There's a stretch of Adams Avenue, right where University Heights bleeds into Normal Heights, that I find myself driving down even when it's not on the way to a showing. It's the kind of street that rewards you for slowing down.
I'm a content person at heart. I've spent 25 years building brands and producing for major networks, and one thing that work has taught me is how to read energy in a space. Adams Avenue has it. The small restaurants with mismatched chairs on the sidewalk. The coffee spots where people are actually talking to each other. The vintage stores that somehow always smell like incense and good decisions. It's not trying to be anything, which is exactly why it works.
What I find interesting is how that energy is starting to show up in the real estate. Buyers I work with in University Heights and Hillcrest are paying closer attention to walkability and neighborhood feel than they were even two years ago. A condo a few blocks off Adams, something listed in the low $600s, will get more attention than a comparable unit on a busier corridor with no personality. I've seen it happen multiple times this spring. People want to live somewhere that feels like something.
There's a take in real estate that says location is about comps, school districts, proximity to freeways. And sure, those things matter for resale. But I think we undervalue the emotional pull of a street or a block. Investors especially tend to skip over it, and I'd push back on that. The neighborhoods in my markets that have held value the longest, Mission Hills, North Park, parts of Hillcrest, all have streets with that same quality. A sense of place that makes people want to stay.
I don't think you can manufacture it. You can build new mixed-use developments and add retail on the ground floor (and plenty of that is happening along El Cajon Blvd and University Ave), but the lived-in feeling takes years. Decades.
Adams Avenue has had those decades. And if you're looking at property anywhere near it, pay attention to what the street is telling you. The data matters. But so does the walk you take after you park your car.