Case Study: City of San Diego engages residents to shape Ocean Beach Pier renewal with Cook + Schmid

City of San Diego boosts media coverage 583% with Cook + Schmid

The City of San Diego faced the challenge of deciding the future of its aging Ocean Beach Pier, which required either demolition or rebuilding. The city needed to engage its diverse residents in the planning process, particularly low-income Latino and Asian communities who were frequent pier users but historically did not participate in public planning. To address this, they enlisted the vendor Cook + Schmid to conduct a public outreach campaign.

Cook + Schmid implemented a comprehensive two-year campaign using public workshops, online engagement, surveys, pop-up events, and in-language collateral. This solution successfully engaged over 5,000 survey participants and reached more than 5,700 residents in person, building widespread consensus for a rebuild and guiding the new pier's design. The campaign also generated a 583% increase in media coverage, which shifted from negative news to positive, excited reporting about the project and its community-driven process.

City of San Diego