The Stockton-based developer takes over a stalled Golden Hill site as part of a strategic pivot toward smaller California infill, with pricing aimed at the region’s most attainable for-sale housing segment.
Nearly three decades after closing out its last project in San Diego County, the Grupe Company is back. The Stockton-based developer has begun construction on Golden Ridge, a 38-unit for-sale townhome community at 1001 32nd Ave. in the Golden Hill neighborhood, marking its first delivery in the region since wrapping Seagate Village in Carlsbad in 1997.
Most units at Golden Ridge will price from roughly $680,000 to about $1 million, with four homes set aside as affordable for low-income households, according to a recent San Diego Business Journal report. The townhomes, designed by Santa Ana-based Woodley Architectural Group, span 900 to 1,635 square feet across one-, two-, and three-bedroom floor plans. Each unit features a two-car attached garage, nine-foot ceilings, glass railings, and full-size laundry, with most including private balconies. Sales are being handled by CityMark Realty.
The project lands in a Southern California for-sale market that has cooled measurably from its 2024 peak. The median price for attached homes in San Diego County fell 4.4 percent year-over-year to $632,000 in January 2026, before settling at $670,000 in March, according to the Greater San Diego Association of Realtors. Townhome inventory across the county climbed 18.3 percent year-over-year in March, the largest jump of any housing segment, while closed sales rose 15.1 percent over the same period, the association reported. That combination — rising supply paired with rising transaction volume — has put pressure on pricing but reaffirmed townhomes as the most accessible entry point into San Diego homeownership.
Grupe President and Chief Executive Officer Mark Fischer told the Business Journal that mortgage rates had recently dipped to roughly 6 percent before climbing again, and that well-priced product is still moving despite a softer overall environment. Roughly 200 prospective buyers had registered on the project’s interest list by late May, according to the company. Fischer indicated that the likely buyer mix skews toward young singles, downsizing empty-nesters, and military households — a profile he characterized as functionally adult-oriented, though not deed-restricted.
Grupe inherited Golden Ridge from a prior developer that ran into financial difficulty. The site had already been graded, entitled, and partially trenched for underground utilities by the time Grupe took control, allowing the company to build to the approved plan without redesign. Fischer told the Business Journal that the city had been a constructive partner and that the project’s economics did not justify revisiting a fully baked plan. Community amenities were kept minimal — limited to a small dog park — to hold sales prices down. The project’s marketing materials emphasize the absence of Mello-Roos special tax assessments and a relatively low base property tax rate, a meaningful underwriting advantage in a region where newer master-planned communities routinely carry Mello-Roos burdens that can add hundreds of dollars to monthly carrying costs.
Golden Ridge is a tactical fit for Grupe’s current playbook. The 60-year-old firm, founded in 1965 by Cliff Grupe and tracing its California roots to the Gold Rush, once built master-planned communities of 2,000 acres across seven states. Fischer told the San Diego Business Journal that the firm exited that business model because the capital exposure left it overly correlated to economic cycles. The company subsequently rotated into rental apartment development — particularly in Sacramento, where it delivered a sizable townhome project in 2017 before shifting toward apartments — and then pivoted back to for-sale product roughly 18 to 24 months ago. Fischer indicated that Grupe is now actively underwriting additional infill opportunities in dense California submarkets with acute housing shortages.
The Golden Hill positioning underscores that strategy. Located less than two miles from Balboa Park and minutes from downtown, the Gaslamp Quarter, and Petco Park, the neighborhood blends historic character with freeway access to the 5, 94, 15, and 805. The project sits within the San Diego Unified School District, with assignments to Golden Hill Elementary School and San Diego High School. For Grupe, that walkable, transit-adjacent profile — combined with an entitled site, a no-Mello-Roos pitch, and a price band that lands at or near the county’s attached-housing median — represents a calculated bet that disciplined infill product can outperform the broader market even as the cycle softens.
For San Diego, Grupe’s reentry signals continued out-of-region capital interest in the city’s chronically supply-constrained housing market, even as transaction velocity and pricing have softened from peak. Whether the firm follows through on additional San Diego infill acquisitions will depend in part on how quickly Golden Ridge moves through its interest list — and whether rates cooperate when sales formally open.
