Jack in the Box has sold its 150,000-square-foot, 7.8-acre headquarters in Kearny Mesa to the San Diego Unified School District for $21.5 million.

The transaction, which closed on Dec. 20, will see the San Diego-based hamburger chain continue to lease the site at 9330 Balboa Ave. from its new owner at a fee of $1,000 per month plus expenses as it works to consolidate business operations at a 70,000 square-foot facility nearby where it operates its test kitchen and consumer research.

The school district, whose board members earlier this month unanimously signed off on the deal, intends to use the property for administrative purposes, although specifics have not been decided.

“While some administrative offices will eventually move to the new site in Kearny Mesa, there has not been a final determination by the district as to the who, what and when,” said Samer Naji, a spokesperson for San Diego Unified. “Over the next 18 months, the current occupant will complete their relocation while the district conducts planning and associated design work for the future administrative building.”


Jack in the Box did not respond to request for comment, but the sale to the district was in the works for most of the year, according to public records. The Board of Education initially approved making an offer on the property in March.

The close of escrow followed by days the announced departure of Jack in the Box Chairman and Chief Executive Lenny Comma. In recent years, Comma, under pressure from an activist investor group, oversaw the conversion of hundreds of company-owned restaurants into franchise locations. Today, only 137 of the 2,243 Jack in the Box restaurants in the nation are company-owned. The firm has also noticeably trimmed its corporate personnel, ending September with 340 staffers versus 500 staffers in the same month two years prior.

San Diego Unified acquired the site using funds generated by Measure YY, the $3.5 billion bond initiative approved by San Diego voters last year that raised property taxes. At the district’s Dec. 10 board meeting, a few members of the public opposed the purchase, characterizing the buy as an unnecessary use of public funds.

“We could stay right here. We could build a five-story parking garage. You can build two towers,” community member Francine Maxwell said at the meeting. “It’s an ego thing to go and take (the) Jack in the Box (property).”


However, the district has said in the past that its current Education Center at 4100 Normal St. in University Heights is past its prime, as the buildings were constructed between 1910 and 1952. In 2017, San Diego Unified tested the private real estate market, offering the site and two other district-owned parcels up to a developer who could provide it a new headquarters, but nothing came of the proposed land swap.