San Diego’s Little Italy is different; a stable ethnic business and residential community, since the 1920′s. Little Italy, today, represents Downtown San Diego’s oldest continuous-neighborhood business district. At one time, more than 6,000 Italian families lived in Little Italy and toiled to build San Diego into the center of the world’s tuna industry.

With the decline of the tuna industry and the destruction of 35% of Little Italy due to the construction of I-5; Little Italy suffered nearly thirty years of decline. In the 1990′s, property owners and family-run business owners decided to take their fate into their own hands.

The Little Italy Association has been working for over 20 years with Italian American and non-Italian business owners, as well as creative architects and developers to make Little Italy a model neighborhood. San Diego’s Little Italy is not only a model urban neighborhood for San Diego, but is also a model for a handful of Little Italys throughout the country.