BACKSTORY: Edited from the San Diego Little Italy website:
San Diego’s Little Italy is 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. Today our community is a model urban neighborhood in the City of San Diego; with new Italian American and non-Italian business owners alike maintaining and opening retail and professional spaces. As well as, creative builders and architects building beautiful new developments. The Little Italy Association of San Diego has been reviving this once thriving neighborhood for the past 20 years; while telling the story of Little Italy to its visitors through public art displays and amazing piazzas. San Diego’s Little Italy is not only a model urban neighborhood for the City of San Diego, but is also serving as a model for the handful of Little Italys remaining throughout the country.
