SAN DIEGO — At lunchtime on a Thursday, people seated at picnic tables dotting the Quartyard sip coffee from Meshuggah Shack. Music wafts from speakers, and the scent of sausages from S&M Sausage and Meat fills the air.

As the day wears on, the scene will fill out, and coffee will give way to craft beer served from a bar fashioned out of a shipping container.

For now, the Quartyard — conceived of and built by a Rad Lab, a student-led organization, and the community — is a beer garden, event space and dog park in the downtown East Village neighborhood of this city. Its projected transition from 25,000-square-foot vacant lot to urban park to housing is part of a larger plan to create an employment hub in the neighborhood’s tech corridor.

That project, known as Makers Quarter, aims to turn six blocks of mixed-use development into one million square feet of office space, 145,000 square feet of street-level retail space, 800 residential units and 72,000 square feet of public open space over the next seven to 10 years.