Officer Jeffrey Szymanski concluded the seawall was necessary, according to The San Diego Union-Tribune, which reported that the primary residence is susceptible to deformation and damage if the sensitive bluff slope beneath it fails. The property had a factor of safety of 1.16 when the project was brought forward in 2025 — a figure that measures a structure’s stability and, per the paper’s reporting, generally must drop below 1.2 before a jurisdiction will even consider emergency protective measures. A factor of safety of 1.0 might indicate a property has already failed or could fail overnight, while new construction near a bluff is required to reach 1.5, a level meant to keep a structure safe for 75 years without damaging the site.
The Union-Tribune, whose reporting anchors most of the record here, noted that the concrete deck separating the house from the bluff is nearing the edge itself, and that the San Diego Development Services Department did not state what the current factor of safety is for the property. The article was written by Ashley Mackin Solomon for the paper’s La Jolla Light news section.
A Non-Emergency Filing Amid a Block of Emergencies
Unlike most of its neighbors, the 5360 Calumet project was processed as a non-emergency application in 2025, and city records show the case was first filed on August 21, 2024, as Project PRJ-1119583 on a 0.16-acre site zoned RS-1-7 in Council District 1, according to the City of San Diego. That stands in contrast to two other bluff-repair applications on the same block, which were fast-tracked as emergency repairs. A permit for emergency bluff repairs below 5322 Calumet was filed in March 2025, and a similar permit for 5316 Calumet followed three months later, in June 2025…