. . . .and still going strong! :carrot:

Earlier SD Development Threads:

SD Development Thread News I
http://www.skyscrapercity.com/showthread.php?t=233950

SD Development Thread News II
http://www.skyscrapercity.com/showthread.php?t=269048&page=25&pp=20

SD Development News III
http://www.skyscrapercity.com/showthread.php?t=310577&page=1&pp=20

SD Development News IV
http://skyscrapercity.com/showthread.php?t=338050&page=1

Wow, that first thread was started a little over a year ago. That brings back memories...

Decision delayed on Broadway site

By Dani Dodge
STAFF WRITER

July 27, 2006

Instead of moving developer Doug Manchester's Navy Broadway Complex proposal forward yesterday, the Centre City Development Corp. board put the brakes on and voted – for a new round of meetings and a delay in making a decision.

Some also expressed reservations about the development, dubbed Pacific Gateway.

“This level of density ... is unbecoming for San Diego's front porch,” said board Chairwoman Jennifer LeSar. “Many feel this should be public open space and for civic uses. I'm one of those.”

LeSar also said the city's downtown redevelopment agency should consider looking for a more suitable location for the Navy's headquarters. At least one board member differed with her on that point, but all agreed they needed more time to consider the proposal because of its importance to the image of downtown and its waterfront.

The Navy owns the 14.7-acre parcel on the waterfront bounded by Broadway, Harbor Drive and Pacific Highway, but it has given Manchester the rights to develop the land in exchange for building the Navy a new Region Southwest Command headquarters. Before Manchester can develop the site, he must get a ruling from the Centre City Development Corp. board, which acts as San Diego's downtown redevelopment arm, that the proposal meets development requirements for the site drawn up 14 years ago.

Four of the five members of the board met yesterday in their capacity as the agency's real estate committee to consider a staff recommendation for approval of the project, but with a number of conditions, including creating more attractive architecture. With member Bob McNeely absent, the board voted for more meetings and research.

“Why should we rush to judgment?” said board member Fred Maas. “This project has had more face-lifts than Joan Rivers.”

Navy Capt. Mike Allen warned board members that they have to either approve Manchester's proposal – with the Navy on site – or they could lose all control of the property. The Navy has until January to get a signed lease agreement for the property or it will revert to a Base Realignment and Closure disposal process, in which the military and federal agencies have first dibs on the land.

“You will go from a win-win,” Allen said, “to a lose-lose.”

http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20060727/news_1m27nbc.html

____________________________________________________



Of course the Navy is using BRAC scare tactics when the Navy is in fact the one with the most to lose. Especially when the overwhelming majority of the time the land goes to the municipality, and most likely for free. They talk about federal agencies getting dibs to the property but conveniently do not mention that 80% of the time that doesn’t happen.

I find it interesting that even CCDC, with their great stake in the project, is expressing reservations. When this goes before the city council we can expect a much greater degree of objective criticism.

You guys know there is no more post limit, right?

Hey SDFan, where did u find the info about Monaco and that Riveria project? i cant find it anywhere or at least dont know where to look on the CCDC projects map or the main website.

Hey SDFan, where did u find the info about Monaco and that Riveria project? i cant find it anywhere or at least dont know where to look on the CCDC projects map or the main website.

http://www.ccdc.com/index.cfm/fuseaction/projects.home

The map tends to be updated less then this list. The Monaco is in the Core list, and the Riveria project is in the Cortez Hill list.

Oh and how you find that site:

Go to main page
Look at the upper-left hand side
Click "All Projects"

And there you go.

Project List:

UNDER CONSTRUCTION:

Ivy Hotel
http://i24.photobucket.com/albums/c24/SDfan12/hotel280.jpg

Smart Corner
http://i24.photobucket.com/albums/c24/SDfan12/scTower_28.jpg

Aperture
http://i24.photobucket.com/albums/c24/SDfan12/UnionBeech_LAT.jpg

Park Terrace
http://i24.photobucket.com/albums/c24/SDfan12/PARK20TERRACE.jpg

Vantage Pointe
http://i24.photobucket.com/albums/c24/SDfan12/Pacific-pointe-cropped.jpg

Nexus
http://i24.photobucket.com/albums/c24/SDfan12/Nexus_4x4_72RGB.jpg

Icon
http://i24.photobucket.com/albums/c24/SDfan12/Icon.jpg

Hilton Hotel
http://i24.photobucket.com/albums/c24/SDfan12/Hilton1.jpg

Residence Inn (?)
http://i24.photobucket.com/albums/c24/SDfan12/GQResidenceINn.jpg

Hard Rock Hotel
http://i24.photobucket.com/albums/c24/SDfan12/CCDC-06-16-04.jpg

Diegan Hotel
http://i24.photobucket.com/albums/c24/SDfan12/Diegan20Web20Size.jpg

Breeza
http://i24.photobucket.com/albums/c24/SDfan12/Breeza.jpg

Aria
http://i24.photobucket.com/albums/c24/SDfan12/Aria-01.jpg

Alta
http://i24.photobucket.com/albums/c24/SDfan12/ALTA-day.jpg

Marriott Renaissance
http://i24.photobucket.com/albums/c24/SDfan12/ACF8C.jpg

The Mark
http://i24.photobucket.com/albums/c24/SDfan12/TheMark.jpg

The Legend
http://i24.photobucket.com/albums/c24/SDfan12/TheLegend.jpg

Diamond View
http://i24.photobucket.com/albums/c24/SDfan12/diamondviewtower.jpg

Electra
http://i24.photobucket.com/albums/c24/SDfan12/Electra.jpg

Cosmopalitian
http://i24.photobucket.com/albums/c24/SDfan12/Cosmopolitan.jpg

Pier
http://i24.photobucket.com/albums/c24/SDfan12/VW20Ketter20Grape.jpg

Sappire Tower
http://i24.photobucket.com/albums/c24/SDfan12/SapphireTower.jpg

Market Street Village
http://i24.photobucket.com/albums/c24/SDfan12/MarketStreetVillage.jpg

Current (Hanover Apartments)
http://i24.photobucket.com/albums/c24/SDfan12/Hanover20Apartments20Rendering.jpg

Courthouse Expansion
http://i24.photobucket.com/albums/c24/SDfan12/courthouse4-1.jpg


PROPOSED AND/OR APPROVED:

Triangle
http://i24.photobucket.com/albums/c24/SDfan12/Triangle20-20SJI.jpg

Main Library
http://i24.photobucket.com/albums/c24/SDfan12/main_library_site.jpg

Bayside
http://i24.photobucket.com/albums/c24/SDfan12/bosa_pacific_hwyAsh.jpg

Pacific Hwy & E
http://i24.photobucket.com/albums/c24/SDfan12/Bosa20Pacific20Hwy20at20E.jpg

Embassy1414
http://i24.photobucket.com/albums/c24/SDfan12/emb1.jpg

Pinnacle Project
http://i24.photobucket.com/albums/c24/SDfan12/Pinnacle2.jpg

Strata
http://i24.photobucket.com/albums/c24/SDfan12/StrataRenderingz.jpg

Library Tower
http://i24.photobucket.com/albums/c24/SDfan12/LibraryTowers.jpg

Mondrian
http://i24.photobucket.com/albums/c24/SDfan12/view201.jpg

MetroLive
http://i24.photobucket.com/albums/c24/SDfan12/MetroLive.jpg

Front & Ash
http://i24.photobucket.com/albums/c24/SDfan12/Front2020Ash.jpg

16th & Market
http://i24.photobucket.com/albums/c24/SDfan12/16th2020Market.jpg

16th and Island
http://i24.photobucket.com/albums/c24/SDfan12/1620and20Island.jpg

Echelon
http://i24.photobucket.com/albums/c24/SDfan12/Echelon.jpg

17th & G (Avion)
http://i24.photobucket.com/albums/c24/SDfan12/17thG.jpg

Pacific Gateway
http://i24.photobucket.com/albums/c24/SDfan12/publisher_2.jpg

17th & G (intercorp)
http://i24.photobucket.com/albums/c24/SDfan12/17thGIntercorp.jpg

India & Beech
http://i24.photobucket.com/albums/c24/SDfan12/IMG_4846.jpg

UNKNOWN:

Bosa Project
http://i24.photobucket.com/albums/c24/SDfan12/7f138825.jpg

SDCC
http://i24.photobucket.com/albums/c24/SDfan12/sdcc.jpg

Citi Point
http://i24.photobucket.com/albums/c24/SDfan12/citypoint.jpg

11th & B
http://i24.photobucket.com/albums/c24/SDfan12/11thBRuff.jpg

Two America Plaza
http://i24.photobucket.com/albums/c24/SDfan12/twopa.jpg

Ballpark Village
http://i24.photobucket.com/albums/c24/SDfan12/BallparkVillage.jpg

Pacific Pointe
http://i24.photobucket.com/albums/c24/SDfan12/pacific-preliminary-nw.jpg

Spinnaker Hotel
http://i24.photobucket.com/albums/c24/SDfan12/Spinnaker387x260.jpg

Laudry Lofts
http://i24.photobucket.com/albums/c24/SDfan12/laundry.jpg

OUTSIDE DOWNTOWN:

La Jolla Commons (University City)
http://i24.photobucket.com/albums/c24/SDfan12/UTCtower.jpg

Qualcomm Tower (Sorrento Mesa)
http://i24.photobucket.com/albums/c24/SDfan12/10120506.jpg

Park Village (National City)
http://i24.photobucket.com/albums/c24/SDfan12/parkvillage.jpg

Sunroad Centrum 12 Floors (U/C Now in Kearny Mesa)
http://i24.photobucket.com/albums/c24/SDfan12/SunroadCentrum.jpg

^^And I still have more to add, but I need to load them to Photobucket. I also have to tweak with that list as well, some more of those projects should be in the "Unknown" category. So its going to change later, just give suggestions. :)

Oh and since I haven't posted enough in this thread already...

About the Post Limit, their is a prefered limit of 500 posts per thread. We could go on, but the mods prefer we stop at 500, or at least thats what history has shown.

(All the previous threads were 500+/-)

^^Both Pier and Sapphire are under construction.

Sapphire
http://live6.truelook.com/timages/live6/ecodb/ecodb_1amnorth_camera1/imgbuf/buf_3729/1153871966920469.jpg

Pier-You can't see it in the webcam but I believe it's there. . .
http://live6.truelook.com/timages/live6/ecodb/ecodb_1amnorth_camera1/imgbuf/buf_3729/1153871966920367.jpg

hello everyone - i'm new to this forum. i've been silently watching and reading the SD thread for a little over a yr. now. i've watched it grow and grow. i'm proud to see what this lil' community forum has become. wow - it's nice to see people w/ the same interest as myself. i've procrastinated to long to join and now i can say i'm finally here. i love san diego w/ a passion! right now i'm living in riverside county and to be honest w/ you guys you cannot truly appreciate SD until you move out. but, one day i shall return!!!

^^welcome, 1904! were you born in 1904?

CCDC had just had their monthly board meeting here's the program (http://www.ccdc.com/resources/resource_files/News_Digest_20060727.pdf).

There were a few new projects mentioned that I never heard of. Are they new proposals???

Solara Towers 23 stories mixed use in Cortez Hill

15th & Market 22 stories mixed use in East Village

Wonderbread 19 stories mixed use in East Village

India & Beech 27 stories condos in Little Italy

Plus the little known Monaco and Riviera (34 & 37 stories respectively) in Cortez and Core neighborhoods were also mentioned. It's good to see more and more mixed use proposals. Perhaps the developers had read my pro-mixed use rants in the earlier threads. :lol:

Are those all the proposals? It woulkd be interesting know the ratio of mixed-use to other type of stuff.

I <3 metrolive.

Nice job of re-posting all of the projects, SDfan! :okay:


A couple of projects that will soon be moving into the U/C category:

-Strata - http://www.stratacondos.com/index.html

-Bayside at the Embarcadero - http://www.baysidebybosa.com/


The ones that are beyond proposal stage and have been approved:

- Pinnacle Project

- Library Tower


Here's another one to add to the projects outside of downtown:

Sunroad Centrum 12 Floors (U/C Now in Kearny Mesa)

http://i4.photobucket.com/albums/y120/Jaygergon/downtown%20development%202/sdscene_9.jpg


More mystery projects with little known info from San Diego Metro Magazine:

Megablock. Simplon is considering development of the block bounded by 16th, 17th, F and G streets in Downtown San Diego. Preliminary plans, which have been submitted to Centre City Development Corp., are for a mixed-use high-rise project by Austin Veum Robbins architects. The proposed project has not been entitled.

Shapery Park Tower. 12th and A Partners has submitted plans for a 39-story building with 138 condominium units on the north east corner of Eleventh Avenue and A Street.

Wonderbread. CityMark Development is planning to build 200 condominiums on the east side of 14th Avenue between L and Imperial. Call (619) 238-3662 or visit www.citymarkdev.com .

I <3 metrolive.

I completely agree, this is probably my favorite high rise project downtown, and will be a beautiful, unique addition to the skyline if built.
I've never seen the India and Beech project, and it's still not on the CCDC website as far as I know. If it's the project some in the forum were talking about that is blocks the hideous view of the back of the Allegro Tower, i'm all for it. and that unnamed Bosa project looks very...Bosa.

So are all these projects that are waiting to be approved eventually going to be approved, cuz i thought the condo market was cooling off and some of these projects arent gonna happen. IMO, its sad if some of these projects are cancelled like Pacific Pointe, or the Pinnacle Project; but then i look at some of the other projects like Citipoint and i really hope the market will take the developers out of the downtown market.

And thanks SDfan for the updates and directing me to the info on 34-story Monaco and 37-story Riveria. but i went to the CCDC News Digest
http://www.ccdc.com/resources/resource_files/News_Digest_20060727.pdf
and i heard that the 34-story Monaco that the CCDC map said was suppose to be 500 feet is actually 350 feet. I hope not...

Okay. I added and changed the list a bit, Sunroad was added, also. I forgot about that, thanks for the reminder sd_urban. Oh and Im looking for the redering of that Hillcrest Project...I lost it...So if anyone has it, post it and I will list it.
I also retitled the Proposed section to 'Proposed and/or Approved' just to bunch them together.

And bushman, I have a strange feeling that the 350ft is right. Although I don't know how that land is 150ft in elevation. I hope its 500ft, but I doubt it...to many false calls before.

Of course the Navy is using BRAC scare tactics when the Navy is in fact the one with the most to lose. Especially when the overwhelming majority of the time the land goes to the municipality, and most likely for free. They talk about federal agencies getting dibs to the property but conveniently do not mention that 80% of the time that doesn’t happen.

I find it interesting that even CCDC, with their great stake in the project, is expressing reservations. When this goes before the city council we can expect a much greater degree of objective criticism.

Yes, but what I am sure that holds true is that 80% of the time the land is not as Prime of a location as the NBC location! You don't think that any Federal Agency would want it? Oh, and then the Indians? I'm sure a great big casino (which is tourist industry and allowed within coastal zones) would be lovely! Oh, one might ask, BRAC closed the old Naval Training Center and no agencies took that! Yeah, but there was $50 million dollars worth of demo/abatement, just in the public areas (I know because my firm did the work), not including all demo and abatement that is continuing (again, I know because we just finshed a $2 million demo/abatement contract on my project @ Liberty Station)

So, all those people who aren't getting 100% their way and suggesting that BRAC is the way to go because of this 80% statistic, don't be so sure. Remember, the 1992 Development Agreement that eveyone says is out of date calls for only, what, 1.6 acres of open space. Manchester/Genlser is saying, "Your right, it is out of date. So we are going to give 5.5 acres of open space!"

I think the real issue here, is not the amount of open space, but the overall sight design, which is very subjective. I hapen to like the way the open space works, with multiple piazas, walkways, green areas, and one large park, rather than nothing but one large park. But again, that is very subjective.

As for IF CCDC is reserved or not, we'll see. It is great that they are letting everyone weigh in one last time, but again, design is subjective, and the architect and developer are going to do what they like with in the program parrameters (Development agreement)

CHEERS

very impressive :)

very impressive :)
We have more than that.. :)

Here's an article I stumbled upon today. Just an outsider's view of Downtown SD's urban rennaisance

VIEW FROM AFAR
A San Francisco journalist parachutes into downtown San Diego and—perhaps—finds California’s futureby Matt Smith

Editor’s note: Sometimes the best way to see yourself is through someone else’s eyes. Matt Smith, a journalist for San Francisco’s SF Weekly, came to San Diego to see for himself how the downtown condo boom was working out. We thought it was a great opportunity to give San Diegans a view of their town from an outsider’s perspective.

Sometimes we forget that others are watching us.

What follows is Smith’s report, originally published in SF Weekly on May 5. In it, Smith details how San Diego’s urban-living renewal got started, some of which you may not have known. He also foresees potential pitfalls and contemplates the possibility that San Diego may be showing the rest of California the path into the future of urban planning.

It’s mid-April, and I’m in San Diego with a group of San Francisco planners, architects, developers and policy wonks, looking at a possible California future that’s unfolding just north of the Mexican border. A 5-year-old boom in downtown condominium construction and the wildly enthusiastic public response to it are forcing builders, planners and local boosters up and down the coast to rethink western America’s supposedly limitless love affair with suburbs and cars.

The early stages of the San Diego experiment portend great things for a state that has become uncharacteristically pessimistic, thanks in part to unchecked urban creep. The bamboo-like growth of suburbia that once made California’s possibilities seem endless is now the state’s greatest burden. Living closer to one another would lessen that burden in many ways, and the revitalization of downtown San Diego provides a hint about how greater urban density can be achieved.

The San Diego experience unveils a glimpse of a possible future in which Californians embrace the dense urban life most of the rest of the world enjoys, while it destroys old myths about California’s supposedly inviolable car culture. But the redevelopment of San Diego’s city center also has spawned plenty of caveats, highlighting the real cultural and political problems that keep Californians from regaining their economic footing.

As the state becomes an ever more massive swath of interlocked freeways, the dysfunctional tangle of governmental entities connected by those arteries becomes increasingly troublesome, not just in terms of transit and development, but in terms of the overall prospects for California. Twenty-six years after the passage of Proposition 13, that measure’s built-in tax incentives urge on the construction of sprawling office and commercial parks and, at the same time, push housing construction constantly into the next county, extending commutes and ruining commuters’ quality of life. Those incentives have infected California for more than two decades, and they have produced their logical end result: near-gridlock from Oregon to Mexico.

A mini-Manhattan sprouting at the edge of San Diego Bay offers hope as medicine for what ails California. But a three-day trip to the state’s southernmost city suggests a complete cure is still far off.

For a century and a half, California has been America’s laboratory of the future, a place where the rest of the country has looked for new cultural, political, technological and business ideas. We achieved our stature based on a real openness to new people and their new notions. Now, though, housing is so scarce in many areas of the state that employers in economic heartlands such as Silicon Valley are moving jobs elsewhere. Commute distances grow by the year; much of San Diego’s work force, for example, drives to the city from southern Riverside County, 100 miles to the north. Outsiders only make things worse, whether they come from Tulsa or Guanajuato. The widespread idea that immigration is an environmental threat stems from this perceived connection between gridlock and growth.

The renaissance of downtown San Diego provides a compelling contranarrative.

The story begins nearly 20 years ago and a half-continent to the north, where officials in Vancouver, British Columbia, pondered what to do about their own version of West Coast sprawl. The city was desperate for new housing in an urban area that had spread 100 miles. Vancouver officials beckoned developers to fallow industrial yards near downtown. Supported by capital flowing out of Hong Kong in the years before its transfer from British to Chinese control, developers were able, within 10 years, to build a miniversion of an Asian city—only nicer. Thanks to careful civic planning, developers were forced to provide land and/or money for ample parks, bikeways and community centers.

Nat Bosa, an Italian immigrant who entered the building trade 30 years ago as a laborer, was among those who foresaw that Canadians would pay good money to live in such a place. “My prediction in 1990 was, in 10 years, it will be fashionable to live in downtown Vancouver, and in 15, it will be a great place to live,” he says. “People now love it.”

As prime, cheap land began to disappear from central Vancouver, Bosa and other Canadian developers looked south to San Diego and saw another abandoned, decrepit downtown. Like Vancouver, San Diego had a beautiful bay to the west, and a hundred miles of traffic-choked sprawl to the east. As in Vancouver, San Diego city officials were anxious to do something about a housing shortage, and to revitalize a decayed downtown. “I felt it was just a fabulous place, with a great climate. I thought it was ready for what I call ‘urbanization,’” Bosa says. “It was lacking on one big thing—more people.”

When San Diego’s Centre City Development Corp., which oversees downtown redevelopment, asked for proposals to build on downtown land in 1997, Bosa and other Canadian developers were at the front of the line. Centre City Development had set in place clear, simple, consistent permitting rules to encourage development in the area. But it didn’t expect anything like the frenzied response from Canadian developers.

“Outside people came in to invest, and they saw an opportunity locals didn’t see,” says Walter Rask, who for eight years was chief planner for San Diego’s downtown redevelopment area, before entering the private urban-design field in San Francisco last year. San Diego officials, he says, “had no clue that there was this market here. It took outsiders to reveal that. What it showed was that there was a huge market for downtown living.”

During the past four years, developers have built 13,000 residential units in downtown San Diego, with another 9,000 under construction or permitted and ready to build. At the beginning of last year, Vancouver’s Bosa was the biggest developer in the city’s central area, with 1,553 units either completed or approved for construction. Intergulf Development Group, also headquartered in Vancouver, had 630 units. Toronto-based Intracorp was third, with 521 units.

Some San Diego civic boosters, anxious to defend $300 million in public investment in a downtown ballpark, contended it was the new Padres stadium that catalyzed the boom. Journalists followed suit, with even The Economist, a London-based magazine that’s usually astute on development issues, saying the stadium “revitalized” San Diego. But Rask says, “That’s nonsense. The boom was on its way before discussion of building a ballpark started.”

Something much more significant than a ballpark lured people downtown: Once-frontier-minded westerners seemed to have grown a yen for urban life. And San Diegans were right about one thing—their new high-rise downtown is a charming place to live. San Diego entertainment districts such as the Gaslamp, Marina and Little Italy neighborhoods are packed in the evening. The new mélange of high-rises and old downtown buildings is visually interesting, exciting even (despite the catty remarks some of the new buildings earned from several of my architect companions). People are moving in from the suburbs because “downtown is where all the party action is,” says Alan Nevin, director of economic research at San Diego-based MarketPoint Realty Advisors.

Vancouver’s kinder, gentler mini-Manhattan didn’t transplant identically to San Diego, a Sunbelt bastion of conservative Republican politics and, therefore, a city averse to government intervention (except, it seems, when it comes to giving money to professional sports team owners).

With hotel tax revenue as backing, the city of San Diego provided $209 million in financing toward the downtown stadium project. Centre City Development provided $76.4 million, using the promise of increased taxes in the built-up downtown area to finance bonds, a technique known as tax-increment financing. This money could have been dedicated to parks or other amenities; instead, it went to the ballpark. “They’re determined to get some parks out of this plan, the people working on the city’s plans. But their money is locked up. It’s paying off ballpark bonds,” says Rask.

If the stadium did not cause the downtown San Diego boom, the redevelopment corporation that encouraged the ballpark and condo towers now must grapple with problems born of a growth explosion the city wasn’t prepared for. Ideally, a dense downtown with lots of apartments would solve transportation problems by putting housing next to jobs. But in San Diego, the forest of new condo towers may leave little space for people to actually work.

“When land was dirt cheap there, nobody was building offices before the housing boom. It was just a function that there was no demand for office space. The concern now is when office comes back, there is no place to build,” Rask says. “San Diego is really pretty skeptical about planning. They feel the property owners know better than planners what’s good for them. If the market is saying there’s no demand for office development, that gets a pretty sympathetic ear down there.”

With little open land left for office buildings that might support new downtown jobs, San Diego may find that its new high-rise dwellers wind up commuting to suburban office parks, creating worse freeway tangle than existed before the condos were built. “To get people from concentrated housing to scattered jobs is really nasty,” Rask adds.

Viewing San Diego’s high-rise spurt in the context of California’s overall housing and transportation problems, it’s hard to argue that it’s terribly relevant—yet. The downtown redevelopment zone represents a speck of land in the vast San Diego urban area, and it accounts for a small fraction of the region’s housing. Downtown may have 9,000 new dwellings on the drawing boards, but developers have taken out 150,000 permits to build tract homes in southern Riverside County, where half the households include a commuter to San Diego, says Marney Cox, chief economist of San Diego Association of Governments (SANDAG), an intergovernmental agency dealing with transit and other planning.

Successful apartment towers downtown are no match for California developers’ insatiable urge to build outward. They’re driven to the fringe in part by the unusual tax incentives created by 1978’s Proposition 13. Commercial centers that generate sales tax revenue are now far more lucrative for municipalities than are housing tracts, which, thanks to Prop. 13, supply a tax revenue stream that will grow only slowly, if at all, over time. So communities struggle to attract auto malls and box stores, shunning new houses and apartments and pushing sprawl to the next community. SANDAG is working to redistribute sales tax money among municipalities, to erase the incentive to shun housing. But the regional agency has limited pull with other counties.

“That’s the big challenge,” Cox says. “How do we get counties to work together?”

The aforementioned caveats notwithstanding, downtown is where the party and real estate action meet in San Diego. At a Starbucks in San Diego’s Marina District, for example, a pomaded condominium broker leans toward a 30-something man and woman, his knees nearly touching theirs, and offers a confidence.

“What I do is, I tell a developer I’ve got 40 people who are committed, and that way he can go ahead with a project. You’re No. 41 on my list. But I’d be willing to bring you in, if you’re willing to make a commitment,” the broker says, while producing a sheet of paper from his leather satchel, then scooting it toward the couple. “This is privileged information. This price list hasn’t been released to the public.”

The couple look at the list, then at each other. Will the building accommodate two Great Danes, the woman asks. An SUV? The broker nods, smiles and yanks his lure.

“I bought my unit two years ago for $494,000,” he says. “Last week someone offered me a million-two.”

Across the street, Jeanette Kagan, a saleswoman for Bosa Development, is selling units in a hole in the ground that next year will become a 39-story, 222-unit building called the Grande Santa Fe Place. There are only nine units left, the cheapest a 10th-floor two-bedroom for $1.824 million.

“Plenty of people who want to move in there right now would love to sell their $2-million homes and move into a $2-million condo,” says condo king Nat Bosa. “But there’s not enough to sell them.”

Two blocks away from the Marina District Starbucks, ex-Marine Barry Finnegan flogs condos at Associated Realtors. The cheapest two-bedroom he can find downtown is a $519,000, 920-square-foot unit, he says, about the size of an airport bathroom. The seller recently bought the apartment as an investment and is reselling it before the unit is completed. More than 20 percent of the new downtown units are flipped by speculators upon completion, he says.

“If you had come two or three years ago, I could have got you new construction downtown for $350,000,” he says.

With the best downtown San Diego sites spoken for and the units in his next building, a 43-story tower a couple of blocks from the Grande, selling at a brisk clip, Bosa is taking his Vancouver-style developments up the coast.

He’s bought a parcel of land near San Francisco’s downtown ballpark, designated for condominiums, designed for living sans cars. “You’ll get out of your unit and get on the trolley,” Bosa effuses during one of his frequent hops from his home in Vancouver to his condo in San Diego’s Marina District. “This car orientation is going to have to stop.”

Just to the north of San Diego, in Irvine, Bosa has begun construction on two 18-story condominium buildings that will provide a total of 232 apartments; he says these are the first-ever condo towers in Orange County, an area known for its endless landscape of cul-de-sacs and strip malls. “We’re 80 percent sold just coming out of the ground,” Bosa says. “You’re talking about a very little blip in terms of demand. If you go in there and do what we’re doing times 10, everybody would do great. Once you get it started, one friend talks to the next and asks, ‘How is it?’

“It’s a beginning.”

Oh boy, another commision weighs in on the NBC project.

From www.signonsandiego.com

Coastal Commission wants a say in Navy complex plan

Doug Manchester's quest to develop the Navy Broadway Complex on San Diego's downtown waterfront likely won't end with a nod from the city's downtown redevelopment agency.

The California Coastal Commission – his nemesis in the past – wants to weigh in.

San Diego Symphony
“We feel pretty strongly, given the lapse of time and changed conditions in the downtown area, that there's no way the previous consistency determination could be binding,” said Deborah Lee, senior deputy director for the commission. “And in terms of what we understand about the scope of the federal and nonfederal uses being considered, a coastal permit is also appropriate.”

Earlier this week, a coastal commission staff member called Perry Dealy, president of Manchester Development, to begin discussing the needed approvals and whether his proposed condo hotels would be allowed on the waterfront land, Lee said.

Manchester wants to build 2.9 million square feet of condo hotels, restaurants, retail shops, offices and a Navy command headquarters on 14.7 acres of Navy land on San Diego's downtown waterfront. The $1.2 billion project, dubbed Pacific Gateway, would stretch from Broadway south to Seaport Village.

The state Coastal Commission had approved a development at the site in 1991. The city of San Diego agreed with the Navy on a development plan the following year. According to that agreement, all that would be needed to build the project would be a determination by the city's downtown redevelopment agency, the Centre City Development Corp., that the proposal was consistent with that plan.

This week, the staff of the Centre City Development Corp. made a determination that Manchester's proposal is consistent with some numerical standards of the 1992 agreement. The agency's board, though, has postponed any findings on the project until after further research and meetings.

A Navy spokesman said a Coastal Commission consistency hearing to determine whether the project fits in with the state's coastal laws, is unnecessary.

“We believe the original consistency determination is still valid because our proposed actions fall within the parameters of the Coastal Commission's original consistency determinations and conditions have not changed to require another review,“ said N. Scott Sutherland, deputy public affairs officer for the Navy Region Southwest. “The passage of time alone does not invalidate a consistency determination handed down by the coastal commission.”

Dealy, who has acted as the spokesman for the project, could not be reached for comment.

Manchester, who developed the Manchester Grand Hyatt and the Marriott Hotel & Marina downtown has had trouble with the commission before. The commission shot down a beachfront hotel project in Oceanside after Manchester had garnered city and voter approvals. Manchester sued Oceanside for $15 million saying the council and city staff did not try hard enough to promote the project with the state. The city paid Manchester a $2.2 million settlement.

This time the Coastal Commission is interested in Manchester's proposed condo hotels, hotel rooms buyers can buy as vacation homes. Although the Coastal Commission has approved a few condo hotels in the past, it has only been with conditions such as not allowing anyone to stay more than 29 days in a row.

“The priority for shore area is visitor-serving uses and for us that's traditional hotels,” Lee said. “When you start making them condominiums, that reduces the number of accommodations available to the general public.”

She also said the commission has concerns about affordability and that the condo hotels would transition from condo hotels into just condos over the years.

“It's a very new kind of project that we are seeing in the coastal zone,“ Lee said, “and we have a lot of concerns about their long-term retention as visitor use.”

^^Wow. This is kind of resembling the ballpark fiasco. Lots of controversy, lots of people pretending to be concerned, and the big bad developer who has to put up with it. It's actually pretty amusing.

^^Unless you remember big rusting iron pylons at the ballpark...then its just scary.

These types of reactions and meddling always amazes me. San Diego is supposed to be conservative, especially fiscally, ergo less government intrusions. The Coastal Commission, I can understand since it is a state insitution, but why are all the other govermental insitutions always getting in the way of the other developments??

And the Nimbys. Except for the environmentalists, chances are, most of these people are also conservative. Why should thier opinion matter if the property and money is not exactly thiers? Views are never guaranteed after all. Don't even start with the whole "my property values will fall" thing since it's just the freemarket doing its thing, correcting itself with the new real estate environment.

http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y289/bushman61988/VantagePoint-1.jpg
http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y289/bushman61988/RVantagePoint.jpg
Garage work is still underway, and i wouldnt be surprised if the garage work still isnt finished by the end of the year.

http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y289/bushman61988/SmartCornerOffice-2.jpg
http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y289/bushman61988/RSmartCornerOffice-1.jpg
I hope the office building looks like the renderings.

http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y289/bushman61988/SmartCorner-1.jpg
http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y289/bushman61988/RSmartCorner.jpg
I was scared that this building would have too much of an exposed-concrete look, but this tower is turning out pretty nice in my opinion.

http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y289/bushman61988/Sapphire-1.jpg
http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y289/bushman61988/RSapphire.jpg
Excavation for the Garage is underway. i hope this project gets completed soon.

http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y289/bushman61988/ParkTerrace-1.jpg
http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y289/bushman61988/RParkTerrace.jpg
I personally hate the high rise tower's lack of color with the exposed concrete look, but how does everyone else like this tower?

http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y289/bushman61988/Nexus2-1.jpg
http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y289/bushman61988/Nexus1-1.jpg
http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y289/bushman61988/Nexus-1.jpg
http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y289/bushman61988/RNexus.jpg
Suppose to be completed by June 2006, but it looks like there will be a couple of months left of exterior and interior work.

http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y289/bushman61988/MarketStreetVillage2-1.jpg
http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y289/bushman61988/MarketStreetVillage-1.jpg
http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y289/bushman61988/RMarketStreetVillage.jpg
looks like they're just doing work on the exterior.

http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y289/bushman61988/TheMark-1.jpg
http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y289/bushman61988/RMark2.jpg
http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y289/bushman61988/TheMark2-2.jpg
http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y289/bushman61988/RMark.jpg
Work is on either the 26th, or 27th floor, but this tower should be completed on time. lookin good so far.

http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y289/bushman61988/Legend-1.jpg
http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y289/bushman61988/Legend2-1.jpg
http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y289/bushman61988/RLegend.jpg
The tower is making real good progress with about a floor per week. Work is now on the 7th floor.

http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y289/bushman61988/Icon2-1.jpg
http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y289/bushman61988/Icon-1.jpg
http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y289/bushman61988/RIcon.jpg
I'm curious what the little rooftop stadium is going to look like. and when are they gonna start painting the tower?

http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y289/bushman61988/HardRockHotel-1.jpg
http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y289/bushman61988/RHardRockHotel.jpg
Not sure what floor the hotel was on, but last time i was downtown, it was like the 6th or 7th floor.

http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y289/bushman61988/Electra-1.jpg
http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y289/bushman61988/RElectra.jpg
I cant tell what floor the tower is on, but it's lookin real real nice.

http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y289/bushman61988/DiamondviewTower-2.jpg
http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y289/bushman61988/RDiamondviewTower1-1.jpg
http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y289/bushman61988/DiamondviewTower2-2.jpg
http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y289/bushman61988/RDiamondviewTower.jpg
I cant wait till they really start the exterior work on the tower. looks real good so far.
http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y289/bushman61988/CosmopolitanSquare-1.jpg
http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y289/bushman61988/CosmopolitanSquare2-1.jpg
http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y289/bushman61988/RCosmopolitanSquare.jpg
Site clearing i think is finished, and the CCDC just approved new design changes to make this project 290 units instead of 239. I think pretty much everyone loves this one.

http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y289/bushman61988/Courthouse.jpg
http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y289/bushman61988/RCourthouse-1.jpg
Site clearing is underway, but i dont know when they'll start work on the tower.

http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y289/bushman61988/Breeza-2.jpg
http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y289/bushman61988/RBreeza.jpg
Work is on the excavation of the garage.

http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y289/bushman61988/Bayside-1.jpg
http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y289/bushman61988/RBayside.jpg
Construction hasnt yet started, but this project im pretty sure will happen cuz Bosa's doin a lot of marketing for the tower.

http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y289/bushman61988/Aria.jpg
http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y289/bushman61988/RAria.jpg
Garage is back to ground level, and the tower should rise quickly from here.

http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y289/bushman61988/Alta-2.jpg
http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y289/bushman61988/Alta2-1.jpg
http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y289/bushman61988/RAlta.jpg
Topped out, and hopefully, they'll paint the tower. But it looks pretty good regardless.

nice update:)

Thanks for the update.

About the exposed concrete, I agree I think it looks ugly. Fine to have it here or there, but to have an entire tower look like that seems wrong to me. They are like the big box buildings of the 80's, and everyone knows that in a decade we're going to look back and ask: what were they thinking?

Looking at Bushmann's updates, by year's end the Legend, Smart Corner, DiamondView, ICON, Park Terrace, Electra, The Mark, Hard Rock, and Alta will have made their permanent impressions in the skyline. That's about 9 new additions.

Next year I'd say Vantage Pointe, Aria, Hilton, Sapphire, Bosa by the Bay (?), Aperture, Current, The Diegan and possibly Cosmopolitan should be taking shape by then. That's another 9 new skyscrapers.

Did I miss any?

^^Thats so much in addition, things are going to be great reguardless of a slowdown.

The Public Face Of The Manchester Pacific Gateway Project:

Perry Dealy, president of Manchester Development

The president of Manchester Development, driving the Manchester Pacific Gateway project on the Navy Broadway Complex, soft-spoken Perry Dealy, has been developing San Diego real estate for nearly 30 years, arriving here in 1977 to work as staff architect developing SDSU’s master plan and finishing its new arts building. He later worked on its bike trails, new library and the athletic master plan for football and baseball. Later, he ran Pat Bowlen’s development of what is now called the Wells Fargo Plaza in Downtown San Diego, and worked on the San Diego Convention Center expansion, Lindbergh Field master plan, Rancho Bernardo Corporate Center, Centerside office towers in Mission Valley, Century Centre office complex in Irvine and the ever-popular Qualcomm Stadium expansion. (Financing of the Qualcomm expansion was not his idea.)

Earlier, he served with the Marines in Vietnam, earned a bachelor’s degree and a master’s degree in architecture from North Carolina State. He, his wife and son live in Point Loma. He prefers to ride a Tomaso, an Italian road bike, having given up his Harley 15 years ago.

Metropolitan: What are the chances of shrinking the Pacific Gateway project below 2.9 million square feet?

Dealy: Not likely to happen. It’s the right size for the proper balance.

But that’s what you said at 3.1 million square feet.

We had above-grade parking and we’ve put it below grade, so we didn’t really lose any program space. We reduced the bulk and scale (above ground) by 300,000 square feet. Actually, we were up to 3.2 million square feet when we heard CCDC and the community raise concern about the bulk and scale.

What’s the breakdown of the 1.65 million gross square feet of Navy and commercial office space? What about subsequent phases?

It’s 373,000 for the Navy. That’s a first phase and as it turns out, that’s all they’ll probably require. It does not look like they’re going to take that option (for a second building). Looks like it will be a private building instead.

Office?

No, hotel.

So there will be another 1.2 million of office space, right?

Correct.

What’s the timing expected to look like, development and construction?

There are eight blocks in the master plan. The four southern blocks including the Navy build-to-suit will commence construction in 2007. The Navy building should be well under way in February and the other three blocks would be under way by summer of 2007. By January we have to have our lease approved by Congress, no later than Jan. 1, 2007. After we get the CCDC consistency review approved, then we will finalize our lease and submit to the Navy a signed lease, which then goes through an approval process through the Department of Defense and Congress. They’ll have three months to get that completed. If they could do it in two months or one month or three, it’s in their hands at that point. Existing legislation allows for this project to take place. We’re optimistic that once we sign our lease that we will get it approved by the federal government.

Who do you work with?

We deal with both Admiral (Len) Hering, and Capt. Mike Allen. They’re very professional, they’re fast and efficient. They’re decision makers, very professional and are working hard as our partner to do what they can to help the project become a reality. They’re committed to the Manchester team and they cut through the red tape whenever possible.

Has the bureaucracy been worse for this project than anything you’ve done?

Absolutely not. We thought we’d be inundated with red tape. But we are dealing with the highest level of real estate professionals within the DoD and the U.S. Navy and they have full authority to make decisions. It’s been, quite frankly, a pleasant surprise in getting decisions made. They are reviewing all of the business plans for the real estate deal. They are looking at the build-to-suit for the Navy office building. They are reviewing the master plan. They did (review plans and revisions before CCDC reviewed them) except for the one plan that became controversial. That’s the 3.2 million-square-foot foot version with four acres of open space and bridges across the Paseo. It was maximizing the development agreement. It went simultaneously to the Navy and CCDC. Since then, we’ve respected the fact that the Navy needs to review it before we submit it to the public. I think they want to be aware of where the planning is and to make comment. It’s their property. They’re the landlord and they have to approve everything we do on the property.

What next document or agreement needs to be reached with the Navy?

That’s the lease agreement. That one we (should have) conclude(d) by the end of July.

When would groundbreaking be for what?

Two hotels and a Class A commercial office building and the Navy office building would all be 2007, about 185,000 square feet for the commercial office building. All the remainder is in Phase 2. The southern four blocks are the smallest parcels. The height of the buildings is 400 feet at Broadway (and Pacific Highway) down to 120 feet near Seaport Village.

The next phase of office could go as soon as 2008; it just depends on the market. We have to wait to relocate the Navy into their new building before we can tear down their old ones and build the two tallest buildings. They would be on Broadway and Pacific Highway, and on E Street and Pacific Highway. Those two buildings contain about 800,000 or 900,000 square feet of office, combined. There’s another freestanding office building of 200,000 square feet at Harbor Drive, between E and F, that we could build simultaneously with the second phase. But given the kind of tenant base we’re going after (if the demand improves), we have the ability to do that 200,000 square feet earlier, so a total of 400,000 square feet of commercial office in the near-term is possible.

The hotels will all be condo hotels, like the Hard Rock Hotel. Not unlike the Hard Rock, we see an opportunity to have consumers enjoy ownership into a hotel, so as you travel into San Diego on vacations, you’re able to have a place pre-determined in a Downtown urban waterfront environment. There’s a big demand. We don’t know how deep it is. But there’s a pent up demand for this kind of a project and we think it’s a very good urban alternative. The sales program is part of the equity to make the project more viable financially. That’s a concern. People are saying: “How fast can you build this?” Well, we’re ready to build Phase 1 right away and we’ll go into Phase 2, if the market remains solid, as fast as we can as well.

About $1.3 billion is the total development value. First phase of four buildings would be valued at $288 million not including the Navy build-to-suit. So add that in and it would worth around $450 million or $500 million.

Who is the artistic heart on the architectural team?

Art Gensler. Hal Sadler is addressing the historical context as it relates to the North Embarcadero Visionary Plan and is responsible for the Navy build-to-suit, along with collaborating with Art Gensler on the master plan, and liaison with CCDC. He’s turning out to be more of an integral part. The change the master plan has been going through, trying to address the historical context of what was intended for the plan, and how to integrate it all.

What happened to Gordon Carrier?

Gordon was part of three architectural firms on the team to help us with the master plan and once we got more involved in the modifications to the master plan, there was only room for two large architects. So we chose to stay with one of the the largest international architects in the world (Gensler), with offices in 26 cities around the world, and Tucker Sadler because of their longstanding history with the North Embarcacdero redevelopment and with Hal’s extensive experience with CCDC. It was a very difficult decision, because there is no question Carrier Johnson also is one of the top firms in San Diego and made some significant contributions to the master plan as it was going through its evolution. His brainstorm was to make the Paseo, the north-south passage through the center of the master plan, a significant pedestrian element.

What do you think of the Irvine Co.’s sincerity in developing more office Downtown, negotiating with Bosa for the old Catellus site, and negotiating with CCDC for the site north of One America Plaza?

I think they wouldn’t have hired the kind of people they did if they were going into a holding pattern. You don’t hire (Steve) Black and Tom Sullivan for nothing. They’re are implementers. They implement product.

Would their projects be a good thing for you?

Yes, I think so. What the Irvine Co. will bring are great relationships throughout California, considering how many tenants they have relationships with. They can give their tenant base opportunities to move into new product Downtown. We certainly encourage competition. You don’t want to build more than the market can bear. But we like our location and believe we offer a different type of product with the Navy proximity, water proximity. I think there’s room for both, not unlike the Lankford building (Broadway 655) and the Petco Park building (DiamondView). We hope they’re both successful.

Is there any satisfying those who’d prefer this property be a park?

When’s the last time a park was built Downtown, outside of the Park at the Park? Of all the locations CCDC could build a park, they’ve had no money to build them. More important, the North Embarcadero Visionary Plan with the 8.4-acre park around the County Administration Building, the two-acre park in the Navy master plan, we’re going to wind up with 35 acres of open space, parks, promenades and plazas along the bayfront.

Doug (Manchester) has made this a significant commitment of his time and resources, and in terms of his own manpower. I think as he’s traveling, he’s staying engaged with this on a daily basis. It’s hard to say how many hours he put in, going through the design and the business side of the project. Everything will be approved by Doug before we formalize any final decision. He feels a lot of pressure to make this a great front door to the city, which is one of the reasons why he’s committed to Gensler Architects, which has tremendous experience in urban mixed-use around the world.

More importantly, he’s been following the Navy Broadway project all along; he competed against a list of nationwide developers and was selected because he had the best waterfront experience. He’s a San Diego developer, a local, and he gave a good economic package to the Navy. He’s “proven” with all the projects he’s built over the years.

What about the criticism that he’s too litigious?

Urban myth. There have been a number of situations where there wasn’t even a lawsuit and disagreements were resolved through business negotiations. I think he’s brilliant. He’s an icon in our industry, not only locally but nationally. He’s contributed unbelievably to this renaissance in Downtown, along with Ernie Hahn and John Moores. I admire him tremendously. I’m working for a man who owns an empire. I enjoy working for him. He’s got a great mind; he’s always thinking of positive solutions constantly. And he has lots of other diverse interests. He’s not just a real estate developer and owner. He has lots of technology investments and is on the board of major corporations. He has a diverse set of investments.

Why do you think the Union-Tribune is so critical of him?

Because Doug hasn’t gone out of his way to schmooze everyone in the community. He’s worked hard to be a good business person, be a good family man and has contributed to charities throughout the community. But he and his wife don’t go out seeking recognition or acknowledgment. That could be misconstrued as arrogance but there’s no way Doug can be considered arrogant. He’s motivated. He’s competitive. But he’s not arrogant.

I think reporters don’t like him more than he doesn’t like reporters. Sometimes what gets conveyed in the public may not be a good representation of some of his qualities and what he’s given to the community.

How much time are you devoting to this project?

This project alone, 30 hours a week, and another 30 doing everything else.

What’s the status of the Lane Field project?

We’re proposing a five-star hotel that will be a major hotel flag — haven’t picked an operator yet — with 500 to 800 rooms. There could be a second-phase hotel. There would be retail, parking, and possibly some office, about 1 million square feet gross, including the hotel, on Lane Field. That’s about four developable acres. The cruise ship terminal is four or five acres.

How did the Port District staff react when Manchester became a partner with Viejas to develop Lane Field?

They embraced it as someone who can get things done on the waterfront. That’s another nasty rumor (that the port doesn’t like Manchester). We’re the No. 1 tenant they have. We pay more rent than anyone else on the tidelands, between the Marriott and the Hyatt.

Manchester employs about 1,800 people, including about 1,400 on the waterfront at the Hyatt. The other 300 are opening the Grand Del Mar and some are in Idaho. More than 1,000 Marriott employees on the tidelands don’t actually work for Manchester.

Things are moving along, I like it. :)

I told you so, from today's (8/1/06) Daily Transcript: :)

Developers nix or delay condo projects as sales slow, costs rise

The increasing volume of new residential construction in downtown San Diego, coupled with a cooling market in which construction costs have continued rising while sales activity has slowed, has prompted some developers to halt their projects or sell the property before construction has been initiated.

A recent example in downtown San Diego includes the Atmosphere, located at 1453 Fourth Ave. and 1446 Fifth Ave., which was offered for sale at a minimum bid of $8 million, said Al Hackman of Alternative Realty Solutions Inc. According to a previous report in The Daily Transcript, David Hawkins of H2A Architects (Hawkins & Hawkins Architects) said the Atmosphere project, which he helped design, was picked up by another developer after JS Properties ceased to exist as a company. If this is true, then chances are the other developer is offering the property up for sale.

The land size is approximately 22,564 square feet. The present entitlements consist of permits for 72 luxury condominium units, 14,839 square feet of retail space and 129 parking spaces on three levels. The proposed gross building area is approximately 183,273 square feet on nine floors above ground and three underground for parking. Currently, all that remains on the site is a huge hole.

Another development, 11th & B, has completed all the planning and permitting necessary for construction to begin; however, T.C. Holdings, a Newport Beach-based real estate investment firm, has turned to broker Rocket Rod Inc. and Chicago-based auctioneer Inland Real Estate Auctions Inc. to auction the project.

T.C. was planning to turn the 20,000-square-foot downtown parcel into a 26-story, 200-unit condominium project. The development plan calls for a 232,669-square-foot tower, with 7,000 square feet of retail and 84,000 square feet of subterranean parking.

Another example includes a project located at 526 Grape St. in Bankers Hill across Sixth Avenue from Balboa Park. In November 2005 Olson Urban Housing Inc. purchased the property, which at the time was a 15-unit apartment complex. On March 2, the San Diego Planning Commission approved 4-0 a map and site development permit to demolish the units and construct 22 condominium units on the 0.57-acre site.

The 15 apartments were demolished, but no further activity has taken place. Right now there are several holes in the ground and a chain link fence surrounding the property, but nothing is posted to indicate what will be built.

Another project where construction has not begun is Intracorp's condo development Triangle across the street from the trolley station at 12th Avenue and Imperial. Intracorp also has taken its sign down and replaced it with a Grubb & Ellis|BRE Commercial for sale sign.

"We progressed to the point where we were prepared to pull the building permits," said Tim Baker, assistant project manager. "We got to the point when we had to make a decision from a business standpoint," he said, adding the company sees the current downtown market as a situation in which it could make a larger profit by selling the property rather than by building and selling the development's units in a year.

Initially, Intracorp meant for Triangle to be a mixed-use development consisting of two buildings containing 57 condominiums, 4,000 square feet of retail and 84 parking spaces on the triangular-shaped block.

San Diego is not the only metropolis in the nation where developers are halting projects based on the current housing market and construction costs.

In Philadelphia, an urban landscape cluttered with condominium construction, Old City 205 aspired to shine as an ultramodern residence for the well-heeled with its zinc and glass facade, loft-style homes and windows that span floor to ceiling.

Too bad no one will get to move in now: The $40 million project in Philadelphia's Old City neighborhood won't break ground after the housing market softened and increasingly picky buyers balked at its price tags from $400,000 for a studio to more than $2 million for a three-bedroom penthouse.

Brown Hill Development, the company behind the project, noticed slower traffic and decided it didn't want to be left with unsold units, said partner Greg Hill.

From coast to coast, developers are nixing or delaying condominium projects as home sales decelerate, construction costs soar and lenders start to shy away from financing units that might not sell. What's making it worse is the glut of high-priced condos and the absence of people who can afford them.

"We've gone through the biggest real estate boom in the last eight or nine years and some of these projects haven't started yet. Do you think they're going to start building now?" asked real estate executive Allan Domb, dubbed Philadelphia's "condo king."

In Las Vegas, projects nixed include high-profile developments such as Aqua Blue, a $600 million, 825-unit luxury condominium-hotel resort that counted Michael Jordan as an investor; the $3 billion, 4,400-unit Las Ramblas resort, backed by George Clooney; and Ivana Las Vegas, a $700 million, 945-unit tower named after Donald Trump's ex-wife.

Related Las Vegas, one of the two developers for Las Ramblas, had cited rising construction costs and slowing sales for the cancellation.

In South Florida, canceled condo developments include 1390 Brickell Bay and ICE in Miami, Fort Lauderdale's The Waves Las Olas, and Promenade in Palm Beach County. WCI Communities Inc., a luxury homebuilder based in Bonita Spring, Fla., said in June that new orders for its high-rise condominiums fell by 84 percent in the second quarter. The company will now go forward with only three to five condo projects in 2006, down from as many as 15 to 17, mostly in Florida.

With housing looking increasingly anemic, it's not surprising that developers are bailing out.

Domb said he's gotten about half a dozen phone calls over the past four weeks from developers asking if he would like to buy their properties.

In May, the volume of apartment-to-condo conversions plunged to $334 million from $1.65 billion a year ago, said Gleb Nechayev, senior economist at Torto Wheaton Research, a real estate research firm in Boston owned by CB Richard Ellis. The all-time high was $4 billion, hit last September.

Builder confidence, as measured by the National Association of Home Builders/Wells Fargo Housing Market Index, fell in June to its lowest level since April 1995. Confidence took a hit due to rising mortgage rates, high home prices and investors and speculators fleeing the market.

The index surveyed builders of single-family homes, where the sales decline hasn't been as severe as for condos.

Jack McCabe, chief executive of McCabe Research and Consulting in Deerfield Beach, Fla., said desperate developers with finished condos are offering plenty of incentives in South Florida.

Freebies range from one year's free mortgage to the use of a yacht or upgraded kitchen packages. McCabe thinks some developers might even sell units at cost if condo sales continue to weaken.

McCabe believes the condo market, especially the luxury end, is at risk of a crash. Over the next few years, he sees prices falling by double-digit percentages.

The luxury condo surplus is to blame. McCabe said about 25,000 condos are under construction in Miami-Dade County, with two-thirds costing $700,000 or higher; another 25,000 units have gotten building permits and 50,000 have been announced for future construction.

McCabe said the median household income in the county qualifies local buyers for a $225,000 home, so the luxury units are targeted mainly toward affluent, out-of-state buyers.

Meanwhile, speculators have driven up prices by flipping units, he said. But they're now leaving the market -- driving down demand -- and putting up for sale properties they own, adding to the glut.

Aside from Miami, he said areas at risk include Boston, San Diego, Las Vegas, Seattle, Chicago, Orlando, Washington, D.C., and Manhattan.

A big part of the problem is that many condo projects are priced high, in part because developers have to recoup the high prices they paid for land. But most buyers can't afford it.

"The sweet spot of the market is probably $250,000 to $700,000," Domb said. "That's what the majority of the population can afford. Many condos are priced higher. That's part of the problem."

Tell that to The Donald. Real estate mogul Donald Trump told the Associated Press that he's going ahead with his 45-story waterfront luxury high rise called Trump Tower Philadelphia.

"It's doing fine," Trump said. "It's been intense. So many people want to move there."

He added interest has been high for the project, which he said doesn't surprise him because his name sells.

No surprises on any of those projects going down. Hopefully some of the bad projects will be "weeded" out with the slowdown.......What are the prospects for the project you helped design,sb??? :|

oh sbaumberger, always willing to come out of the shadows to announce bad news. ;)

But after reading the article, I have come to conclude that we are fairing a bit better then a lot of other cities. I mean look at Vegas, there has been a complete fall out as it seems. And even if we were to lose a good number of projects, its not like whats been going on hasn't already changed SD for the good.

I look at the slowdown as a good thing. The market has been run by speculators for quite a while now and the steep prices kept downtown largely a rich person's playground. They've priced out alot of what a "real" downtown needs in order to be relevant and care I say it, vibrant. Towers are good and all but activity and stability is what will keep the construction train humming along in the long term.

^^I agree. These lots won't stay empty forever. It's just a healthy market correction. Most of those stalled projects were "ehhhhh" anyways. Especially Triangle and 11th&B. I just hope they don't scrap the Embassy project in Little Italy.

Here are some interesting renderings to go along with SDFan's posted article:
http://sandiegometro.com/images/0608/coverstory2_2large.jpg
While the architecture of each building in Pacific Gateway must meet detailed city design standards, the $1.2 billion project will transform an area now home to a nearly 80 year old military building.

http://sandiegometro.com/images/0608/coverstory2_3large.jpg
Plans for Pacific Gateway call for extra wide corridors down the streets, opening up view corridors to the water that presently do not exist because of the mass of the existing Navy Broadway Complex.

^^I agree. These lots won't stay empty forever. It's just a healthy market correction. Most of those stalled projects were "ehhhhh" anyways. Especially Triangle and 11th&B. I just hope they don't scrap the Embassy project in Little Italy.

Here are some interesting renderings to go along with SDFan's posted article:
http://sandiegometro.com/images/0608/coverstory2_2large.jpg
While the architecture of each building in Pacific Gateway must meet detailed city design standards, the $1.2 billion project will transform an area now home to a nearly 80 year old military building.

http://sandiegometro.com/images/0608/coverstory2_3large.jpg
Plans for Pacific Gateway call for extra wide corridors down the streets, opening up view corridors to the water that presently do not exist because of the mass of the existing Navy Broadway Complex.


If people really think that that is not a quality development project then they are crazy. Yeah, there may be different opinions on architectural style preference, but that is one solid solid solid looking development right there. I have no doubt it will be terrific. If it were my decision construction would start tomorrow.

Thanks for all of the updates, All.

I'm off to Vancouver to see what San Diego's future may look like ;) I'll try to post some pics when I get back.

what do you guys see for developers of these "proposed" high-rise condo projects in downtown? from what it appears, most developers are afraid that there is too much supply scheduled to come out on the market, right as real estate sales slump. Is there still a market for these high-rise developers, so should they just get out while they still can?
Also, living in LA... i'm curious as to what factors would drive people to live in downtown SD as opposed to places like La Jolla?

Also, living in LA... i'm curious as to what factors would drive people to live in downtown SD as opposed to places like La Jolla?
Changing demographics and consumer preference. La jolla people tend to be the executives, the CEOS and the administrators. Even those that are not largely of this type live in high rises a bit more inland. Downtown living is more suited for the yuppies and the hipsters(that can afford it). Then there's simply those that are tired of suburban living, irregardless of thier economic class.

oh sbaumberger, always willing to come out of the shadows to announce bad news. ;) Nice. This isn't meant to be bad news. That is unless you slavishly applaud all new development downtown. A little diversity, including some new civic, retail and office product will go a long way to revitalizing the long-neglected areas of the city. More of the same condo-schlock will only turn the rest of downtown into a bigger version of the Marina district with its reverse-commuting car culture.

And thanks chicbicyclist for the diversity of opinion. :)

What are the prospects for the project you helped design,sb??? Except for the ones already underway - Hard Rock, DiamondView, Breeza - they're all dead. Except for the possible exception of Mondrian, which is on life-support at the moment. If it is saved, then it will most likely be due to its rental component - the for-sale market here is dead. Here's a rundown of the ones that I know first-hand have been cancelled: Eschelon, Laundry Lofts, Pinnacle, 17th & G, G Lofts East, Katalyst, Wonder Bread, Dynasty Lofts, Front & Cedar, Grand Pacific. So hopefully you can forgive my negativity.

I just hope they don't scrap the Embassy project in Little Italy.The reason for the "I told you so" is my guess two years ago that for a condo project to get built it needed to get out of the ground by June '06, and it looks like that's exactly what's happening. So say goodbye to Embassy, 445 West Ash and all the other condos still on the boards. :(

Is there still a market for these high-rise developers, so should they just get out while they still can? They've been getting out for the past year, very quietly selling off the marginal properties and getting the land they can't sell permitted for the biggest possible building. The real action right now is in the office sector, with more activity than downtown has seen since the 80's.

i'm curious as to what factors would drive people to live in downtown SD as opposed to places like La Jolla?Well, if you believe the marketing hype, it's so you can have the "urban" experience. By any measure though, very little of downtown could truly be considered urban - much of it is still one-dimensional and remains very pedestrian unfriendly. It's well documented that most of the new residents that CCDC boasts of are actually driving out to the suburbs to work. And La Jolla has had practically zero residential construction in this cycle - the little supply that has been added is ultra-high-end. The median price of a home there (including condos & detached houses) is well above $1,000,000. Can you tell that the housing market is completely out of whack?

Nice. This isn't meant to be bad news. That is unless you slavishly applaud all new development downtown. A little diversity, including some new civic, retail and office product will go a long way to revitalizing the long-neglected areas of the city. More of the same condo-schlock will only turn the rest of downtown into a bigger version of the Marina district with its reverse-commuting car culture.

Joking!! Thats what the wink is for. ;) (=joking)

Anyways.

Have a nice trip sd_urban, bring back some good pictures.

The real action right now is in the office sector, with more activity than downtown has seen since the 80's.

IS THIS REALLY TRUE???

By any measure though, very little of downtown could truly be considered urban - much of it is still one-dimensional and remains very pedestrian unfriendly.

I agree. All those one way streets are not good for bicyclists either. I actually notice more "urbanity" in the University Avenue(Hillcrest/North Park/City Heights) and Adams Avenue(University Heights/Normal Heights/Kensington) corridors than downtown right now. Mixed-use, alot of pedestrianism, and diversity is more pronounced in those latter communities. Of course, office jobs are still lacking but what part of urban San Diego can't use more of them?

Except for the ones already underway - Hard Rock, DiamondView, Breeza - they're all dead. Except for the possible exception of Mondrian, which is on life-support at the moment. If it is saved, then it will most likely be due to its rental component - the for-sale market here is dead. Here's a rundown of the ones that I know first-hand have been cancelled: Eschelon, Laundry Lofts, Pinnacle, 17th & G, G Lofts East, Katalyst, Wonder Bread, Dynasty Lofts, Front & Cedar, Grand Pacific. So hopefully you can forgive my negativity.

On the contrary, G Lofts East will still be built. OM is only building rental stock and they have a ZERO land base on that project. CCDC's website is incorrect calling that project a condo project. OM just takes a long time to do anything, and last I checked, that project will break ground soon, only because it is a rental. If you take the land base out of any project, it easily pencils. The problem now is that all the land is now being marketted by land brokers as highest and best use as luxury condos, even though everyone knows, without a following, like Bosa has, they won't necessarily sell. I would agree that all other projects are dead, for now, except for the one's that are built with no land base, or they can get the financing (Bosa's Bayside, Pacific & E, and Citymark's Pier). But, at the same time, when you read that Mcmillan just bought a 10k lot for 5.5 million to build condos, I can't see it dying, and them tying up that kind of money for the market to cycle. We'll just have to wait and see.

[Quote]The reason for the "I told you so" is my guess two years ago that for a condo project to get built it needed to get out of the ground by June '06, and it looks like that's exactly what's happening. So say goodbye to Embassy, 445 West Ash and all the other condos still on the boards. :(

Sbaumberger; As always thanks for the info. I'm pretty much on the same page with you with how the condo projects have gone.As I said,no real surprises.Real estate is all about cycles,so here we go again.....I am curious about a few projects however,if you have any info. on them since they look ready but haven't officially broken ground yet.Any clue to the status of Bosas' Bayside tower,Pier in little italy,Cosmopolitan square, and Library tower.Are these projects at risk? Also any clue to what's up with the Marriott Renaissance Hotel in the gaslamp? Again, thanks for the info. and keep us updated on that Mondrian project...........

Oh yeah, I'd be curious about your opinion of the Navy Broadway complex too. Think it's up to standard?

Except for the ones already underway - Hard Rock, DiamondView, Breeza - they're all dead. Except for the possible exception of Mondrian, which is on life-support at the moment. If it is saved, then it will most likely be due to its rental component - the for-sale market here is dead. Here's a rundown of the ones that I know first-hand have been cancelled: Eschelon, Laundry Lofts, Pinnacle, 17th & G, G Lofts East, Katalyst, Wonder Bread, Dynasty Lofts, Front & Cedar, Grand Pacific. So hopefully you can forgive my negativity.



Do you know if Dynasty Lofts is on the block to be sold?

[Quote] Also any clue to what's up with the Marriott Renaissance Hotel in the gaslamp? Again, thanks for the info. and keep us updated on that Mondrian project...........

The current developer is having a lot of issues in dealing with the city for the Marriot project. I believe it's an issue more about entitlement and permits rather than financing. :runaway:

^^Isn't that the site where La Gran Havana used to be? If so, why did they have to demolish the building before permitting and entitlement issues were resolved. :mad:


Anyways, my trip to Vancouver was fantastic. I gotta say that San Diego has a long way to go before we even come close to what downtown Vancouver has to offer. While I'm still not crazy about the monotonous skyline/buildings (I'll post pics later) , it's street-level/pedestrian activity and encompassing seawall (think the future north embarcadero plan, but extend it for about 10 miles) is much to be desired.

What impressed me most is how the downtown neigborhoods intertwined so easily (Yaletown, Gastown, West End, etc). Imagine walking from Little Italy to East Village via Cortez Hill or the Marina District without having a break in pedestrian activity/streetlife, i.e, restaurants, shopping, parks, plazas.

Another great thing is that most streets led to the water or seawall, all the while letting you see the mountains and water from nearly every major street. The view corridors let you know that the water and mountains surrounded you. It still kills me that our MLK Promenade doesn't run along the waterfront side of the convention center.

I could go on and on, but will spare everyone the boredom. It was quite humbling to experience what a nearly perfect downtown (sans the architecture) could be like if planned right. The good thing is we still have the potential to get there. I actually talked to a Vancouverite who had heard that San Diego and Vancouver shared similarities, which I took as a huge compliment.

On the flight home, I sat to a man who lived part of the year in downtown Vancouver and the other part at Park Row in the Marina District DTSD (Lucky guy if you ask me). He kept telling me that DTSD could be just like DTVan if our Port District wasn't so interested in making money. He said he loves living in both cities, and acknowledged that DTSD still has a way to go to reach it's potential. He seems to think it can happen though.

Maybe one day it will :yes:


Take Note: I had perfect weather during my visit, and was told and am very sure that the city is quite different during the drearier times of the year.

^^San Diego definitely has the potential to be like Vancouver in terms of urban vibrancy. I can imagine SD has a long way to go but it's not like Vancouver became what it is overnight. Nice to hear you had a good time. Can't wait to see pics. :)

Glad you had a nice trip.

Hey I just took the CCDC tour of downtown. It was a fun way to see the project sites in person. Although that when I was finally at the site I at times knew more than the tourguide because of being on this message board. It is given on the first and 3 Saturday of every month. I would really encourage anyone who is not a downtown resident to take it since you will have many projects pointed out to you from a nice coach. I will post some of the pictures I took from the tour.

Hey I tried forever to figure out how to post pictures to the thread. I tried just cutting and pasting in to the text box and that did not work, and then I tried using the insert picture button and it wanted me to type in the file location for each picture. Is there an easier way because this is ridiculous. :bash:

you have to post the images on a image site like imageshack.us

they work well, then just copy paste the hot link from there to your post. its kind of tedious, but works.

Hey I just took the CCDC tour of downtown. It was a fun way to see the project sites in person. Although that when I was finally at the site I at times knew more than the tourguide because of being on this message board. It is given on the first and 3 Saturday of every month. I would really encourage anyone who is not a downtown resident to take it since you will have many projects pointed out to you from a nice coach. I will post some of the pictures I took from the tour.

Yeah that happend to me when I went down to the CCDC center near Horton Plaza. The man answering my questions told me the height limit downtown was 400ft...

I can imagine SD has a long way to go but it's not like Vancouver became what it is overnight.
So true. I believe that Vancouver has gone through multiple downtown residential boom cycles in the past 30 years or so, while we've only gone through one that began about 4 years ago. I guarantee that our best years are still ahead of us :)


As promised, here are some Vancouver pics. I posted them here as a comparison to San Diego, but you'll notice that some of the shots look so much like our city. Separated at birth perhaps?



It's not a big stretch to imagine that this could be the view of DTSD from Coronado in the future.
http://static.flickr.com/70/209831174_58d47893d6_b.jpg

http://static.flickr.com/88/209827331_42142fb646_b.jpg

The ugly commie block towers of the West End neighborhood
http://static.flickr.com/98/209831173_1f5d62f7a0_b.jpg

My biggest fear is that our skyline will end up looking like this. I'm not digging the monotonous look of exposed concrete and green glass.
http://static.flickr.com/88/209827332_f43cc96f00_b.jpg

Check out the shorter siblings of our Pinnacle Museum Tower
http://static.flickr.com/88/209827334_49cd091dee_b.jpg

Gastown looks similar to the Gaslamp, right down to the streetlights
http://static.flickr.com/71/209820886_97aa9b372e_b.jpg

http://static.flickr.com/89/209824429_1d7dbb31e2_b.jpg

More street level pics
http://static.flickr.com/98/209824428_0b787e1e64_b.jpg

http://static.flickr.com/80/209831175_c30c53b52f_b.jpg

These waterfront pics all are part of downtown Vancouver.
http://static.flickr.com/70/209824432_edcc95b2af_b.jpg

http://static.flickr.com/91/209824431_93f07f5f3c_b.jpg

http://static.flickr.com/85/209831170_146e64c85f_b.jpg

http://static.flickr.com/78/209824434_4dec8d7601_b.jpg

http://static.flickr.com/96/209833958_b052774fc4_b.jpg

http://static.flickr.com/86/209833959_95f0a4a20f_b.jpg

I wish our convention center jutted out into the bay so it didn't wall it off
http://static.flickr.com/75/209833963_750d8a05be_b.jpg

Third Beach in Stanley Park
http://static.flickr.com/89/209831176_4e5584b5ba_b.jpg

Hey I just took the CCDC tour of downtown. It was a fun way to see the project sites in person. Although that when I was finally at the site I at times knew more than the tourguide because of being on this message board. It is given on the first and 3 Saturday of every month. I would really encourage anyone who is not a downtown resident to take it since you will have many projects pointed out to you from a nice coach. I will post some of the pictures I took from the tour.
It would be cool if a few of us here met up to go on this tour together. We could probably teach the guide a few things or two ;)

As long as the Port and the California Coastal Commission are in existance, our waterfront will NEVER look like that. Notice all the residential towers that would be on "Tidelands"?

thank goodness for the port and costal commission after looking at those pictures I was getting aprehensive.

As long as the Port and the California Coastal Commission are in existance, our waterfront will NEVER look like that. Notice all the residential towers that would be on "Tidelands"?
So true. Some of the towers in Vancouver went right up to the water, which is good only for residents but bad for the public. It's saving grace is the uninterupted miles of walking/biking/green space that line the waterfront.

Here in San Diego, we have rental car parking lots and hotels that line the bay :mad:

Oh and Im looking for the redering of that Hillcrest Project...I lost it...So if anyone has it, post it and I will list it.

Here are some recent renderings of the controversial Hillcrest Project -

http://i4.photobucket.com/albums/y120/Jaygergon/downtown%20development%202/viewatuni3rd.jpg

http://i4.photobucket.com/albums/y120/Jaygergon/downtown%20development%202/RetailsResidentEntrance_1.jpg

http://i4.photobucket.com/albums/y120/Jaygergon/downtown%20development%202/Proposedsiteplan.jpg


.....and more projects to add to your "Outside Downtown" list, SDfan


6th and Palm project adjacent to Balboa Park
http://i4.photobucket.com/albums/y120/Jaygergon/downtown%20development%202/6thPalm.jpg

Alicante in Bankers Hill recently topped out
http://i4.photobucket.com/albums/y120/Jaygergon/downtown%20development/alicante.bmp

Bad quality pic of National City's Revolution project by same developer of Embassy1414
http://i4.photobucket.com/albums/y120/Jaygergon/downtown%20development/Revolution-R2.jpg

National City's Cove at San Diego Bay proposal
http://i4.photobucket.com/albums/y120/Jaygergon/downtown%20development%202/covesd1.jpg


**There's also the Monte Verde proposal in UTC with its four towers at 39-stories each. Not sure if this is still alive or not.


I personally hate the high rise tower's lack of color with the exposed concrete look, but how does everyone else like this tower?
I'm with you in hopes that this color pic I found of Park Terrace is still accurate
http://i4.photobucket.com/albums/y120/Jaygergon/downtown%20development/scan0001-1.jpg

thank goodness for the port and costal commission after looking at those pictures I was getting aprehensive.

Because of the Coastal Commission and Port of San Diego, our Bay is lined with parking lots, rental car lots, and heavy industry. They are the ones that restrict uses to tourism and maritime industry ONLY. Not for uses to benifit the population that lives along that coast.

Hey guys,
The model for the Navy Broadway Complex is up on the big model in CCDC. I'll post pictures tonight.

The last I heard about the Hillcrest project was that it was very likely to happen because of the public parking it was going to provide. Even NIMBY's have a price! hahaha

I really hope the project happens by the way, but I do hope they use materials other than just stucco - at least near the base. IMO, stucco is fine on Mediterranean homes, but it looks a little cheap on larger structures like that.

Great Editorial From the Daily Transcript:


Editorial: CCDC needs to get off the dime
Wednesday, August 9, 2006
Print E-Mail
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


If ever there was a situation that demonstrates just how woefully the city of San Diego and many of its so-called leaders have fallen, it is the ongoing controversy over the U.S. Navy/Manchester Development Group plan for redevelopment of the Navy Broadway Complex.
Centre City Development Corp. needs to get off the dime, stop the delays and extended periods of study and give the green light to the Pacific Gateway project on the site of the Navy Broadway Complex.
The present agreement ends Jan. 1, 2007, and if the land falls into the Base Realignment and Closure system, everyone will lose. It is unlikely the city or any other local jurisdiction will ever regain meaningful "say" over how the land is to be used in the future.
The current CCDC board of directors seems to be contributing to, rather than seeking solutions for, the logjam that can doom a project vital to the interests of San Diego and the U.S. Navy.
Manchester Development Group, the entity selected by the Navy to carry out the project, has a successful record with similar sites exemplified by the Hyatt Grand Regency and Marriott Hotel. The projected total cost for the project is presently estimated to be in excess of $1.3 billion. When complete it will activate the western waterfront with pedestrian-scaled mixed-use ground-level retail along with entertainment, restaurants, museums and cultural facilities complementing its parks, hotels and office accommodations.
Some simply do not like Doug Manchester and do not want him or his company involved. They ignore the fact that the agreement gives the Navy the right to select the developer. Attempts to delay this project aim to make it financially difficult to proceed and potentially force Manchester's company to withdraw.
In recent posturing, members of the board and other interested parties seem to be ignoring the fact that the Navy Broadway Complex is federal land. In 1920, San Diego citizens voted by a 99.3 percent margin to grant the site to the Navy.
Local jurisdictions usually don't have as much input and say on development of federal land. It would not be surprising if the Navy now wishes it had not agreed in 1992 to give CCDC staff and directors (but NOT the City Council) the right to check ultimate development plans for agreement compliance. It is wise enough, however, to know that the agreement made 14 years ago must be upheld in good faith --- at least until Jan. 1, 2007.
CCDC needs to have the courage to act upon the fundamental reason why it and the Navy spent five years reaching their development agreement: The U.S. Navy wanted to maintain its command for this region on the site given to it by the voters of San Diego in 1920, and CCDC, acting on behalf of the San Diego City Council, wanted to participate in how the site would be redeveloped as well as keep the Navy command downtown.
This is the right project at the right time. CCDC is still charged with working on behalf of the City Council to remove blight in the Centre City Project area, and the Navy Broadway Complex is a poster child for blight. San Diegans still need and want jobs and an expansion of the local economy. The Navy still wants a state-of-the-art facility on its land, and is willing to approve a long-term lease with a private-sector developer to get that facility without cost to federal taxpayers. The hospitality sector still needs more hotel rooms to support the San Diego Convention Center, not to mention the cruise ship industry's necessity for an area to entertain the hundreds of thousands of visitors entering San Diego in the off season. San Diegans living downtown also need more retail. The North Embarcadero Visionary Plan is now far closer to realization than it was even a couple of years ago and this project will be the catalyst needed to make it a reality.
There is nothing basically wrong with the developer's solution. CCDC and other local government need to stand aside and let it happen.

The Vantage Point situation is just sad. It's probably one of the most impressive projects being built in SD and yet it can't seem to get going. I have to assume they're having some sort of supply chain problems. Does anyone have a clue as to why this project is ailing?

Because of the Coastal Commission and Port of San Diego, our Bay is lined with parking lots, rental car lots, and heavy industry. They are the ones that restrict uses to tourism and maritime industry ONLY. Not for uses to benifit the population that lives along that coast.

Sarcasm.

Sarcasm.

No sarcasm here. The only reason Manchester will be able to build office at NBC is because the Navy owns the land, and they trump the Coastal Commission and the Port.

Hey guys,
The model for the Navy Broadway Complex is up on the big model in CCDC. I'll post pictures tonight.

It is? Good, hope those pictures come soon, thanks.

-------

Oh and thank you sd_urban for the pictures, I will post them on the list as soon as I can.

*waiting for charitorae's pics of the NBC model*

San Diego Metro:

Little Italy spectacularly achieves its ‘goals’
with housing, businesses and residents all prospering

http://sandiegometro.com/images/0608/living_5.jpg http://sandiegometro.com/images/0608/living_6.jpg http://sandiegometro.com/images/0608/living_4.jpg



When Italy played France for the World Cup in July, there was just one place in San Diego to be: in Little Italy, where 15,000 people packed India Street to watch the game on a Megatron screen brought in by the neighborhood association. “Little Italy is that kind of place,” says resident Pasquale Iolele. “It’s a neighborhood where people are full of life and embrace tradition.”

The neighborhood was born in the 19th century, when Italian tuna fishing families arrived. Early maps show nary a road in Mission Hills but carefully drawn streets from Ash to Laurel, east to the first ridge. The first fire station was built in 1906.

As the rest of San Diego filled in around it, tuna fishing gave way to commerce. About a third of the neighborhood was sacrificed to build Interstate 5 and much of what remained fell into an semi-industrial footprint, not quite Downtown and not quite Mission Hills. But it never lost its heritage, signaled to the world by the family-owned restaurants along India Street and Our Lady of the Rosary Church on the corner of State and Date streets.





Little Italy’s fishing heritage is reflected on sidewalk banners.


In the last seven years, the neighborhood has grown and changed. Where parking lots, tire stores and car dealers stood, new businesses and condominium developments are springing up. Already a haven for artists and galleries, the bayside neighborhood attracted designers and architects as well as thousands of new residents who’ve snapped up the modern, quirky condominiums as fast as they hit the market.

“The spiritual base hasn’t changed,” says Marco LiMandri, chairman of the Little Italy Association. “But we have more public spaces and more public art than before, we have view corridors so we can always feel the presence of the bay and there’s more to come.”

For the past five years, people have moved into the neighborhood in droves, into nearly 2,000 new condominiums and townhouses that are part of the Centre City Development Corp.’s revitalization of Downtown. Hundreds more are slated for construction by the end of 2007.

Ecco Lofts, 10 homes designed for usable space, came online in March. A few remain available, reports Judy Finkbiner, the manager of Columbo Venture LLC. “There’s a lot of interest because of the neighborhood – it’s such a great place to live,” Finkbiner says.

The changes are blending well with the community character.

“The whole area has changed dramatically but what has stayed constant is the sense of neighborhood,” Finkbiner says. “We still have a large Italian population and a large live-and-work population, so it stays really comfortable, with people watching out for each other and great walkability.”

The boom has drawn a dozen new restaurants and invigorated the ones already there. Filippi’s, one of the longest standing Italian restaurants on India Street, has hungry people waiting in even longer lines for those red-checkered tablecloths and marinara sauce on weekends. The Busalacchis have opened new restaurants and the peak hours at Mimmo’s Italian Village have shifted from lunch to include the growing dinner crowd.





CityMark Development LLC and CLB Partners will break ground in the next few months on Pier, a condominium development designed by Martinez + Cutri.


And the neighborhood is alive with events. On Kettner Boulevard, The Arts & Design District sponsors Kettner Nights, a party with shops. San Diego ArtWalk has found its footing in Little Italy, and the neighborhood is now home to the Italian Festa in the fall and Carnevale in the spring. It has its own bocce ball tournament and stickball league.

“We make sure our events promote and celebrate the character of the neighborhood,” Di Landri says.

Residents lay the credit for much of that sense of neighborhood, and the impressive advances towards the feeling of openness and warmth in the neighborhood to the Little Italy Association. “This is about their hard work and amazing planning,” Iolele says. “It doesn’t feel overpopulated, and it’s the kind of place where you want to hang out, where your friends want to come and visit.”

In the next few months, CityMark Development LLC and CLB Partners will break ground on Pier, the firm’s third condominium development in Little Italy.

The building follows the Downtown trend of mixed use, retail on the ground floors and residence above; that’s based on the way old European cities are built. But it has a distinctly modern look; two towers that will hold 230 units and 10,500 square feet of retail space. Designed by Martinez + Cutri, Pier will have three distinct areas, all reminiscent of cargo ships, the pier and sailboats that dot the bay in its sight lines.





Russ Haley, principal of CityMark, which broke ground last year on Aperture, an 11-story, mixed-use condominium building in Little Italy.


“It’s a landmark building inspired by the bay and the tradition of this great neighborhood,” says CityMark principal Russ Haley. “We have a lot invested in this community and Pier will be our absolute signature building.”

Pier will rise at the site of the old Metro Volkswagen Audi dealership, on Kettner between Fir and Grape streets. To the west, residents will have a view of the landmark County Administration Building and a front seat for the development of the North Embarcadero project, an effort of the city, county and Port that will transform the waterfront in a more pedestrian friendly environment. The Trolley and Amtrak stations are within a few blocks.

CityMark finished Doma, a seven-story condominium building on Kettner between Date and Fir streets, in 2003 and broke ground last year on Aperture, an 11-story, mixed-use condominium building.

It is among a dozen developers, including K. Hovnanian Associates, which built Acqua Vista, Lennar Communities and Camden Development, that have built apartments and condos in the neighborhood since 2000.

While the change seemed sudden, it started with a small gesture that thrust a secret favorite of locals onto a larger stage.





The condo development on Kettner Boulevard, across the street from the site of CityMark’s Pier building site.


In 1999, the Little Italy sign went up over India Street as the neighborhood announced itself to the world. Since then, the look of India and Kettner streets has changed from a commercial corridor to a charming group of shops, restaurants and galleries that force a passerby to linger.

LiMandri convinced Little Italy residents to assess themselves and fund the neighborhood association in 1997, and then went back for more a few years later. The association has been powerful and effective, convincing developers and donors to fund construction of four piazzas — so far.

“It’s amazing to see what the association has done in the last decade,” Haley says. “The incredible amount of work done really contributes to the fiber of the neighborhood. And the meetings are great because the established members are welcoming the new people and new ideas.”

The quick work to get the World Cup broadcast party in place was the epitome of a committed and effective neighborhood. “In a couple days — just a couple of days — they got permits to shut down India Street, got that huge screen, set up sound and security and vendors, and created this incredible small town atmosphere for the game,” Haley says.





The Little Italy sign on India Street was erected in 1999.


In 2003, the association broke ground on Piazza Basilone, dedicated to the local boys who never came home from the wars of the 20th Century, LiMandri says. Named for Medal of Honor hero John Basilone, who died in World War II, it is one of the neighborhood’s four piazzas in four blocks along India Street.

Besides the art, trees and fountains, the lovely spaces are full of inviting places to sit and stroll — and that’s one of the most common pastimes in the neighborhood.

“I want people to walk down Little Italy streets and have every step be an experience,” LiMandri says. “We are doing things like hanging flower baskets and building piazzas so our neighborhood remains a place to stop and chat, to know your neighbors, to be glad you live here. Before we’re done, you’ll see chairs on every corner, you’ll see landscaping on every corner, you’ll see hanging plants on every corner. Every step we take, every idea we bring in is to make this more of a neighborhood.”

The reason for the "I told you so" is my guess two years ago that for a condo project to get built it needed to get out of the ground by June '06, and it looks like that's exactly what's happening. So say goodbye to Embassy, 445 West Ash and all the other condos still on the boards. :(


No Not Embassy!:bleep:

Seriously though, I wouldn't go too far as to say that they are totally 100 %scrapped. I would think that they're maybe laying low, waiting for the next mini-boom to happen. They have too much invested into downtown SD to just tear up plans and walk away (too many empty lots to just ignore as well). I'm sure that the developers have seen Downtown SD's potential to be a truly great world class CBD. IMO both the Navy Broadway Complex and the Ballpark Village will set off more interest into more development just as Petco Park did (probably not in the same magnitude).

The Busalacchi's is in Little Italy???? Nah uh, it's in Hillcrest.

I never forgave Little Italy for putting up that sign, what a copy cat! The sign distinction should only be given to the four originals(5, some say) in the uptown area.

Seriously though, I wouldn't go too far as to say that they are totally 100 %scrapped. I would think that they're maybe laying low, waiting for the next mini-boom to happen. They have too much invested into downtown SD to just tear up plans and walk away (too many empty lots to just ignore as well). I'm sure that the developers have seen Downtown SD's potential to be a truly great world class CBD. IMO both the Navy Broadway Complex and the Ballpark Village will set off more interest into more development just as Petco Park did (probably not in the same magnitude).The downtown condo market is over - the next mini-boom in hotels is already well under way, and the next mini-boom will probably be mostly office buildings (if we are lucky). I just can't see the condo market recovering any time soon, and in the meantime the best locations will be gobbled up by newer proposals that actually pencil out. IMO neither NBC or BV are going to happen, at least as currently envisioned - but that may be more than I can elaborate on in one post. Condotels are condos, and the California Coastal Commission will never let these "hotels" get built at NBC.

On the contrary, G Lofts East will still be built. OM is only building rental stock and they have a ZERO land base on that project. CCDC's website is incorrect calling that project a condo project. OM just takes a long time to do anything, and last I checked, that project will break ground soon, only because it is a rental. If you take the land base out of any project, it easily pencils. The problem now is that all the land is now being marketted by land brokers as highest and best use as luxury condos, even though everyone knows, without a following, like Bosa has, they won't necessarily sell. I would agree that all other projects are dead, for now, except for the one's that are built with no land base, or they can get the financing (Bosa's Bayside, Pacific & E, and Citymark's Pier). But, at the same time, when you read that Mcmillan just bought a 10k lot for 5.5 million to build condos, I can't see it dying, and them tying up that kind of money for the market to cycle. We'll just have to wait and see.Well that would obviously be great news if OM is still moving on G Lofts. The whole time I worked on the project with AVRP it was designed to be a for-sale building, and then suddenly went on hold earlier this year. I did hear that KMA had picked up the project (which makes sense if it is being converted to rentals), but my source at AVRP told me that the project was dead Laundry-Lofts-style. But kudos to OM if they can pull it off - that block is in really bad shape, and it seems like a good project for the neighborhood.

Oh, and you can add Strata to the cancelled list BTW.

http://static.flickr.com/85/209831170_146e64c85f_b.jpg

I'm going to go on a little bit of a rant here about the SD vs. Vancouver comparison. In the photo above, THERE ARE NO CARS. As has been said here before, this type of development cannot take place in San Diego because of the Port and the CCC. As a result SD is failing to capitalize on its natural assets. Before we can envision a downtown San Diego that looks and feels similar to Vancouver, we need to envision a radically-remodeled (if not scrapped) Port and California Coastal Commission.

Here is a quote from Larry Beasley, codirector of planning for Vancouver - it seemed especially relevant to the NBC discussion:
"The following are basic ingredients combined to create a balanced, sustainable society: rapid transport infrastructure, enabling inhabitants to commute by foot rather than car, preserving a relatively low-density environment, and ensuring that the right balance of civic governance and growth management is struck so that "the city is planned by the city and not the developers." Urban Land - July 2006

Here are some photos of mine from April 2005:
http://www.baumbergerstudio.com/vancouver1.jpg
http://www.baumbergerstudio.com/vancouver2.jpg
http://www.baumbergerstudio.com/vancouver3.jpg
http://www.baumbergerstudio.com/vancouver4.jpg
http://www.baumbergerstudio.com/vancouver5.jpg

Here are some photos of mine from April 2005:
http://www.baumbergerstudio.com/vancouver1.jpg
http://www.baumbergerstudio.com/vancouver2.jpg
http://www.baumbergerstudio.com/vancouver3.jpg
http://www.baumbergerstudio.com/vancouver4.jpg
http://www.baumbergerstudio.com/vancouver5.jpg

Great pics...Vancouver is such a gorgeous city!

I realize some folks don't like Vancouver's architecture and/or how so many of the buildings look alike, but I REALLY LOVE that look. I doubt San Diego's skyline would ever end up looking like the above photos because there seems to already be a lot more variety in building appearances, but if it did, I don't think it would be the end of the world at all. Worse things could happen, ya know. 

I'm also anxious to see the NBC model photos. I really like how that project had turned out and I hope everyone can get their crap together enough to get the project approved.

hngcm- Im not on SSP (can't get an account) but thankfully I read that forum at least :)

Heres the link to the article you wanted on the I-15 railway:

http://www.nctimes.com/articles/2006/06/27/news/top_stories/09_02_276_26_06.txt

sbaumberger, could you make a list of all of the cancelled projects in downtown for us?

How 'bout some San Diego?
http://forum.skyscraperpage.com/showthread.php?t=112908

hngcm- Im not on SSP (can't get an account) but thankfully I read that forum at least :)

Heres the link to the article you wanted on the I-15 railway:

http://www.nctimes.com/articles/2006/06/27/news/top_stories/09_02_276_26_06.txt


Why not?

And it be cool if they can get that off the ground, seeing how HSR isn't going anywhere soon...

Here's a small rendering of the latest version of library Tower. I think it looks more interesting than the previous one -


http://i4.photobucket.com/albums/y120/Jaygergon/downtown%20development%202/LibraryTower.jpg

Library Tower was granted redesign approval. Located on the north side of K St between Park Blvd and 13th. (East Village – Lower East Side)

Overview: 41-story tower with a 3-story base and a 6-story building; 38’ and 478’ in height; 158 market-rate and 16 affordable condominiums; 1-, 2-, 3-bedroom units; 10,680 square feet of ground floor retail; 322 parking spaces, including 6 guest spaces, in a 4-level underground garage.

Due to the two fault lines that traverse the site, the building is a tall, slender, rectangular shape. Large expansive light green glass windows with projecting and recessed balconies add depth to this contemporary structure.

A 6-story affordable housing building is punctuated with red and gold colored concrete, purple metal facades, glass canopies, and a metal trellis.

Both the tower and 6-story building offer roof top amenities for residents. And, for the pet lover, a dog park is incorporated within the project.

Why not?

And it be cool if they can get that off the ground, seeing how HSR isn't going anywhere soon...

They don't accept hotmail, yahoo or gmail accounts anymore. Their loss. :D

Yeah it would be, the mountians are a big problem though. Cost wise at least.

Here's a small rendering of the latest version of librarty Tower. I think it looks more interesting than the previous one -


http://i4.photobucket.com/albums/y120/Jaygergon/downtown%20development%202/LibraryTower.jpg

Library Tower was granted redesign approval. Located on the north side of K St between Park Blvd and 13th. (East Village – Lower East Side)

Overview: 41-story tower with a 3-story base and a 6-story building; 38’ and 478’ in height; 158 market-rate and 16 affordable condominiums; 1-, 2-, 3-bedroom units; 10,680 square feet of ground floor retail; 322 parking spaces, including 6 guest spaces, in a 4-level underground garage.

Due to the two fault lines that traverse the site, the building is a tall, slender, rectangular shape. Large expansive light green glass windows with projecting and recessed balconies add depth to this contemporary structure.

A 6-story affordable housing building is punctuated with red and gold colored concrete, purple metal facades, glass canopies, and a metal trellis.

Both the tower and 6-story building offer roof top amenities for residents. And, for the pet lover, a dog park is incorporated within the project.

Oh I want this one to be built badly! The east village needs it.

I wonder how far that tower will get without the librarry making any significant progress. Its not much of a librarry tower without the librarry.

The tower looks awesome! Is it common practice to segeregate the affordable housing from the the market-rate units? Seems....too caste-ish to me. I guess the glorified "maid room" just rubs me the wrong way.

Are any of these neat looking buildings going to be affordable? or are they all for the "luxury market", which seems to be the only thing that exists these days...

Yes, but what I am sure that holds true is that 80% of the time the land is not as Prime of a location as the NBC location! It’s probably better than 80% in the case of NBC because of the very fact it’s such a premium location. The acquisition rate has declined dramatically since federal agencies have been forced to pay fair market values. This land easily has a market value in excess of $100 million. What are the odds some federal bureaucracy can justify spending that kind of dime on prime real estate it doesn’t need, especially at a time federal agencies are contracting? Considering that, it’s extremely unlikely this land would be acquired.
And the Nimbys. Except for the environmentalists, chances are, most of these people are also conservative. Why should thier opinion matter if the property and money is not exactly thiers? Nimbys aside, it’s reasonable that the public expect the development of public land to be for the benefit of the public, not one particular federal agency.

This is a money grab by the Navy, pure and simple. A true fiscal conservative would be more likely to support a modest structure at an existing secure base rather than an unnecessary gleaming new office tower on prime real estate. We’re talking about military offices here, not Deloitte and Touche. Come on.
… it's street-level/pedestrian activity and encompassing seawall (think the future north embarcadero plan, but extend it for about 10 miles) Exactly, the Vancouver waterfront is extremely accessible and running along a very large amount of it they have park space and/or beach. (Those pictures look terrific by the way.) They understand open space is not a “waste”. Also note that the water is not hidden from their public spaces (e.g. enclosed promenades), it’s contiguous with it. Such a no-brainer.
As long as the Port and the California Coastal Commission are in existance, our waterfront will NEVER look like that. (…) The only reason Manchester will be able to build office at NBC is because the Navy owns the land, and they trump the Coastal Commission and the Port. My understanding is that the Port also had their hand in the NBC development agreement which is why there are no condos or apartments and limited open space. The Port only wants things developed that they get $ from, which I believe does include office space.
Because of the Coastal Commission and Port of San Diego, our Bay is lined with parking lots, rental car lots, and heavy industry. They are the ones that restrict uses to tourism and maritime industry ONLY. Not for uses to benifit the population that lives along that coast. Exactly, and the same thing continues at NBC. There’s very little regard as to what’s in the public’s interest. These agencies really need to be restructured. Hopefully the city council will stand up for the public’s interest regarding NBC.

Oh I want this one to be built badly! The east village needs it.

Yep, I agree. Library Tower will help to extend the skyline further south and give East Village some needed height.

I wonder how far that tower will get without the librarry making any significant progress. Its not much of a librarry tower without the librarry.


I was thinking the same thing. Knowing this city, you know there's a "behind closed door" deal going on right now in regards to the new Main Library ;)

The tower looks awesome! Is it common practice to segeregate the affordable housing from the the market-rate units? Seems....too caste-ish to me. I guess the glorified "maid room" just rubs me the wrong way.
I thought the same thing. I thought most projects were required to have a certain number of affordable units within each project, but I could be wrong. This might be the first one to actually build a separate building for it, but I'm not sure of that either. Remember all of the hoopla when JMI proposed building a separate affordable housing structure outside of Ballpark Village?

Are any of these neat looking buildings going to be affordable? or are they all for the "luxury market", which seems to be the only thing that exists these days....
As mentioned above, many of the projects include a certain number of affordable units within them, but I don't think any of them are considered true affordable housing projects, except for maybe SmartCorner.

Exactly, the Vancouver waterfront is extremely accessible and running along a very large amount of it they have park space and/or beach. (Those pictures look terrific by the way.) They understand open space is not a “waste”. Also note that the water is not hidden from their public spaces (e.g. enclosed promenades), it’s contiguous with it. Such a no-brainer.

Exactly. What I loved about their waterfront was how everything connected without interuption for miles. It was possible to walk/bike along the same path for miles and not have to go thru (or even see) auto traffic for a long time. While our setting isn't as spectacular as Vancouver's there's no reason why we don't have a bayside trail that runs entirely along San Diego Bay from Downtown, to Shelter Island, and back down to Chula Vista, National City and Coronado. I also think there should be a bike or walking path across the Coronado-Bay Bridge. Damn, is that asking too much?

Renderings of some projects that I hadn't seen posted in the past:

10th & B
http://i107.photobucket.com/albums/m312/coastalsd/10thB2.jpg

KB Home plans to build a mixed-use project with 191 condominiums and approximately 14,000 square feet of retail space on the north side of B Street, between Tenth and Eleventh avenues.

15th & Market Promenade
http://i107.photobucket.com/albums/m312/coastalsd/15thmarket.jpg

CJUF II Lankford Market LLC has applied to build 274 condominiums on the west side of 15th Street between Market and G streets.

Grand Pacific Tower
http://i107.photobucket.com/albums/m312/coastalsd/Grand_Pacific_Tower.jpg

Mixed-use project featuring 86 residential units and approximately 3,100 sf of commercial space.

16th & J
http://i107.photobucket.com/albums/m312/coastalsd/Katalyst.jpg

8-story (91 feet high) mixed use residential building with 81 units over 4,100 square feet of ground level retail

Dynasty Lofts
http://i107.photobucket.com/albums/m312/coastalsd/Ps002.jpg

A 20-unit condominium project with 76 parking spaces and 2,900 square feet of retail on the southwest corner of Third and Island avenues, in the Asian Pacific Thematic Historic District.


In a past thread, someone asked about the status of Citi Point on 16th & C. The developer has sold (or is in the process of selling) that site to San Diego City College for constrcution of a parking structure.

As we probably all know, the downtown market is experiencing some growing pains right now with the amount of new for-sale units as well as resale units, but don't expect to see the elimination of all the projects on the drawing board that have not yet broken ground. With high price tags on some condo units, buyers are just sizing up each project, sometime even waiting until completion before actually snataching one up, as opposed to speculators in the past who just purchased product regardless of location/amenities, etc. to make a quick buck. It is going to take more retail sites (the opening of the Albertson's in the East Village will be huge and I'm sure downtown would also embrace a specialty grocer like Whole Foods Market or Trader Joe's), everyday convienences like casual dining (not luxury resturants), and especially public parks to attract people to call downtown home in the upcoming years. If you look at the migration patterns and the population growth expected in SD in the next 10-20 years, it's obvious that downtown will be able to absorb heaps more residential units (although San Diego always has been and always will be a "Beach Town" in my opinion).

Building a new sports arena has long been discussed and many civic leaders have expressed a desire and expectation that it be built downtown. Due to the plethora of problems dogging the city, all rooted in ineptitude and (mostly) corruption, this was put on hold indefinitely. However according to Friday’s UT, Sanders wants to put together a panel to evaluate stadium issues and possibly a new arena. Of course the Chargers dominated the rest of the article, however it looks like the arena issue may be coming back into play.

“San Diego Mayor Jerry Sanders has asked for a report from two city staffers about forming an empowered stadium authority that could aid the construction of a new stadium and look into building a new arena, among other responsibilities.”

Full story:
http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20060811/news_2m11stadium.html

This would be an incredible asset to downtown. If only they could do it in a respectable manner; speaking of which, there’s also a write up in the UT about the cover up of the bad Petco bond deal:

http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/metro/20060814-9999-1n14ballpark.html

Is the proposed Arena going to be basketball, hockey? or will it also hold rock concerts too? I doubt any new stadiums or sports venues are going to be built in the near future because of all the money problems the city has been having the last couple of years.

CoastalSD: Where did you find these renders?

This one I like. Lankford always puts out some nice projects . . .
http://i107.photobucket.com/albums/m312/coastalsd/15thmarket.jpg

Here are cleaner versions of some of those renderings:
http://www.baumbergerstudio.com/Grand Pacific 1.jpg
http://www.baumbergerstudio.com/Grand Pacific 2.jpg
http://www.baumbergerstudio.com/Grand Pacific 3.jpg
http://www.baumbergerstudio.com/Katalyst.jpg
http://www.baumbergerstudio.com/Dynasty Lofts.jpg

As we probably all know, the downtown market is experiencing some growing pains right now with the amount of new for-sale units as well as resale units, but don't expect to see the elimination of all the projects on the drawing board that have not yet broken ground. With high price tags on some condo units, buyers are just sizing up each project, sometime even waiting until completion before actually snataching one up, as opposed to speculators in the past who just purchased product regardless of location/amenities, etc. to make a quick buck. It is going to take more retail sites (the opening of the Albertson's in the East Village will be huge and I'm sure downtown would also embrace a specialty grocer like Whole Foods Market or Trader Joe's), everyday convienences like casual dining (not luxury resturants), and especially public parks to attract people to call downtown home in the upcoming years. If you look at the migration patterns and the population growth expected in SD in the next 10-20 years, it's obvious that downtown will be able to absorb heaps more residential units (although San Diego always has been and always will be a "Beach Town" in my opinion).I actually agree with most of what you said, except that I think the high-end condo market really is over. True, some of the projects on the boards in the absolute best locations (such as Bayside & Pier) may still move forward, but the vast majority of projects that haven't gotten out of the ground just aren't going to happen. And they won't happen for a lot of the reasons you point out: there so little retail space downtown, and yet new space that is coming on to the market remains vacant. Albertson's will help, but most people going to grocery stores drive so I wouldn't overestimate its impact. CCDC has yet to deliver on the public parks side of the equation and that will be a real limiter on future residential growth as well. The East Village for instance just isn't that great of a place to live right now or in the foreseeable future. You're right, SD's population growth in the next 10-20 years will be significant so it is paramount that the city make the necessary improvements downtown to attract some of the of this growth. SD is at a real crossroads - in large part the airport referendum will determine whether SD remains a "beach town" / "Navy town" or whether it have the opportunity to become a legitimate city.

SD is at a real crossroads - in large part the airport referendum will determine whether SD remains a "beach town" / "Navy town" or whether it have the opportunity to become a legitimate city.

I couldn't agree more. If San Diego ever expects to progress beyond what it currently is, it absolutely must have a new, world-class airport. Plus, it would be nice to have some height downtown.

Nimbys aside, it’s reasonable that the public expect the development of public land to be for the benefit of the public, not one particular federal agency.

You are forgetting that this is not simply "Public Land", but rather the Navy's land, and they can and should do what ever is in the Navy's best interest, and get the Federal taxpayer the best deal. They should not do what is in the "Public's" best interest. All the public should expect is the Highest Quality of Architecture, and not get involved in a philisophical debate as to what land uses should or shouldn't be on the NAVY'S LAND.

You are forgetting that this is not simply "Public Land", but rather the Navy's land and they can and should do what ever is in the Navy's best interest, and get the Federal taxpayer the best deal. If the Navy had to pay FMV for this property they'd never build there. Economically it's simply a waste of resources. Like I said, these are military offices, not Deloitte and Touche. By the way, this is the same reason it's extremely unlikely another federal agency would pick up the land through BRAC.

And everybody knows this is not about the taxpayer. If it were, the taxpayer would get a much better deal if they sold the land for FMV, built a much cheaper facility on much cheaper land on a secure base then trimmed their budget by the balance. Of course that's not what's happening.

This transaction has nothing to do with efficiency, practicality and even less about what's in the interest of the public and/or taxpayer.

They should not do what is in the "Public's" best interest. All the public should expect is the Highest Quality of Architecture, and not get involved in a philisophical debate as to what land uses should or shouldn't be on the NAVY'S LAND.Any land "owned" by the government is owned by the public. This is not private property, it's public property. There's no debating that.

Any government entity is supposed to serve its citizens, not grab as much as it possibly can.

they can and should do what ever is in the Navy's best interestJust above you criticized the Coastal Commission and Port of San Diego for “restricting uses to tourism and maritime industry ONLY”, which of course serves their own self interest, and for not creating “uses to benefit the population that lives along that coast.”

How do you resolve these conflicting statements? If the Navy should do what’s in its best interest, why shouldn’t the Coastal Commission and Port of San Diego also? The role of government is not to serve itself, but to serve the public's interest.

I wasn't sure where to post this, but this seems to be close enough. anyways, my parents just purchased a place at Gaslamp Square at 4th and Island i believe. does anyone have any thoughts or experiences with this place? I haven't been down your guys' direction in a while, but im really excited for them to let me use it on occasional weekends for a ball game and/or debauchery. anyways, i live up on the westside of LA and my parents in Riverside county, what should we expect? are there any turnoffs to this area? its seems like everything is absolutely walkable in this neighborhood, if not a short cab or trolley ride away. i'd appreciate anyone's $.02 they would like to throw in.

I'm not aure about that particular development but the area at 4th and Island is very nice. Like you said, very walkable. Balboa Park is less than a mile away, and the restaurants in that area are both diverse and good. The "people life" is probably one of the best in the San Diego metro. Your parents coming from riverside county should expect a drastic change in scenery and more variety(am I saying the obvious too much?).

Gaslamp Square isn't for the meek. It's right smack dab in the middle of everything: the ultra-vibrant Gaslamp, the ballpark, the Convention Centre, Horton Plaza, trolley station, freight trains, etc etc all within a a few blocks. If your parents like noise then they've found heaven. Clubs, bars, restaraunts, hordes of tourists, clubbers, and baseball fans at your doorstep practically 24/7. If I had the money I'd buy it as a 2nd home for those hyper-active wild weekends.

I'd prefer the nearby and developing East Village or Marina District, a little more quiet and it's only a few blocks away.

If the Navy had to pay FMV for this property they'd never build there. Economically it's simply a waste of resources. Like I said, these are military offices, not Deloitte and Touche. By the way, this is the same reason it's extremely unlikely another federal agency would pick up the land through BRAC.

The Navy was GIVEN this land to bring the Navy here to San Diego. After being such an asset to our region, why should they have to pay FMV? And, for the record, I'm sure, if FMV is $100 million, Pappa Doug will be paying at least that for that new facility. Also, the majority of people that work there are civilians that work on all of their Southwest Div RFP's. But hey, forget what the Navy has done for the region, and better yet, with Downtown starving for high paying jobs to move into the CBD, lets ship out 1000 of these high paying jobs to best serve the public. Personaly, I want the CBD that I live in to evolve into a true world class CBD.

Me thinks this is a funky looking building. I wouldn't mind getting it built but I'm sure sbamberger will say "It's DEAD"

http://www.baumbergerstudio.com/Grand%20Pacific%201.jpg

It is going to take more retail sites (the opening of the Albertson's in the East Village will be huge and I'm sure downtown would also embrace a specialty grocer like Whole Foods Market or Trader Joe's), everyday convienences like casual dining (not luxury resturants), and especially public parks to attract people to call downtown home in the upcoming years.
I've heard that Whole Foods has been looking for a downtown site for some time now, this goes back to the ParkLoft project. I'm hoping they will open at the soon to be re-vamped and repositioned Horton Plaza Mall.

although San Diego always has been and always will be a "Beach Town" in my opinion
I think being a big beach town is the best thing about this city and it's what gives us personality. It's just an added bonus that we are becoming known for our increasingly urban and vibrant core.

I wasn't sure where to post this, but this seems to be close enough. anyways, my parents just purchased a place at Gaslamp Square at 4th and Island i believe. does anyone have any thoughts or experiences with this place?
Congrats on your parents purchase! Both Mongozx and chicbicyclist have it right by saying that Gaslamp Square is in the middle of everything good. If an urban living is what you are your parents are looking for, then the location can't be beat. If I'm not mistaken, both Puma are Quiksilver are just two of the ground floor tenants of this mixed-use development. My advice is to keep a bike down here, that way you can bike around instead of drive to places like Balboa Park/Hillcrest, Shelter/Harbor Islands and Coronado (via ferry, of course), etc.

Me thinks this is a funky looking building. I wouldn't mind getting it built but I'm sure sbamberger will say "It's DEAD"

http://www.baumbergerstudio.com/Grand%20Pacific%201.jpg
Even a great rendering (thanks, sbaumberger) of this project isn't enough to make me like this one. :puke:

My advice is to keep a bike down here, that way you can bike around instead of drive to places like Balboa Park/Hillcrest, Shelter/Harbor Islands and Coronado (via ferry, of course), etc.

Make that an electric motorized bicycle. Those hills can be a killer if you're not into cycling full time.

:owns two electric bikes::

The Navy was GIVEN this land to bring the Navy here to San Diego. Exactly, you’d think that after being given the property, for navy purposes, they’d have a little respect for San Diego when redeveloping it for nonmilitary use. After gifting the property to them they turn around and try to make the biggest buck off it they can. Real nice. Let’s stop pretending the military is being altruistic towards San Diego and that we owe them something.

After being such an asset to our region, why should they have to pay FMV? .The point regarding FMV was that it’s a good economic test. It’d never get built if they had to pay the true price. Off topic, but in response to your question about why an asset should have to pay FMV, it’s just good economic policy. Should we be subsidizing Qualcomm’s land because they bring thousands of high paying jobs? Most would say no.

And, for the record, I'm sure, if FMV is $100 million, Pappa Doug will be paying at least that for that new facility. Of course. One would expect the FMV to be roughly the cost of constructing the Navy’s building and the land it sits on. That’s what Manchester is effectively paying for the rest of the property.

Also, the majority of people that work there are civilians that work on all of their Southwest Div RFP's. But hey, forget what the Navy has done for the region, and better yet, with Downtown starving for high paying jobs to move into the CBD, lets ship out 1000 of these high paying jobs to best serve the public. Personaly, I want the CBD that I live in to evolve into a true world class CBD. First, if we’re going to play favorites why not just hand the property over to Qualcomm or SAIC since they employ thousands more people still? This is clearly not how policy should be set. Second, there’s nothing that says they have to leave downtown at all. They could construct a much more modest structure on much more affordable land in East Village, which frankly would be a nice catalyst for development in an area still dominated by abandoned warehouses and parking lots.

Even a great rendering (thanks, sbaumberger) of this project isn't enough to make me like this one. :puke:Thanks guys - actually I don't know if this one is completely dead or not. At best it's unlikely though (for the reasons I've already pointed out). This just isn't that great of a site for residential development - the cancelled Atmosphere project is only a block away. I really think downtown would be better served by commercial & mixed-use projects in this area. Oh, and how is that Cortez Hill neighborhood center coming along? :)

And FWIW, Pacific Gateway is becoming an ever-increasing shitstorm and every day that goes by makes it more clear that the site will revert to BRAC early next year. Manchester will profit from the inevitable lawsuits that will be filed as a result. The Navy will move its offices out of downtown. And perhaps the Port will be shamed into loosening its grip on the North Embarcadero. Only then will a project worthy of the site become possible. At the risk of being flamed again, I still think this is the best outcome.

And FWIW, Pacific Gateway is becoming an ever-increasing shitstorm and every day that goes by makes it more clear that the site will revert to BRAC early next year. (...) Only then will a project worthy of the site become possible. At the risk of being flamed again, I still think this is the best outcome.No you're spot on, that's great news. With the Navy trying to grab as much as it can at the expense of the public, and refusing to revisit the obsolete development agreement, the best option is to go through BRAC with the overwhelming likelihood of the City gaining control of the land.

No you're spot on, that's great news. With the Navy trying to grab as much as it can at the expense of the public, and refusing to revisit the obsolete development agreement, the best option is to go through BRAC with the overwhelming likelihood of the City gaining control of the land.

Great, now it will be another 15-20 years before anything comes up again with that site....

DTSD wont be happy until we have a big park on that entire location. A stupid park. Green grass is not that cool, and you know why. Because grass grows anywhere. I can go 5 minutes north and have tons of grass next to the water, in mission bay. Especially considering that Fiesta Island is in the works to be developed into what much of it will be a BIG OL WATERFRONT PARK. I can also go 5 minutes east and have tons of grass in a big park called balboa park. There is only one spot highrises and vibrant life and urban environment exist in our county. That is downtown. Take your tree hugging antics and concentrate on fiesta island if you have a hard-on for the grass and water mixture. The Pacific Gateway project is a great idea, looks fantastic and accomodates more than the community plan blueprinted. Get over it, a park isnt going in there. So drop that horrible idea. That location is perfect for what they have designed, a step ladder type development with open space for ground level shops and such, hotels, offices, and living. Add a museum too and nice architecture and the project is a winner in my book. Im glad you are not making any decisions for this city. VERY VERY glad.

DTSD wont be happy until we have a big park on that entire location. A stupid park. Green grass is not that cool, and you know why. Because grass grows anywhere. I can go 5 minutes north and have tons of grass next to the water, in mission bay. Especially considering that Fiesta Island is in the works to be developed into what much of it will be a BIG OL WATERFRONT PARK. I can also go 5 minutes east and have tons of grass in a big park called balboa park. There is only one spot highrises and vibrant life and urban environment exist in our county. That is downtown. Take your tree hugging antics and concentrate on fiesta island if you have a hard-on for the grass and water mixture. The Pacific Gateway project is a great idea, looks fantastic and accomodates more than the community plan blueprinted. Get over it, a park isnt going in there. So drop that horrible idea. That location is perfect for what they have designed, a step ladder type development with open space for ground level shops and such, hotels, offices, and living. Add a museum too and nice architecture and the project is a winner in my book. Im glad you are not making any decisions for this city. VERY VERY glad.Wow - who are you talking to? And who's talking about a park? My god, chill out.

^^
Yea, no doubt, who are you talking to? I’d love to see some towers in the mix. The problem is NBC's complete disregard for the water it’s right next to. What people would like to see is something more like the Vancouver pictures urban_sd posted on page 3.
http://www.skyscrapercity.com/showpost.php?p=9559559&postcount=56

You’ll notice virtually every waterfront picture has open green space for recreation and many also have beaches, some packed with people enjoying it no less. This is such a no-brainer. It’s such a waste of waterfront land to construct buildings right up to the water.

There is only one spot highrises and vibrant life and urban environment exist in our county. That is downtown.Are you saying downtown should have some finite amount of land, boxed in by artificial borders, and once that’s developed it should not be permitted to grow anymore? The reality is there’s no limit on the amount of land towers can go up on. Is there any doubt downtown will grow into Barrio Logan, Golden Hill, even Banker’s Hill once the airport goes away? Do you think Vancouver and Chicago are smaller or bigger today because they’ve done a phenomenal job with creating recreational space on their waterfront?

Setting some space aside to maximize your waterfront is in no way going to limit downtown growth; to the contrary it will catalyze growth because it makes it more desirable. I’m amazed at how people have such a hard time understanding this.

Great, now it will be another 15-20 years before anything comes up again with that site....Actually it’s the Navy who’s been dragging their feet for the past 15 years as CCDC has been poking and prodding them to get moving. This is very well documented. Typical unaccountable federal bureaucracy behavior.

i just think you are disregarding the fact that this property is NOT right up to the water. It is in fact a major street and a promenade from the water. There will be a grassy promenade, walking areas, biking areas, benches all along the waterfront. If you dont believe me then consult the North Embarcadero Plan. The proof is right there. There are going to be exactly ZERO buildings along the entire waterfront right there that will have no less than a promenade with grass and trees plenty wide and a major street between them and the water. You forget that i think. From the crescent to seaport village will all be like this. Grassy park area, pathways for bikes, benches, flower gardens etc., then a street( that isnt going anywhere) then buildings. That is a large enough offset of the water in my opinion for buildings to rise.

And sbaumberger, i was talking to DTSD, who has said he wanted an unabaded open area between any building erected and the water on that location. The problem is, it will be obstructed no matter what because there is a major street there and even more grassy area with paths and such. His idea of open space along the waterfront is already gonna happen, and i just think it is a little overkill to waste a prime location on such open space when the surrounding areas even closer to the water will be chalked full of that very thing.

Just build the damn thing damnit.

And I'll kill if DT expands to Golden Hill.

^^
Yea, no doubt, who are you talking to? I’d love to see some towers in the mix. The problem is NBC's complete disregard for the water it’s right next to.

Last time I checked, NBC's PL is at least 200' from the waterfront at the closest location (check google maps if you don't by it). And, when the North Embarcadero visionary plan is implemented, now that the Port has stepped to the plate, that portion of Harbor Drive will be closes to vehicular traffic, giving you a 200' wide open space promenade along the water. You see, if your vision were carried out, and the western blocks were made park land, walking along the waterfront, there would be no urban feeling, but rather, a feeling of being outside the city, looking in. The whole community plan's idea (see community plan build out and the 2 acre park that Doug has is not there) is to bring the city to the waterfront, not the city to open space and then the waterfront.

^^What people would like to see is something more like the Vancouver pictures urban_sd posted on page 3.

You’ll notice virtually every waterfront picture has open green space for recreation and many also have beaches, some packed with people enjoying it no less. This is such a no-brainer. It’s such a waste of waterfront land to construct buildings right up to the water.

http://static.flickr.com/88/209827332_f43cc96f00_b.jpg

Oh yeah, everyone take a look at the HUGE park in between all of those buildings and the bay. I think this picture is what a waterfront city is all about.

^^Are you saying downtown should have some finite amount of land, boxed in by artificial borders, and once that’s developed it should not be permitted to grow anymore? The reality is there’s no limit on the amount of land towers can go up on. Is there any doubt downtown will grow into Barrio Logan, Golden Hill, even Banker’s Hill once the airport goes away? Do you think Vancouver and Chicago are smaller or bigger today because they’ve done a phenomenal job with creating recreational space on their waterfront?

Come on, Chicago is what it is because of the Burnham Plan, not Millenium Park. And were you at any of the CCDC Plan update meetings? If so I'm sure you remember all the Golden Hill, Logan Heights, Sherman Heights, and Barrio Logan residents claiming that Downtown is too dense and that they DONT want downtown to spread to their communities. And, we all know that NO ONE in San Diego politics has the Cojones to tell these communities that they are not pulling their weight in tax revenue and that their run down areas are now going to be opened up for redevelopment, Like Vancouver and San Francisco with SOMA.

^^Setting some space aside to maximize your waterfront is in no way going to limit downtown growth; to the contrary it will catalyze growth because it makes it more desirable. I’m amazed at how people have such a hard time understanding this.


Easy, very few residents who live in downtown, go to say, Embarcadero Park, Seaport Village, etc... The 2 acre park that is planned will serve the workers, visitors and residents because it is surrounded by street level retail. And I don't see how hard it is for YOU to understand that urban open space is best when surrounded by an urban environment. I would take San Francisco's Washington Square over Vancouver's grassy knolls along their bay any day of the week. Why? Because it makes you feel like you are IN A CITY! if you ask me, leave the grass land on the other side of the bay, where you can't build high rises.

Again, I think that this is a great forum where different opinions can be shared, which they are. DTSD want's waterfront parks, where as I prefer city parks like Washington Square in SF and Bryant Park in NYC.

i couldnt agree more keg. The interesting thing is, both the opinions of us two, and DTSD in reality are going to come true. THe North Embarcadero Visionary Plan calls for open space in a promonade format. Lots of open space along the waterfront with at least three very large open areas. One on that pennisula already in existence south of the midway, a new planned circular park that hugs the waterfront just north of seaport village, the half city block open space that is designed into the pacific gateway development and the park space surrounding the County Administration Building. These areas all connected by paths, more greenery, more grass and open space, benches, etc. If it is true that they are closing that area in front of the Pacific Gateway development to traffic then that is even more open space. Bottom line is DTSD, i have a feeling, is going to eventually be very happy with how the waterfront looks because it is just what he is asking for, almost exactly. He/she just may not know it. And a few hundred meters off the water will be the nice urban landscape rising up. Both of these can happen without condemning Pacific Gateway to the BRAC process. It is an amazing looking project as is, particularly the the lower rise buildings closer to the water on the site.

I think the CCDC wises up and agrees to move forward, and then the waterfront begins to transform. On a side note, i hope this same arguement doesnt arise with the lane field project. That is the exact same thing, just as far off the water, just as fantastic a site.

I'll take any green open spaces over the abominable paved open parking spaces any day.

i would too, although im not sure that is the debate. i will concede this. If Lindbergh leaves for greener pastures in Miramar, then a Nice Huge waterfront park there would be my preference. Maybe let in some water on the site and make a nice big Marina a la Dubai with mid rises, high rises and lots of park.

http://img209.imageshack.us/img209/4290/uptownac9.gif (http://imageshack.us)

I just hope that if and when Lindbergh Filed left, that the are wouldnt turn into a Mega Midway District in Loma Portal, with all those car-centric arterial roads. I already hate Harbor Drive as it is.

If the airport ever moves, I would like to see a super-spiffy urban, pedestrian-friendly neighborhood made up primarily of mid-rises with a few nice parks, schools, and some more retail as well. Street cars linking it with downtown would also be nice.

Something possibly like:


http://img244.imageshack.us/img244/4981/airporttoast7qc.gif

^^ agreed

*dreams of a crescent shaped skyline*

And I'll kill if DT expands to Golden Hill.

It will.

Last time I checked, NBC's PL is at least 200' from the waterfront at the closest location (check google maps if you don't by it). Using Google Earth to measure, it’s 200’ at its furthest and only 135’ at the closest location, being the southwest lot. This is a narrow strip of land.
Oh yeah, everyone take a look at the HUGE park in between all of those buildings and the bay. Kind of funny how you picked one of the few, if only, waterfront pictures with no green space. If you read my post, I did not say every picture has green space.
If so I'm sure you remember all the Golden Hill, Logan Heights, Sherman Heights, and Barrio Logan residents claiming that Downtown is too dense and that they DONT want downtown to spread to their communities. And that’s politics. Of course some residents don’t, and of course they were the ones to show up and complain. Does that change anything? They passed the plan update anyway. People complained about Pinnacle, Aria, Cortez Blue and Ballpark village, claiming they were too dense and they’d lose their views. The nimby argument, fortunately, is not very affective.

Further, downtown has a long way to go before it needs to expand to those neighborhoods, by that time a new generation of residents who like downtown and urban living will be there.

Besides all that, there are plenty of people who already live in those neighborhoods who’d be thrilled to have it redeveloped, including high-rises going up. In fact I personally know people who purchased in Golden Hill because they couldn’t afford downtown but wanted to be as close as possible, and would love to see it eventually become downtown.

There’s no shortage of land for towers. Growth is inevitable, like it or not.
Come on, Chicago is what it is because of the Burnham Plan, not Millenium Park. I agree. It’s been that way for a century. So I ask again, do you think Vancouver and Chicago are smaller or bigger today because they’ve done a phenomenal job with creating recreational space on their waterfronts?
very few residents who live in downtown, go to say, Embarcadero Park, Seaport Village, etc... Seaport Village is a tourist trap. Embarcadero Park is walled off. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard anecdotally ‘oh yea, I never think to go there, it’s kind of tucked away back there’.
I would take San Francisco's Washington Square over Vancouver's grassy knolls along their bay any day of the week. I prefer both. One does not preclude the other. Squares are great for inland areas. Large recreational parks and beaches are great for the waterfront. Incidentally, if forced to choose, I think most people would choose the latter.
Because it makes you feel like you are IN A CITY!Below are a few of the pictures I was referring to. Whenever I visit downtown Vancouver and go to the beaches and parks, I never feel like I’m not in the city, even when the towers are 400-500 feet away. Have you ever been there?

This is what NBC's public space should look a lot more like:
http://static.flickr.com/86/209833959_95f0a4a20f_b.jpg

http://static.flickr.com/91/209824431_93f07f5f3c_b.jpg

http://static.flickr.com/98/209831173_1f5d62f7a0_b.jpg

.

I love the bay and all but I don't think I would wanna swim in it. :runaway:

It's a bit closed off from the ocean and there are alot of industry and ship traffic for it to be reasonably "clean".

My favorite building in SD is still the Harbor club, there is nothing like it in the world. I would love to see any development with that much attencion to detail.
That sail ship thing behind the convention center is tight, we need more of that.

Also, Whats going on in Coronado next to the hotel del?

Finally, Cortez Hill is the ugliest building in the US. It belongs somewhere in Pakistan or Uruguay. whoever built that should be sent to Iraq

He's probably dead.

This is what NBC's public space should look a lot more like:


Would it even be possible for the NBC project to look like that? Isn't there a road between it and the waterfront?

i have to agree DTSD, that would look great along SDs waterfront. My issue is i dont think it is possible, and i dont think three half blocks of park next to a street next to a promonade will have the effect one would hope. I think the real evil in holding up a vision such as your idea isnt the NBC design as it is, but rather Harbor Drive. If that could be scrapped or submersed, then you could have unabaded park the entire distance from the cresecent to seaport village in front of lots of city environment. That is not likely though i wouldnt think but would look beautiful.

http://img108.imageshack.us/img108/6114/embarcaderogi9.jpg (http://imageshack.us)

http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y174/HurricaneH/08-18-06_1414.jpg
http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y174/HurricaneH/08-18-06_1417.jpg
http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y174/HurricaneH/08-18-06_1416.jpg

Looks nice.:)

i agree, looks nice.

This is what NBC's public space should look a lot more like:
http://static.flickr.com/86/209833959_95f0a4a20f_b.jpg

http://static.flickr.com/91/209824431_93f07f5f3c_b.jpg

http://static.flickr.com/98/209831173_1f5d62f7a0_b.jpg

.


Yeah, I'm sure all of us that live here in downtown want a nice big recreation space so that the every weekend, every family from Santee to Escodido trip into the Centre City to have a picnic by the bay. We already have Mission Bay for that.

Lets just agree to disagree and leave it at that.

Oh my Gosh! They're walling off my condo view... ...I mean the Bay front!!

i agree, looks nice.

I said this over at SSP, but I'll say it again here. Hell yeah it does! I especially like how the buildings step up in height as you move further from the water. Just imagine another, taller row of buildings behind those. We just need to get that airport moved.

Very impressive. I'm sure the NIMBYs will have something bad to say, but I think this project is great! It better get built.


BTW, here's what I'd do once the airport's gone. The dotted purple lines are street/cable cars which head over to Pt. Lomas, Midtown and Hillcrest, Balboa Park, and into downtown along Harbor Dr and 4th Ave. The neighborhood would be made up mostly of mid-rise buildings and there would also be a bunch of parks, a few schools, and a new arena.


http://www.ericburress.com/mysandiego/images/uptown.gif

Yeah, I'm sure all of us that live here in downtown want a nice big recreation space so that the every weekend, every family from Santee to Escodido trip into the Centre City to have a picnic by the bay. We already have Mission Bay for that.

Lets just agree to disagree and leave it at that.
I was thinking more that the park would be for the nearly 30,000 (which is forecasted to be 90,000 by 2030) downtown residents who currently live within downtown's 1 square mile area from Little Italy to the Marina District to East Village and finally, Cortez Hill. If you think about it, 15 acres is nothing when you consider that downtown covers about 1,500 acres.

I'm with you in that we should just agree to disgree on the matter since everyone seems to have their own version of what should be there. I, for one, would rather see the site redeveloped instead letting it sit the way it is now for another 20 years.

Just some random pics from this past weekend-


Taking in the view from Coronado
http://i4.photobucket.com/albums/y120/Jaygergon/downtown%20development%202/IMG_5271.jpg

The southern half of the skyline is finally starting to show some height
http://i4.photobucket.com/albums/y120/Jaygergon/downtown%20development%202/IMG_5251.jpg

Zooming in on East Village. Can you count the 6 cranes? :okay:
http://i4.photobucket.com/albums/y120/Jaygergon/downtown%20development%202/IMG_5249.jpg

Electra is sure to make an impact when it's done
http://i4.photobucket.com/albums/y120/Jaygergon/downtown%20development%202/IMG_5263.jpg

Under a canopy of cranes
http://i4.photobucket.com/albums/y120/Jaygergon/downtown%20development%202/IMG_5287.jpg

The Mark, up close and personal
http://i4.photobucket.com/albums/y120/Jaygergon/downtown%20development%202/IMG_5307.jpg

The area around the Hard Rock was buzzing with activity
http://i4.photobucket.com/albums/y120/Jaygergon/downtown%20development%202/IMG_5291.jpg

View from the convention center's "Grand Staircase" (I counted 4 cranes in this pic)
http://i4.photobucket.com/albums/y120/Jaygergon/downtown%20development%202/IMG_5294.jpg

Hilton Hotel crane from behind the convention center. Notice the metal and concrete beginning to rise
http://i4.photobucket.com/albums/y120/Jaygergon/downtown%20development%202/IMG_5297.jpg

Alta and The Mark as seen from Embarcadero Marina Park
http://i4.photobucket.com/albums/y120/Jaygergon/downtown%20development%202/IMG_5300.jpg

That all for now!

Thanks for the great pics sd_urban!

Some observations:

Alta is a lot boxier then I thought it would be.
The Hardrock Hotel is very close (or at least looks like it) to the street. I mean the Gaslamp sign looks like its about to be eaten up by it.
Electra is going to be good filler for the skyline.

And thats about it.

So umm, anybody knows what the city is doing to have more middle-class stuff in downtown? Right now, its all the ultra posh and the ultra poor. The middle class is still laregly concentrated in the outside pheriperies.

The Mark is looking a lot better than I thought it would. :)

So umm, anybody knows what the city is doing to have more middle-class stuff in downtown? Right now, its all the ultra posh and the ultra poor. The middle class is still laregly concentrated in the outside pheriperies.

Vantage Pointe has 2 bedrooms for $300k. That will probably be as cheap as they come simply because of the cost of land, and the cost of high rise construction. More affordable simply means a smaller unit. Just look at cities like New York, DC, and San Francisco. We should be so lucky. I just came back from SF, and my buddy is a mortgage broker whose clients tell him, "I don't care, just keep my payments under $6k!!!" Rents in SF push $5 per SF, so what would a 600 SF studio lease for in SF? That's right, $3,000. Plain and simple, if you wanna live in the city, you live in a smaller space.

Vantage Pointe has 2 bedrooms for $300k. That will probably be as cheap as they come simply because of the cost of land, and the cost of high rise construction. More affordable simply means a smaller unit. Just look at cities like New York, DC, and San Francisco. We should be so lucky. I just came back from SF, and my buddy is a mortgage broker whose clients tell him, "I don't care, just keep my payments under $6k!!!" Rents in SF push $5 per SF, so what would a 600 SF studio lease for in SF? That's right, $3,000. Plain and simple, if you wanna live in the city, you live in a smaller space.Sorry man, but that's just way off. San Francisco(and I mean the city not the rest of the Bay Area) is more like $2 or $3 per SF. Maybe an upper floor unit in a brand new condo could command $5, but I think the original question was directed towards affordability. If you don't believe me, check out craig's list and you'll see 2BR's right in the city for under $2000/mo. Even in NY, you can still get quite a bit for under $2K in Manhattan.

Purchasing a condo is another matter though, and most American cities (even second-tier markets such as Denver, Seattle, etc.) have serious affordability issues. The for-sale markets are pushing the "workforce housing" further and further out, adding a great deal to the increase in commuting length and overall traffic levels of the past ten years. San Diego of course is no exception, but this is really a broadly American problem and most of the real solutions to the affordability crisis need to come from the federal level of government. On the other hand, we may have a price correction anyway that will alleviate the unaffordability at the expense of the construction market. But in the meantime, there just isn't that much affordable stock going up anywhere. The only real option in most cities is to buy something that's a little older (which there is very little of in downtown SD).

And FWIW I would expect the 2BR/$300K @ Vantage Pointe to be an internal unit on a lower floor with no view and very little light. If that's something that has appeal, I'm pretty sure M2i still has some units available with no wait. :)

Not to change the subject, but have you all seen the new Sprinter trains? I think they look really cool :okay:

http://i4.photobucket.com/albums/y120/Jaygergon/Misc/sprinter20train_apr06sm.jpg

http://i4.photobucket.com/albums/y120/Jaygergon/Misc/vehicle2.gif

Interior
http://i4.photobucket.com/albums/y120/Jaygergon/Misc/intshot2.jpg

Stations
http://i4.photobucket.com/albums/y120/Jaygergon/Misc/etc.jpg

http://i4.photobucket.com/albums/y120/Jaygergon/Misc/rdo.jpg

Map of Western route
http://i4.photobucket.com/albums/y120/Jaygergon/Misc/leftmap.jpg

Map of Eastern route
http://i4.photobucket.com/albums/y120/Jaygergon/Misc/rightmap.jpg

http://i4.photobucket.com/albums/y120/Jaygergon/Misc/sprint430.jpg

http://www.gonctd.com/oerail/oerail.html

Project On Track

First Sprinter train for Escondido-Oceanside route arrives
By Michael Burge
UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER

August 16, 2006

ESCONDIDO – When the train rounded the corner from Metcalf Street onto Washington Avenue yesterday, the 20 or so people waiting didn't seem to mind that it was three hours late.

After all, some had been waiting for this train to arrive for more than 20 years.

Yesterday, the first Sprinter rail car arrived at 9:48 a.m., not on a set of tracks, but split between two flatbed trucks that hauled it overnight from Port Hueneme to the train's new home at the North County Transit District's vehicle maintenance facility in Escondido.

Excitement rippled through transit district employees standing on the street as the trucks carrying the cars, escorted by a phalanx of Escondido police cruisers and motorcycles that blocked the street, eased into the yard's driveway. They needed all five lanes of Washington Avenue to make the final turn of their journey, which began a month ago in Germany.

“We've been anticipating this for so long it's hard to realize the importance of it,” Don Bullock, the Sprinter project manager, said as he watched the trucks carrying the two shining halves of the vehicle pull to a stop.

The $440 million Sprinter passenger train project, which is under construction on 22 miles of track between Oceanside and Escondido, is expected to begin operating at the end of next year.

Painted blue, white and teal with “Sprinter” emblazoned on the sides, the car that arrived yesterday is one of three that sailed July 15 from Bremerhaven, Germany, passed through the Panama Canal and arrived in Port Hueneme last week.

The two halves of the car were mounted on trucks Monday night to make the 170-mile drive down Interstate 5 toward Escondido. The trucks were diverted off Interstate 5 in the Los Angeles area to Interstate 15 because their load was too tall to pass beneath a low overhang on the coastal freeway.

The change added about 20 miles and about three hours to the journey. Instead of arriving at 7 a.m. yesterday, as expected, they pulled in nearly three hours later.

“Just to get this far, it's been a long journey,” Bullock said. “It's quite a milestone.”

Two other vehicles will be hauled down over the next several days, the first installment in a set of 12 cars being manufactured by Siemens AG Transportation Systems in Krefeld, Germany, for $52.2 million. The other nine will arrive over the next three months.

Bullock said workers from Siemens and the Sprinter operator, Veolia Transportation, will put the first unit car together and begin testing it at the new maintenance facility as soon as possible. The cars already were tested on a track in Dusseldorf, Germany.

The Sprinter will not be a traditional, locomotive-pulled passenger train, but self-powered “diesel multiple units,” rare in North America. Each car has two six-cylinder, 420-horsepower engines that drive the 67-ton vehicle.

“They're so much different from the trolley,” which is powered by an overhead electrical line, Bullock said.

Each car will have 136 seats and be able to carry about 220 passengers, including those standing. The North County Transit District plans to link two cars for most runs and operate them as a single train.

The train line will have 15 stops along the tracks through Oceanside, Vista, San Marcos and Escondido. There will be stations at Palomar College and California State University San Marcos.

The last time a passenger train ran on that line was 1946; the tracks have been used exclusively by freight trains since then. The transit district bought the rail in 1994 to operate a passenger train along the state Route 78 corridor.

Looking good.

Hopefully it expands in the future.:)

^^It would be awesome if it expanded south along the 15 freeway and connected to the Qualcomm Trolley station :yes:

Those Sprinter trains do look pretty nice. They have the same color scheme as the Coaster trains. I'm not familiar with that area but is traffic really bad that a brand new public transit system was needed? Or were city officials actually THINKING about smart growth? :uh:

And it would be cool if they expanded the routes southward and integrated with the northern most trolley lines.

That sprinter line is going to be helpful. Now I can walk to a station, take it to Oceanside and then take the coaster to downtown. Makes my life much easier. :)

Those Sprinter trains do look pretty nice. They have the same color scheme as the Coaster trains. I'm not familiar with that area but is traffic really bad that a brand new public transit system was needed? Or were city officials actually THINKING about smart growth? :uh:

And it would be cool if they expanded the routes southward and integrated with the northern most trolley lines.

The 78 is clogged most of rush hour so this will be very nice to have. North County isn't full of transit options, besides the Bus and Coaster (which only goes to Oceanside-Carlsbad-Encinitas...). I hope its sucessful, it was strongly opposed, but maybe those people will hop aboard.

And I would love it if they expanded it south to the inner areas of Carlsbad, Encinitas and Solana Beach later on. But the main tracks for the Sprinter we're already in place, no land needed to be bought, it just needed to be redone. So expanding anywere else would require a lot more money since it would be starting fresh.

This is the first time I've heard of this transit project and I'm very surprised it got passed in the first place! I still have doubts it will actually benefit that part pf the region seeing that it's not exactly an urban environment(viability of such systems largely depend on land-use and development style) up there but I'm glad they finally have one up there. It's a good start and it is about damn time.

Went down to San Diego this weekend. Very nice I must say. Humid though. I might have some pics, but with my camera you never know.

Where do you live?

Where do you live?

Oceanside.

Some quick visual construction updates :)
Market Street Village
http://live6.truelook.com/timages/live6/ecodb/ecodb_evillage1_camera1/imgbuf/buf_2392/1156414536676706.jpg

The Legend
http://live6.truelook.com/timages/live6/ecodb/ecodb_evillage1_camera1/imgbuf/buf_2392/1156414536676867.jpg

Smart Corner
http://live6.truelook.com/timages/live6/ecodb/ecodb_evillage1_camera1/imgbuf/buf_2392/1156414536676981.jpg

Aria
http://live6.truelook.com/timages/live6/ecodb/ecodb_evillage1_camera1/imgbuf/buf_2392/1156414536677095.jpg

Vantage Pointe
http://live6.truelook.com/timages/live6/ecodb/ecodb_evillage1_camera1/imgbuf/buf_2392/1156414536677210.jpg

Sapphire
http://live6.truelook.com/timages/live6/ecodb/ecodb_1amnorth_camera1/imgbuf/buf_3974/1156414536677391.jpg

Alta
http://live6.truelook.com/timages/live6/ecodb/ecodb_omni_camera1/imgbuf/buf_5151/1156414536677898.jpg

Electra
http://live6.truelook.com/timages/live6/ecodb/ecodb_1apsw_camera1/imgbuf/buf_2329/1156414536677551.jpg

Federal Courthouse
http://live6.truelook.com/timages/live6/ecodb/ecodb_oneamerica_camera1/imgbuf/buf_1878/1156414536677670.jpg

Other observations on my last downtown visit:

Marriott Rennaisance Hotel site has a sign stating it will open up late 2008.

The site of the former KUSI mixed use hotel has begun demolition. Anyone know what project is planned for that lot?

Embassy 1414 in Columbia seems to have started sales marketing.

Good but long article in the SD Reader.

San Diego Reader
August 24, 2006
A tall building takes a sizeable square of land and transforms it into multiple cubes of habitable space -- story after story rising -- converting once-empty sky into a series of interior chambers and environments. Picture it this way: on the island of Manhattan, with thousands of high-rise buildings, there's actually more indoors than outdoors.

The purpose of the original tall building, if you believe that old biblical babble, was to reach heaven. Nowadays, our ambitious edifices maximize commerce and loom as symbols of pride and power.

The high-rise is, as you might guess, an American invention. Which means that Americans brought together into one form the crucial developments that made it possible: steel frames, reinforced concrete, glass, water pumps, the elevator, modernist patriotic hubris.

But in a classic case of technological appropriation, it's estimated that by 2015 the five tallest buildings in the world will all rise above east Asia. Realms like Taiwan possess the know-how and the industry, they need the space, and they're emerging onto the global stage at a perfect moment for making undeniable assertions of nationalistic vanity. If nothing else, really high high-rises herald the global presence of a country.

The skyline of Manhattan is punctuated by over 228 buildings that are taller than the tallest building in San Diego. Even Los Angeles has 23 buildings that rise into more troposphere than any of ours, with one, the U.S. Bank Tower, that's more than twice as high as anything downtown.

The reason for the local height limit isn't because of our sandstone soil, nor because of the seismic fault that runs under downtown. Rather, it's because of a local ordinance that says no taller buildings may escalate near airport flight paths. Phoenix and Tampa have similar regulations in effect.

Some lament the fact that San Diego's skyline isn't distinctive enough or tall enough. Kurt Hunker, award-winning architect and graduate chair of the NewSchool of Architecture, told me, "Some cities seem to have more distinctive high-rise skylines than others. And we don't. San Diego doesn't. We really don't have anything terribly distinctive."

But if the choice lies between (1) a massive, recognizable, famous cityscape with an airport out on some brown faraway mesa and (2) our tidy downtown high-rise clusters with an easy commute to and from all flights, then I'd vote for number two any day. We take to the sky instead of scraping it. Commendably, San Diego, in this way at least, is more "functional" than "status symbol."

According to Emporis Buildings, the largest building database in the world, 118 high-rises currently loom over America's Finest City, 17 more are under construction, 15 others have been approved to begin construction soon, and 29 beyond that have been officially "proposed," which means that they're as good as built.

Think about that. By 2010, our downtown will have undergone a space odyssey indeed. One hundred eighteen high-rises will become at least 179 of them, and likely more. Nine of these new additions will be among the top 20 tallest in town. In just a few years, we stand to enjoy (or lament) a dramatically different skyline.

San Diego's high-rise history began in 1909 with the 155-foot Broadway Lofts building on Fifth and Broadway. The El Cortez Hotel, in 1927, was the first local building to top 300 feet. The El Cortez was the highest in town for over 30 years and was in the top 5 until the high-rise boom finally developed here in the 1980s. Now 21 downtown buildings are officially higher than the El, with dozens more soon to follow.

San Diego's current reigning building and, at 500 feet exactly from grade, the tallest building possible unless the airport moves and/or the laws change is One America Plaza, located at 600 West Broadway.

One America Plaza is nothing if not distinctive. The structure tapers slightly, all the way up (four inches per floor), which means that One America Plaza is an obelisk. A 500-foot-tall glass-and-steel obelisk. But it's the top of the thing that makes it stand out -- say, the last 70 feet or so before the structure gives way to sky. This increment of One America Plaza is a complex, pointy geometry of tilting, angular folds that looks like either the world's tallest shrug or one of Queen Amidala's most outrageous hairdos in Star Wars.

But tilting pointy geometries on the tops of glass-and-steel obelisks garner architectural awards. Since it was completed in 1991, One America Plaza has won San Diego Building of the Year eight times and Pacific Southwest Region Office Building of the Year seven times. And if you take a moment to look at the place, or step inside and swing your eyes around the atrium, then you'll probably understand why.

The architect for One America Plaza was Helmut Jahn. Forty or so years ago, at the Illinois Institute of Technology, Jahn studied under the renowned Ludwig Mies van der Rohe (1886- 1969), an architect so famous that he has his own kind of building geometry, "Miesian," named after him. (As an aside, Mies van der Rohe is also the answer to the trivia question, "Who said, 'God is in the details'?")

In 1967, Jahn joined an architectural firm in Chicago, which, within 14 years, had added his name to the firm's. At Murphy/Jahn, Helmut Jahn designed, among many other projects, Kemper Arena in Kansas City, Missouri, and the United Airlines terminal at Chicago's O'Hare Airport. According to a website called greatbuildings.com, Jahn's ability to combine modernist architectural doctrine with a more intuitive "creative rationalism" has led to "a symbolic code which could be appreciated by both professional architects and the general public."

Anyway, back in the atrium of Jahn's creation on 600 West Broadway, it's all black, white, and gray marble, sleek lines, and pointed angles. A smooth waterfall cascades gently downward, 40 feet, over six tiers of black granite. The lobby shares an information desk, a "Galleria," two halls leading to rows of elevators, and a U.S. Bank. Many of the passersby on a given day are smartly attired -- suited and blazered -- although it's obvious from the other outfits -- shorts, T-shirts, flip-flops -- that this building isn't all business.

The Galleria leads past a half-dozen contemporary paintings to what has to be the world's most futuristic and ostentatious trolley station, a covered, wraparound structure that vaults out of the rear of One America Plaza. Back inside, on the white marble information desk, is a list of the building's 50-odd tenants: mostly law offices, financial services groups, architectural firms, communications and computer companies, and a radio station. Incidentally, and as the fellow with the walkie-talkie and the earpiece at the information desk will inform you, there is no public restroom.

My chaperone up into One America Plaza was a security guard, who explained that to go all the way to the top, into the "crow's nest," we'd be taking the elevator to the 31st floor, then a second, special elevator to the 34th floor, and then we'd have to walk up steps, outdoors, the last four flights.

The express elevators in One America are silent, beautiful, and very fast. Built by Mitsubishi, they're designed to travel 1200 feet a minute (the fastest in San Diego), and their interiors are paneled in exotic karelian burl wood inlaid with stainless-steel trim. I was most impressed by the smooth ride punctuated only by prim little beeps. That, and the fact that we were at the 31st floor in about 20 seconds, by which time I felt like a sealed water bottle on an airplane, with all the air sucked out of me and my ears about to explode.

The last door in the building, out to the crow's nest, opened onto the whirring, humming, buzzing, ear-filling sounds of multiple huge turbines. I was standing inside a slanting, pointed mesh enclosure, basically a very big tent, with a jumble of metal ducts and fans and tanks all around. In the center of this industrialization, rising the last 40 feet through the iron mesh, was a gray, metal spiral staircase, 50 steps, the most dizzying 50 steps I'd ever endeavored. After winding around and around and around, the stairs ended on a star-shaped platform, outdoors in the wind, with five steel girders meeting in a point above my head. I was now officially drawing the highest breaths in all of downtown San Diego.

To the south, on a clear day, you see Tijuana; to the north is University Towne Centre. Mountains perforate the east, and wide water spreads west. In between, dozens of high-rises are gradually eating the view. If not for a few tall structures in the south center of downtown, you'd be able to watch baseball games at Petco Park, over half a mile away. And even more of the view was about to go: right across the street, kitty-corner to the southwest, the Electra, the "tallest residential building in San Diego," was currently being built.

After I descended, back down on ground level, I crossed the street to check out the progress of the Electra, and I wandered into a place where I shouldn't have been. "Hard hat area!" a worker yelled at me. "Boots. No shorts." Well, I answered, with my bare head, sandals, and cutoffs, I'm almost in compliance. But the guy didn't like the joke. Cement mixers mixed, lattices of steel uprose, enormous stanchions propped, huge holes gaped, and over it all, two giant cranes swung massive blocks and girders -- so I could tell the rules were for my safety.

Turns out the Electra is going up in the midst of the shell of the old (1911) San Diego Gas and Electric Building. At the time I stood there, last October, the 50-foot-high, 94-year-old shell was being held up by dozens of mammoth braces, inside and out, while hundreds of workers crawled all over the skeletal beginnings and foundation materials for what will one day be a very tall building.

In fact, at 475 feet, the Electra will be the tallest residential building in San Diego in 2007. But the tallest residential building in 2005 (at 450 feet) was the Pinnacle Museum Tower on Front Street. Tenants began moving into the Pinnacle in October 2005. I called the concierge to ask what special information and provisions were provided for tenants living over 400 feet in the air.

Richard Amberry, concierge at the Pinnacle, immediately answered, "Of course we furnish our tenants with foldout ladders and plastic ropes for scaling down the sides of the building in case of an emergency." Then he laughed. "No. No. I'm kidding. Imagine your grandmother having to do that." Amberry then began to paint the real modern picture of high-rise safety.

"We have the cutting edge in technology for fire alarms and sprinkler systems," Amberry said. "We have a committee put together to train our residents what to do in the event of an evacuation. And the building itself has all the latest technology to make it safer in the event of an earthquake or fire or what have you."

Amberry told me that he's worked in high-rises for many years, and the effects of an earthquake can be unnerving. "Sometimes a building will take 20 minutes to quit swaying," he said. "I personally always joke that if I had a 1200-square-foot high-rise, I'd only ever use 800 square feet of it because I'd never go near the windows. I hate heights. But, of course, the glass in this building is nonbreakable and tempered and really thick and all that good stuff, so the windows are just as safe as the walls." Luckily for Amberry, the concierge does almost all of his work on the ground floor.

A straight shot another quarter mile down Kettner Boulevard from the Electra, the Manchester Grand Hyatt, at 497 feet, the tallest waterfront building on the West Coast, rises in two conical towers from a wide driveway. After entering and walking through the football-field-sized lobby, I found, tucked onto a section of wall near the concierge's desk, six plaques dedicated to the people who built the Hyatt. Etched in the plaques were hundreds of names, too many to count, and over 60 companies specializing in everything from fire sprinkler systems to doors, steel, glass, marble, engineering, waterproofing, and elevators. Scanning these plaques, I gained a heightened appreciation for the level of coordinated activity that is required to put up a high-rise.

Austin Swint, assistant beverage manager for the Hyatt, had worked on the 40th floor for over two years. I asked Swint what it was like to work so high. Had he ever felt unsafe?

"The only time I ever felt unsafe was during an earthquake," Swint said. "I've worked here during two quakes. For one, I was on the fourth floor, and for the other, I was on the top floor, and the one on the top floor scared the living daylights out of everyone. Our building is set up on rollers, and it's designed to sway about four feet in any direction. So I know it's safer than if it stayed still, but it's a whole lot scarier."

Had he ever been evacuated? Were there special instructions for evacuation situations? "We had a light evacuation once during a fire alarm," Swint answered. "The hotel wasn't very busy, so the stairwells weren't all that crowded. There was no fire, but an electrical short on the 30th floor caused a lot of smoke, and we lost power from about the 10th floor up. But I was actually really impressed with how well the security and the hotel employees worked. It was kind of all hands on deck. And it went just fine."

I wondered what Swint's biggest concern was, going to work over 450 feet in the air every day. "You know, it's funny," he said without hesitation, "and you didn't mention anything about this, but my biggest concern comes from riding in the elevator quite a bit. I mean, every single time I go up and down, up and down, and my ears pop. I always kind of wonder if I'm going to suffer long-term effects from all the ear popping."

I should digress a moment to address another fear associated with any building over, say, 130 feet or so in height. Triskaidekaphobia, it's called. Fear of the number 13. Of the six tallest buildings in San Diego, three have 13th floors, and three do not. The presence or absence of this locale seems to hinge on the nationality of the developers. The series of eight rather beautiful, commercial, graduated hexagons that is Emerald Plaza (450 feet) was built by the Japanese, and the Pinnacle and Electra are Canadian projects, and so, for these three tall buildings, the 13 stayed in. In the good old-fashioned spirit of American denial, and despite the fact that there is definitely a floor 13 stories above the ground in One America Plaza, Symphony Towers (499 feet), and the Grand Hyatt, the floor numbers skip from 12 to 14. But it's like what the comedian Mitch Hedberg said, "If you jump out of the window on the 14th floor, you will die earlier!"

Batophobia is the fear of tall buildings, as distinguished from acrophobia, the fear of heights. Acrophobia may be suffered from in a tall building, but the fear of tall buildings is different. One may be afraid of a tall building even while standing beneath it, on otherwise safe ground.

Personally, I engage tall buildings on an aesthetic level. I find it easy to appreciate the visual rhythm of high buildings, punctuating the landscape like high notes in sheet music, like loud sounds on an equalizer's LED display, like prosperity depicted on a bar graph, or the graduated bars of an improving signal on a cell phone. Abrupt, obdurate, undeniable, tall buildings charge the negative spaces between them.

On the telephone one afternoon, I asked Michael Stepner some questions about downtown San Diego's high-rise past and future. Stepner has been the official city architect and the dean of the New-School of Architecture and is currently an urban planner.

What about some philosophical perspective. Why do we build tall buildings in the first place?

"Well, for a number of reasons," Stepner said. "One is because land is valuable, and you want to maximize the return on it. Two, we have uses that require a lot of space in a concentrated area so that people can interact with each other. And thirdly, I think people build high-rises as a symbol of ego; that is, cities and companies will build tall buildings for prestige. There's been talk, too, about tall buildings being a phallic symbol for some people's minds. I'm not sure I'd go along with that, but folks are entitled to their opinions."

What about plans for San Diego's high-rise future?

"We're working to make a successful downtown," Stepner began. "We're adding toward a critical mass of buildings that are residential and office and commercial, to bring people downtown and strengthen the whole area. The real concern is how all those buildings will relate to each other. You don't want buildings that are separated by parking lots; you don't want buildings that don't relate well to the street; you don't want buildings that have garages where people drive in and then drive out at night and never go downstairs to experience downtown. So you've really got to treat high-rises differently in a downtown area than perhaps you'd have to do in a suburban area."

But to say how a building relates to the street, isn't that a question of beauty being in the eye of the beholder?

"No. It's more than that," Stepner demurred. "It is an aesthetic question, but it's also a practical one. If the building doesn't relate well to the street, then the building doesn't encourage people to walk on that street, then you have a dead spot. And if you have a dead spot downtown, then the surrounding properties might not be as productive as they could be, because then you don't have a lot of foot traffic. You need attractive and functional entrances and ground-floor activity."

I asked Stepner about the life expectancy of a tall building. Are they built to last?

He said, "These buildings are studiously maintained, of course, although there have been cases where they've discovered structural problems and so on. But one of the things that's happened over the years that's fascinating is land measures pass in a lot of downtowns, and then a 20-story building might get taken down for a 50-story one. And then later, the 50-story building gets taken down for one that's 75 stories. We've seen situations like this in San Francisco, New York, and Chicago. And some of the buildings that were built in the '20s and '30s probably would have lasted for hundreds of years. If we'd have let them. If the economics didn't get in the way. Other buildings might not last that long, because as we strive for lighter and lighter structural systems, these newer buildings might not be as long lasting."

And who's building these newer buildings? I wanted to interview some big-time architect who had designed local buildings, but I wondered who Stepner thought I should talk to.

"Helmut Jahn is considered by many to be among the outstanding high-rise architects," he answered. "Skidmore, Owings, and Merrill too. Also, Austin Veum Robbins Partners. Everybody has their favorites. And it's interesting in architecture, it's a lot like the movies or television, where the star system kind of takes over and you have someone who's really popular one day and then not so much the next."

I can vouch for the celebrity of architects, at least as it relates to trying to get in touch with one of them. I placed dozens of calls to Jahn and a few other big-name architects who'd had their hands in various San Diego projects, but it took weeks of trying before I could finally get an appointment to speak with one of them. Finally, I was given a half-hour time slot to talk with Doug Austin, chairman and CEO of Austin Veum Robbins Partners.

For Austin, I had prepared precisely one question. I wanted to pretend that I owned a city block downtown, a good spot to develop a new high-rise. Now, could Doug Austin take me step by step through the planning and building stages for putting up a high-rise?

"Generally what would happen," Austin began, "if you were looking at a piece of property, you would initially do some feasibility studies on that project, to find out what you can and can't build. In the downtown area, which is covered by the master environmental impact report, there are several planned district ordinances that apply to different areas at different times. Right now, under the current PDO, or planned district ordinance, generally speaking, there is still incentive there to build housing. In other words, you can get more FAR, or floor area ratio, if you build at least 80 percent housing."

Could Austin linger for a moment on the concept of floor area ratio?

"Let's say you had a block which is 60,000 square feet," he began, "and that's a full block downtown, 200 by 300. If you multiply that times the FAR, you have how many square feet you can build above grade. You can build below grade as much as you want and it doesn't count against your floor area ratio, because, basically, FAR is there as control for bulk and scale above grade."

Austin went on. "Let's just say you had a 6 FAR in a 60,000-square-foot block. That would mean that, generally speaking, you could build 360,000 square feet of building above grade. Sometimes, you could get up to an 8 FAR because you were building housing. So you'd get a bonus. So then you're multiplying 8 times 60,000, which is 480,000 square feet. So it depends where you are downtown, and whether you're under the old ordinance or the existing ordinance or the new one. Now they're starting to encourage more employment-based building downtown, although they do still want to encourage housing, but there is a shift going on slowly right now toward more commercial building as well."

Next, Austin began visualizing the financial aspects for a specific project on my hypothetical plot of land.

"Let's say on your plot of land we can build 360,000 square feet, and you're still under the old ordinance, so you've decided to go with 80 percent housing. Now, for what it's worth, the average price of high-rise housing downtown is roughly $600 per square foot. So if you said you were going to build 1000 square feet as an average-size unit, then you could take the net square footage that was saleable -- and that's excluding the corridors, the stairways, the elevator shafts, and any mechanical rooms you'd need to have -- and if you're doing it well, you're probably not going to have more than 15 percent of your floor area that's devoted to those things I just mentioned. So you'd have 85 percent available, and you'd multiply that times your basic revenue."

Austin continued. "Let's say you're doing a high-rise and it's in a decent location," he said, "and you're going to average $650 a square foot, because it's in a good location. So you take your gross revenue, which is, you remember, 80 percent of your 360,000 square feet which is for housing, times 85 percent which is actual livable space, times $650. And then you have to figure out your retail space, the other 20 percent, which might come in about $350 a square foot. And then you have your basic gross revenue tag. Then, from that, you have to find your net revenue: you have to subtract out your sales, commissions, construction, financing, all the soft costs, which include the engineers, the insurances, the HOA dues, legal fees, accounting fees, and so on and so forth."

Then Austin laid out the bottom line. "With the cost of construction right now," he said, "in order to get something built, you've got to get to a point where you're getting at least a 20 percent return on that sales dollar. So if you think you can sell this thing for $150 million, then if you can't make $30 million of profit on the project, then it's probably not going to get built. And the reason for that is because there's so much risk involved in a high-rise, and with a project that big, you've got institutional partners, you've got a Goldman Sachs, you've got a J.P. Morgan, and they're looking for a certain internal rate of return for the money they're going to put up as equity. Generally, they're going to put up part of the equity, the developer's going to put up part, and then you're going to go to a lender who's going to put up the rest. The most you can get in a construction loan is 80 percent of cost, and the rest has to come from big institutional partners and out of your own pocket. Your money goes in first, generally, and you take the most risk. And the big institutional lenders are looking for certain internal rates of return to put up the rest."

So now we have all the numbers. We know what works and doesn't work. But now what? Now we go and look for an architect?

"No, no," Austin said. "You're doing this in conjunction with an architect. You need to be looking both physically and at the numbers simultaneously. You're going to be tweaking it both ways. You might have an architect who comes in with a project that's only 81 percent efficiency, and you have to say, 'Wait, this doesn't work.' "

Then the architect isn't necessarily the inventor of the deal?

"Not usually," Austin said. "Typically, the developer is the one that goes out there and has the chutzpah to tie up the land. He's the one with the vision and the money and the backing, and he goes and finds an architect who can help him realize the thing."

And then the developer comes to you?

"Generally, yes," Austin said. "The developer comes to us and says, 'Gee, what can we do here?' They'd also go to some sort of marketing consultant and ask them, you know, 'What do you think about this site?' But an architect doesn't have to wait for a developer. I'm just saying that's traditionally how it would happen. But sometimes an architect goes out and says, 'Look, I see this site, and I see what can be done with it. So I'm going to take a risk, and I'm going to dream up what I think needs to be done here, and then I'm going to go find a developer.' "

Then, for the first time, Austin referred to his own company specifically.

"And we do that," he said. "AVRP actually invents projects. Because we don't necessarily want to wait. Plus, high-rise projects are so dependent on architecture. Whereas, if you're out in the suburbs, all a developer has to do is have a set of plans he's used over and over and over again, and like cookie cutters he can just keep banging them out. But downtown, you can't do that."

And what about the actual physical project? What about the building of the structure itself?

"Once you understand the function of a building," Austin began, "that is, once you know whether it's going to be a hotel, housing, offices, then the design is going to be based on the needs of those users. So an architect's going to work very hard with a client to make something that's not only beautiful, hopefully, but that also works well. Then, there's a whole team of structural and mechanical engineers that have to get the guts of it working. Because basically it's a machine for living when you're all done."

Austin continued, "But now, when you start construction, because it takes so long to build a high-rise, most of the developers downtown want to fast-track the project. Which means they'll start digging the hole once they know enough about the project to define the parameters of the foundation of the structure. Before you even get a full architectural permit. You know you can get certain finishing touches right no matter what, so you can start a lot of the big stuff before you really know where it's going."

And they start with a hole?

"They start with a hole," Austin said, "and usually they go down about four stories. And downtown, usually what we have is a mat foundation. Which means they dig the hole, and then they pour a giant slab of concrete, five, six, seven feet thick, full of steel reinforcement, and that's going to resist the weight of the building, the force of wind, an earthquake, what have you. And you're getting certain basic mechanical structural things done in that hole when you're down there. You're putting in a parking garage, probably. And you come back up to grade. And then you create what's called a podium level, which generally is anywhere from 30 to 50 feet high, and that's what fills out the block. And somewhere within the podium there's going to be one or two towers that are going to keep going on up, as many stories as need be, depending on how big each floor is."

Then Austin digressed a moment to address one of his peeves concerning local high-rise architecture. "Once you get to 240 feet," he said, "you're required in San Diego to do what's called a redundant structure. You could do performance-based design, which I think is smarter, but San Diego's chosen not to do it yet. And so you have to go to a lot more expense in doing the structure as you get above 240 feet. There's a sort of magical line there. The theory behind redundant structuring is that more is better. You know, if I have a thick wall, then a thicker wall is stronger. Well, the reality is that's not completely true. You don't want your building to be too rigid. You want to have a certain amount of flexibility. Performance-based design, which is the way of the future, makes more efficient and smarter buildings. Redundant structures are safe, don't get me wrong. They're just inefficient as hell. The thing is, performance-based design is more sophisticated, and San Diego just hasn't gotten there yet." Then Austin laughed. "Now I'm going to get criticized by the building department, but...

"But anyway," Austin finished his description, "once you're really blowing and going, and you're in the tower itself, these guys are building the structure for these buildings in concrete anywhere between five and eight days per floor. If you're steel, it goes even faster than that, because it's like a big Erector set."

So now I wanted to encourage Austin to make a leap with me in his thinking. If his firm did, in fact, develop projects, then what was he dreaming up to make San Diego's skyline more distinctive? In what he could envision, would San Diego ever compete with New York and its Chrysler Building or St. Louis with its famous Gateway Arch?

"Part of the problem is the height limit," Austin said. "We really just need a little more room. I think if we could go to about 750 feet, we could do some amazing things. As an example, AVRP, our company, is located in One America Plaza, which, pound for pound, is a very high quality building, but if you hear any criticism of it, you hear people say it just doesn't look high enough. It's too short!"

But that's the challenge.

"Yes," Austin agreed. "That's the challenge."

So what's the future of our skyline?

"Well, what I really wish is that we could find some way to go to 750 feet tall. Because I think it would make it a much more exciting skyline. But aside from that, we're going to see a lot of development in the East Village. And the most exciting thing we're doing right now is one pencil-thin building right on Park Boulevard down there, where it turns to start going up toward the park. There's something there called Library Circle, and right there, we're going to build a sort of iconic building that's going to be only about 75 feet wide and about 480 feet tall. Which is pretty narrow, but appropriate, I think. Almost like if you were in Egypt or Rome or Paris, and they would mark these places with some sort of icon. But this building will be a living building; there'll be people living in it. And if the library gets built someday, because the library's supposed to be a large dome, and if you look at the classics of architecture, then you always have the campanile and the dome, and so this becomes kind of the same relationship. We're building the campanile for the library dome. Maybe in three or four years, those buildings will help distinguish San Diego's skyline. I don't know. We'll see!"

I read that when I accidentally got SDReader(I prefer citybeat) while waiting for my breakfast at the neighborhood deli. The article is spot on about public art and something defining in the urban fabric. We are so lackluster in that department. A bit off-topic but anybody know the trendlines for city politics? I've read somewhere that it is trending Democratic, but the union is losing its clout. I want to know since a more liberal city is usually more open to such things.

Oh yeah, what is the pencil and globe thing project on Park Blvd called? Whats the status?

The pencil is library tower. The globe is the library itself

Thanks for the webcam shots, Mongozx. I love watching Electra rise :yes:

Good but long article in the SD Reader.
I usually never read The Reader (like chicbicyclist, I prefer CityBeat - Do you all remember Fahrenheit? That was the best weekly before it folded) but I found that article regarding downtown pretty interesting and informative.


Oh yeah, what is the pencil and globe thing project on Park Blvd called? Whats the status?
Are you referring to the future main library and Library Tower?

I dropped by the DT Info Center and took pics of some new mini-model additions -


NBC
http://i4.photobucket.com/albums/y120/Jaygergon/DTSD%20Info%20Ctr/IMG_5343.jpg

http://i4.photobucket.com/albums/y120/Jaygergon/DTSD%20Info%20Ctr/IMG_5344.jpg

SEXY EMBASSY1414
http://i4.photobucket.com/albums/y120/Jaygergon/DTSD%20Info%20Ctr/IMG_5350.jpg

PIER (My favorite mid-rise project)
http://i4.photobucket.com/albums/y120/Jaygergon/DTSD%20Info%20Ctr/IMG_5349.jpg

MASSIVE MONDRIAN DRESSED-UP IN BLUE
http://i4.photobucket.com/albums/y120/Jaygergon/DTSD%20Info%20Ctr/IMG_5352.jpg

BIRD'S EYE VIEW OF THE WESTERN WATERFRONT (Do you see the potential?)
http://i4.photobucket.com/albums/y120/Jaygergon/DTSD%20Info%20Ctr/IMG_5355.jpg

Damn, still too many parking lots. People who complain about open spaces in the Manchester Pacific Gateway project should pressure the city to convert those underused lots instead.

I never really liked The Embassy but it looks really good amongst those buildings around it! Glad we're not seeing the blocky building syndrome predominant in Vancouver.

:soapbox: ARRRRGH! Why are they putting up models of projects (Embassy & Mondrian) that we don't know will actually materialize?! I oughta sew these guys :D

I'm confident that Embassy will get built :yes: I love the tower for looking more like a sculpture instead of just another building.


http://i4.photobucket.com/albums/y120/Jaygergon/downtown%20development/EMBASSY.jpg

http://i4.photobucket.com/albums/y120/Jaygergon/downtown%20development/emb2.jpg

Here's a media release announcement from the developers website on 7/31/06. In it, it says groundbreaking is slated for early 2007
http://www.embassy1414.com/pdf/MA_EmbassyCCDCApprovall_07.31.06.pdf

The smoothness of the non-glass surfaces just reminds me of too much of those 70s-80s era block multi-level parking garages. I am still crossing my finger that it gets built though, variety can't hurt anyone.

^^No, no, no....don't compare Embassy to a multi-level parking garage. Instead, look at it like the rotunda of the Guggenheim Museum in NYC. It will make you feel better ;)

http://i4.photobucket.com/albums/y120/Jaygergon/Misc/Guggenheim20Museum.jpg

:soapbox: ARRRRGH! Why are they putting up models of projects (Embassy & Mondrian) that we don't know will actually materialize?! I oughta sew these guys :D


It is a CCDC requirement that upon design approval, a scale model be installed in their information centre.

Damn, still too many parking lots. People who complain about open spaces in the Manchester Pacific Gateway project should pressure the city to convert those underused lots instead.

I never really liked The Embassy but it looks really good amongst those buildings around it! Glad we're not seeing the blocky building syndrome predominant in Vancouver.

All those available parking lots will come in handy when it comes time to build those supertalls...


...you know, in 50 or 60 years.

Embassy1414 better be built. That tower would add some long needed distinction for us.

It better.

*shakes fist*

All those available parking lots will come in handy when it comes time to build those supertalls...


...you know, in 50 or 60 years.
My exact thoughts, but I'm thinking in more like 15-20 years ;)

Looks like they are still kicking around the idea of building an office building at Horton Plaza. I hope it works out because that Sam Goody building needs to go! From today's SD Daily Transcript -


Office tower might take up residence at Horton Plaza

By THOR KAMBAN BIBERMAN, The Daily Transcript
Thursday, August 31, 2006

The Westfield Corp. in May proposed developing a large office tower at Horton Plaza where Robinson's May and Planet Hollywood have been and where a Sam Goody store is today.

The tower may be just the beginning of the changes at Horton Plaza.

Nancy Graham, Centre City Development Corp. president, talked of the changes during a May 24 Downtown San Diego Partnership meeting.
Graham offered few details, but Jason Hughes, principal of The Irving Hughes Group tenant brokerage firm, said he has discussed the possibility with Westfield officials during the past several months. The exact size of the project has yet to be determined, however.

Hughes suggested the development could be about 300,000 square feet and perhaps 20 to 25 stories. The building that houses the Sam Goody space would be demolished.

"This sounded intriguing. It's a great location. A lot of my clients are very interested," said Hughes.

The development, which would likely have at least some underground parking, could augment this greatly by its access to Horton Plaza spaces.

While many of downtown's mixed-use developments have only ground floor retail, Hughes said Westfield is examining the possibility of having three floors of retail on the lower floors of the office building that would act as a continuation of a redeveloped Horton Plaza. Ernest W. Hahn's roughly 900,000-square-foot mall was completed in 1985. Just how Horton Plaza itself will redevelop is still in flux, but Westfield or a future tenant has plans to spend about $2 million to redevelop the old Mervyn's store space that became available earlier this year. The Jaynes Corp of California, a San Diego-based contracting firm, has been listed as a prime bidder on that job.

Centre City Development Corp. spokesman Derek Danziger confirmed that a proposed 450-room hotel along the G Street side of the Horton Plaza parking garage is still an approved project.

At the northeastern corner of the mall, the adjoining Balboa Theater is in the midst of a multimillion dollar renovation that was decades in coming, and to the northwest, Spreckels Theater is being eyed for a major upgrade as well.

As for the office tower, Hughes said it is hard to imagine a better location. Not only that, since Westfield is so large that it can finance its own projects if need be, it doesn't have to have the pre-leasing that is required in most other office buildings.




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Here's an encouraging answer to the big question we all have. From this week's SD Business Journal -



The Experts Ponder: Downtown, Overbuilt or Underbuilt?

Despite New Units Available, Shortage Looming, Say Development Experts
By PAT BRODERICK

San Diego Business Journal Staff

Boom or bust: Is downtown San Diego being overbuilt, or will shortages soon be plaguing the residential market, as demand overtakes supply?

According to the latest figures compiled by the Centre City Development Corp. for July 2006, projects under construction include 3,560 condo units, 570 apartment units, 381,000 square feet of retail, 433,000 square feet of office, and 1,900 hotel rooms.

Projects approved but pending construction include 3,790 condos, 1,000 apartments, 199,000 square feet of retail, 70,000 square feet of office, 1,100 hotel rooms and 770 public parking spaces.

In August 2005, the closest figures available for comparison reported that projects under construction numbered 3,420 condo units, 540 apartments, 346,000 square feet of retail, 743,000 square feet of office, and 121 hotel rooms.

Projects approved but pending construction totaled 3,000-plus condos, 730 apartments, 340,000 square feet of retail, 140,000 square feet of office, 2,650 hotel rooms and 950 public parking spaces.

Overall, projects completed since 2001 numbered 5,440 condo units, 2,250 apartment units, 447,000 square feet of retail, 404,000 square feet of office, 1,250-plus hotel rooms, and 7,300 public parking spaces.

What does it all say for the health of the downtown market?

“If you were to believe the numbers, then in fact we would be wildly overbuilt,” said Alan Nevin, director of economic research for MarketPointe Realty Advisors in San Diego. “The realty is, we are going to be short of product until at least 2009.”

One reason is that the units going up now are selling rapidly, he said.

“By the time they are completed, they will be sold out,” said Nevin. “Where do you move then? Nowhere.”

No one is building new product at the moment, he added.

“Go down and try to find holes in the ground,” he said. “There are no holes in the ground. Nobody is starting anything. The key is, the numbers don’t work. Developers will have to get a hundred dollars more per square foot, because construction costs have gone up by that much in the last three years. It’s not a happy scene.”

Where, then, is the market heading?

“It’s a situation that is not going to cure itself,” he said. “It could probably take two or three years before it gets better again.”
But Nevin thinks this is a good time for people to “get off the fence and buy.”

“Once inventory softens, there are a lot of investor-owners downtown who are trying to sell their product,” he said.

Ebbs And Flows

Stabilization is now taking place, said Russ Valone, MarketPointe president.

“Values are not declining,” he said. “You might have incentives offered in the last units, but prices have held.”

And, if the supply starts to ebb?

“If there is no new construction, we could be in a situation where the only inventory is resale, and that product will not be able to satisfy all the demand generated,” said Valone.

But there seems to be a good supply of likely investors in downtown, said Valone, from second-home buyers to the Generation X and Y-ers who have no wish to live in suburbia.

“They continue to be a strong, viable consumer base for downtown,” he said. “Then there is the empty nester. In the beginning they were primarily from San Diego. Now, we’re finding them coming from all over the country.”

Crystal Ball Gazing

Frank J. Alessi, CCDC’s vice president and chief financial officer, doesn’t have any easier answers about the future of downtown’s market.

“It’s hard to tell,” he said. “A slowdown in development is going to slow down tax increments, which will decrease the ability to do certain things, depending on its magnitude.”

Alessi regularly reviews his projections, and so far, he’s not worried.

“Based on my knowledge of where we are today and the rate of construction, I don’t see any immediate impact,” he said. “I don’t see any major pullback in what we do.”

Glad to hear the office tower in the horton plaza project is moving along. 20-30 stories... i wonder how it'll look and it should have a good impact on the skyline.

But when is that Horton Plaza Hotel project going to get started, and what the hell is it gonna look like? i think that rendering on the CCDC website is a little dated..

Those two would fill up a couple of gaps in the skyline. :)

And for the redevelopment of HP, they should open it up more ya know?

Walking on 1st and 4th avenues, you dont really notice that there's a mall there....

Here's a nice bit on Cortez Hill from SD Metro. . .

Downtown — like most of San Diego — is both defined by and held captive by its geography. Bounded on the west and south by the San Diego Bay, its north and east edges are defined by the hills that must be scaled to escape.

The biggest of those is Cortez Hill, one of Downtown’s first neighborhoods to have residences and businesses side by side. Named for El Cortez Hotel, which spent 25 of its 79 years under threat of demolition, the hill marks the entry to and periphery of Downtown.

http://sandiegometro.com/images/0609/living_3.jpg
The hill remains dotted with a handful of the original Victorian mansions, along with 1920s Spanish Revival apartment buildings, 1980s post-modern, and new construction as well. Blocks of Mediterranean rowhouses staircase up and down the hills, and residential high-rises tower across from the highways marking the limit of Downtown.

“It’s our own little slice of San Francisco,” says Joyce Summer, who has lived on Cortez Hill for five years. “We are a charming bedroom community in the heart of the city.”

Besides views of the bay, Balboa Park and the Coronado Bridge, longtime residents have had a bird’s eye view of the condominium towers popping up Downtown.

The past five years have brought more than 1,000 new homes — condos and apartments — to Cortez Hill, with Aloft, Aria, Atmosphere, Cortez Blu, Discovery and Current either completed or under way.

And a second building may be coming to the landmark El Cortez as developers Peter Janopaul and Anthony Block seek approval for a seven-story, 84-unit building on a 20,000-square-foot lot next to the historic hotel.

Down the hill to the south is the core of San Diego, from First Avenue to Park Boulevard and from A Street to Broadway, where the business district finds hotels and office towers being nudged by a number of proposed condominium and apartment developments.

In this area, developers are trying to blend residential towers with the existing retail, hotels and office buildings — Symphony Towers, the Union Bank and Bank of America buildings — with interesting results.

The projects range from affordable units at SmartCorner, where residents will have the trolley at the front door, to the luxuries of the 680-unit Vantage Pointe project on the entire block between Ninth and 10th avenues, and A and B streets.

SmartCorner, slated for completion in May, may be the first new residential development to open its doors in the Core, reports Sherm Harmer, co-developer with Urban Housing Partners.

The moderately priced units are selling well, he says, of the project where the 20th floor, rooftop terrace will be open to every resident rather than built into a penthouse.

“A lot of young professionals and single folks are interested because our low price points are allowing them to move Downtown,” Harmer says. “We’re planning a really livable building, with the trolley and 8,000 square feet of retail that caters to our residents on site.”

Vantage Pointe, among the largest residential buildings Downtown, is loaded with amenities and priced to reflect it. Condos are selling well in the 40-story building now under construction, reports spokeswoman Sarah Peterson.

But not all the Core projects are soaring.

T.C. Holdings abandoned plans for 196 units in a 33-story building slated for the corner of 11th Avenue and B Street, although the project was fully entitled. An auction of the property and plans originally scheduled for August were canceled at the last minute when the company found an as-yet-unnamed buyer, said to be based in Newport Beach.

Harmer says he knows of a half dozen projects on hold and other projects where developers have lost interest in converting apartments to condos. For example, national developer D.R. Horton has pulled out of some of its San Diego projects and left its deposits behind, including one in Bankers Hill.

“With few exceptions, if they don’t already have a shovel in the ground, they won’t be building for a while,” says Michael Zucchet, the former city councilman who is vice president of real estate for J. Peter Block Cos.

That’s fine with Cortez Hill residents, including Rita Collier. While the neighborhood welcomes the coming park at the northeastern edge, and the completion of the projects under way, many people are concerned about the hill becoming too busy and too built.

“I hope our neighborhood won’t change in the next five years,” says Collier, who has lived on the hill since 2002. “It would be nice to have more neighborhood retail that you didn’t have to go down hill for, but we’re about the right size now.”

The neighborhood character — reminiscent of Potrero or Nob Hill in San Francisco — is part of the attraction for OliverMcMillan Co., which is developing Aloft.

“Our view was that everything was basically being built right in the middle of Downtown, and with that you get all the benefits of the high-energy central location, yet there is also some downside to it,” says Dene Oliver, the company’s chief executive. “ We thought (Cortez Hill) was really a differentiated site because it looks back over Balboa Park, and you are going to be getting a little more tranquility, yet if you want to be in the epicenter of everything, you can walk down the hill.”

The hill puts its residents just a bit above the hustle and bustle of work-day Downtown, and offers its own special benefits. The hill also includes the Cortez Hill Shelter where the YWCA offers homeless families a chance to get grounded and started toward their own homes.

El Cortez Hotel, which opened in 1927, has served as a neighborhood catalyst several times in its history. When it was built atop land cleared of Ulysses S. Grant Jr.’s Victorian house, as a mixed apartment and hotel building, it sparked the new development of the Cortez Hill neighborhood, according to the “Journal of San Diego History.” In the next 50 years, the 17-story hotel withstood additions and alterations — a bright red sign in 1937 and the exterior glass elevator in the 1950s. The hotel deteriorated in the 1970s and 1980s, and was threatened with doom until it was declared a historical landmark in July 1990.

In 1998, Block and Janopaul struck a deal with the Centre City Development Corp. to redevelop the historical landmark into apartments with seed money from the CCDC.

By 2000, the partners decided to switch from apartments to condos, repaid the loan and again transformed the property, leaving the historic Don Room and El Cortez sign intact. The quick sale of the condos in the appreciating market helped draw other developers into the neighborhood.

Now Block and Janopaul have returned to the agency with plans for the second building that will include a ground floor swimming pool to be shared with El Cortez, underground parking and retail on the first floor.

“Peter has proposed a building that’s about half of what he could build and he’s taken great care to respect the architecture and the tremendous landmark next door,” says Zucchet. “Even the Save Our Heritage Organisation has voted 8-1 to support it.”

But resistance to the development exists among El Cortez residents and others, who say the building will block views, attract crowds and diminish the character of the landmark.

If approved, the building may be the last to break ground in the Cortez Hill and Core neighborhoods, at least until the market shakes out.

“No one’s in a hurry to break ground because financing is tough,” Harmer says. “The market is soft and sales are at last year’s levels. It’s a good, healthy thing to let the supply dry up.”

That’s fine with Cortez Hill residents, including Rita Collier. While the neighborhood welcomes the coming park at the northeastern edge, and the completion of the projects under way, many people are concerned about the hill becoming too busy and too built.

These people really grate on my nerves. You live right besides downtown ferchrisake. don't expect the kind of peace and tranquility you will find in the country. The people in Hillcrest are also complaining about this too: http://www.hillquest.com/index.htm

They actually had it titled "Will Hillcrest become Hong Kong" a couple days ago. Talk about grasping on straws.

Ohh, Channel 8 just did a feature about buying condos in downtown in thier Consumer Alert segment. They featured Atria and Smart Corner. Downtown living has finally become mainstream. They basically said its a nuyer's amarket and now is the time to buy!

^^Saw that also. Interesting piece, funny how one of the real estate agents said "well now we can offer more incentives to buy".

Makes me laugh, like they wanted to offer incentives in the first place...

Ohh, Channel 8 just did a feature about buying condos in downtown in thier Consumer Alert segment. They featured Atria and Smart Corner. Downtown living has finally become mainstream. They basically said its a nuyer's amarket and now is the time to buy!
Maybe it will lead to a downtown buying frenzy and help to get rid of the excess inventory ;)

San Diego Metro News. . . .

Owners of The Pickwick Hotel at Front and Broadway are embarking on a $16 million renovation that is to be completed in December. The hotel, built in 1926, will reopen as The Sofia Hotel. Ken Winslow, president of Pickwick Partners Inc., says the hotel will be transformed into a modern, stylish boutique property. "Since its inception, the hotel has been an important San Diego historical landmark," says Winslow. "For this remodel, we took great care to preserve the property's distinct gothic architecture while transforming its interior into an entirely new environment creating urban, smart, sophisticated accommodations and public spaces tailored to fit the discerning tastes of both business and leisure travelers."

Architect Richard Bundy was chosen to lead The Sofia Hotel project. "Our goal in the Sofia development is to refurbish the spirit of the original hotel," says Bundy. "In doing so, we are working to retain the important architectural spaces such as the hotel's lobby, guest rooms, staircases and hallways so that the hotel will be new, yet retain the glory of the late '20s when it was built." Interior renovations will include a makeover of the hotel's 212 rooms and suites.

Interior design is by Anjum Razvi, president of Razvi Design Studio Inc. "Every aspect of The Sofia -- from the wall sconces to the design of the lobby desk -- will be custom made and remain consistent with the hotel's organic theme," says Razvi. "Throughout the hotel, unique fossil sculptures and natural art pieces will be illuminated. The foyer will also host metal-beaded shimmer screen partitions that drape from the hotel's exquisite high ceilings; the distinct open staircases leading to the elevator will incorporate unique translucent capiz shell window panels that allow outside light to fill the area."

The Port District’s Lane Field/B Street Cruise Ship Terminal development has another prospective developer. With the close of the 90-day exclusive negotiating agreement window with the Viejas Tribe and Manchester Development in August, the Port contacted Lankford Development as lead entity of Lane Field, San Diego Developers LLC and Hardage Suites Hotels, which separately had responded to the original RFP. They have combined and Port Commissioners, at their Sept. 5 meeting, will hear new proposals for the signature bayfront project from both Viejas/Manchester and Lankford/Hardage. Some suspect pressure to get a seven figure non-refundable deposit from Manchester.

I'd rather have Lankford (Smart Corner, Broadway 655) develop this lot instead of Manchester to give the Embarcadero some diversity in terms of redevlopment & architectural styles.

Ohh, Channel 8 just did a feature about buying condos in downtown in thier Consumer Alert segment. They featured Atria and Smart Corner. Downtown living has finally become mainstream. They basically said its a nuyer's amarket and now is the time to buy!

So how long do you guys think this "buyers market" will last? I'm thinking about buying a condo late next year. Probably in the East Village or Little Italy. I can't wait!

So how long do you guys think this "buyers market" will last? I'm thinking about buying a condo late next year. Probably in the East Village or Little Italy. I can't wait!

There are two routes you can go. You can go with the best product (a bosa or citymark project) who do not offer any incentives, and still sell their units with no price reduction, or go with the Centex/Smartcorner, a lesser product with all the plasma/furniture allowance, etc...

Or, if you want one of the good buildings, find a resale that was bought by a speculator who has been sitting with an empty unit for a few months, and has to sell. Then you will probably get a good deal.

Just remember, with brand new product, you get what you pay for.

I'd rather have Lankford (Smart Corner, Broadway 655) develop this lot instead of Manchester to give the Embarcadero some diversity in terms of redevlopment & architectural styles.

It would be awesome. Smart Corner is one of the more affordable projects in downtown, and the developer seem to be more inclined to actually be more serious to mixed-use and better urban planning, than the somewhat tokenism approach of the others. They are also a great example that affordability doesnt have to mean butt ugly.

Padres Owner Going to Bat for Two Hotel Brands Under One Roof

By CONNIE LEWIS
San Diego Business Journal Staff

JMI Realty, the real estate arm of San Diego Padres owner John Moores, has a new hotel project on the drawing board — actually two hotels — an Aloft, a sub-brand of the W in combination with an extended-stay brand of the Westin, both of which are owned by Starwood Hotels.

Having been selected by Starwood to be a member of a “development board of advisers” for Aloft, JMI was given the exclusive right to develop a property in downtown San Diego, said John Pani, the real estate firm’s vice president of acquisitions and development.

JMI, which developed and owned the 284-room San Diego Marriott Del Mar in Carmel Valley and the 255-room Hotel Solamar with the Sycuan Band of the Kumeyaay Nation in downtown’s Gaslamp Quarter, also developed the 511-room Omni San Diego, which has the distinction of being the only hotel in the country connected to a major league baseball park by a catwalk. Both the San Diego Marriott Del Mar and the Solamar were sold this year.

One Roof, Two Brands

JMI could gain the distinction of building the nation’s first new hotel property with two brands under one roof, if all goes as planned.

Pani said that Starwood would announce the name of the new Westin brand this month. He declined to pinpoint the exact location of the proposed hybrid property, but said it would be built east of Petco Park.

It may contain 350 to 400 rooms, with one brand atop or aside the other. While they may have separate elevators, they would likely share an entrance, lobby and check-in area.

“Part of this new generation of hotels is that they simplify the check-in process,” Pani said. “Guests may check themselves by computer at a kiosk. Customer service agents may not be behind a desk. They may be roaming to help guests get to their rooms.”

Pani said rooms at the new Aloft might be priced in the range of $175 a night on average. He declined to speculate on the cost of the project.

Plans will be firmed up within the next 12 months, but expectations are that JMI could break ground by the end of next year and that construction would take up to 18 months.

It Just Might Work

Since the Aloft and the extended-stay version of the Westin cater to different customers, they’d coexist happily under one roof, said Bernie Murphy, an Encinitas-based regional vice president of the Plasencia Group Inc., lodging industry brokers and advisers.

“It’s all about shelf space,” Murphy said. “They’re (Starwood) looking at segments they haven’t yet penetrated.”

Referring to Aloft as the “down brand” of the W, which introduced cool to San Diego when it opened in late 2002 in downtown’s Marina District, he anticipates that Aloft will attract clientele between the ages of 20 and 35, looking for less expensive accommodations than the posh W, where rooms currently go for $329 or more on a weekend night.
Those attracted to the Westin extended-stay hotel would more likely be older business travelers needing lodging for three days or longer, such as those coming to town to attend training or sales seminars.

“That’s a market that is under-served in San Diego. These are people wanting to feel a little more at home than in a 20-by-20 room,” he added. “They want the extra space of a suite and a pantry kitchenette.”

Pani agreed, but he said that even though the brands will cater to different markets, their customer bases wouldn’t necessarily be different age groups.

“The age of business travelers is changing. It’s getting younger,” he said. “While the W may be viewed as a place for the young and hip, they alone do not provide enough revenue to sustain the operation. The W also attracts business travelers.”

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Interesting concept, never heard of it, but interesting.

^^Hmmmmm. I'm trying to figure out where this mystery location is. In the proposed Ballpark Village?

And my guess is that it would be at least 40 stories since they're stacking 2 hotels on top of each other.

^^ That's a good guess. We know there's been talk of hotels being a part of BV. Perhaps this is the first step in getting that project going again :yes:

i have to agree DTSD, that would look great along SDs waterfront. (…) I think the real evil in holding up a vision such as your idea isnt the NBC design as it is, but rather Harbor Drive. If that could be scrapped or submersed, then you could have unabaded park the entire distance from the cresecent to seaport village in front of lots of city environment.
I agree Harbor Drive should probably be removed as part of that. CCDC has already reduced it to narrow access road in front the NBC property, and with G st being extended to the waterfront as a similar access road, Harbor Drive will no longer be needed there.

And FWIW I would expect the 2BR/$300K @ Vantage Pointe to be an internal unit on a lower floor with no view and very little light. If that's something that has appeal, I'm pretty sure M2i still has some units available with no wait.
Those “2 bedrooms” at Vantage Pointe are a joke; some are 700sf! That’s small for a ONE bedroom. And the layouts are all scrambled to allow both “bedrooms” a window. You’re not even going to be able to fit a queen sized bed in the “master bedroom”. I can’t wait to take a tour of one of these; it’s going to be hilarious to see in person!

But in the meantime, there just isn't that much affordable stock going up anywhere. The only real option in most cities is to buy something that's a little older (which there is very little of in downtown SD).
That’s the way the market has always worked in the past. It’s a very new (and backwards) concept that people who can’t afford luxury homes should be entitled (and subsidized) to get into brand new construction, while the middle class hunts down older more affordable homes.
“Rather, it's because of a local ordinance that says no taller buildings may escalate near airport flight paths.”
This needs to change. The city should not be imposing even more severe restrictions than the FAA’s already strict height limits.

I never really liked The Embassy but it looks really good amongst those buildings around it! Glad we're not seeing the blocky building syndrome predominant in Vancouver.
The Embassy’s architecture is gorgeous! My only complaint is that it’s not bigger. I’d love to see this on a full city block going up 500 ft, preferably higher.

The Embassy’s architecture is gorgeous! My only complaint is that it’s not bigger. I’d love to see this on a full city block going up 500 ft, preferably higher.
My thoughts exactly! :yes:





Finally, some good news!


http://i4.photobucket.com/albums/y120/Jaygergon/downtown%20development%202/hdbbf_2.jpg

http://i4.photobucket.com/albums/y120/Jaygergon/downtown%20development%202/hdbbf_1.jpg

http://i4.photobucket.com/albums/y120/Jaygergon/downtown%20development%202/hdbbf_3.jpg

PEDESTRIAN BRIDGE REACHES MAJOR MILESTONE

Downtown Harbor Drive Pedestrian Bridge Obtains PUC Approval


San Diego, CA— The California Public Utilities Commission (PUC) formally approved construction of the Pedestrian Bridge at Park Boulevard and Harbor Drive at their headquarters in downtown San Francisco on Thursday, September 7. The Commission voted unanimously to grant the request of the City of San Diego, submitted by the Centre City Development Corporation (CCDC). The PUC is the regulatory agency which governs rail crossings in the state of California.

“This is an exciting and important infrastructure project that will improve pedestrian access to the highly used area near PETCO Park,” said CCDC President Nancy Graham. “The bridge’s world-class design will add an artistic focal point and gateway to the city. The PUC’s approval is a pivotal step in completing this important project.”

The pedestrian bridge will complete a 100- year old vision of a Park-to-Bay Link, connecting Balboa Park and San Diego Bay. It will provide a safe crossing over a heavily traveled Harbor Drive and existing train and trolley tracks. The bridge will improve traffic circulation and access to and from the waterfront, Barrio Logan, and a rapidly developing East Village neighborhood. It will also connect the 2,000-space Hilton San Diego Convention Center Hotel Parking Facility with Park Boulevard.

The project is expected to begin construction in 2007, with completion targeted in 2008. The self-anchored suspension bridge design features a 500' curved span, stainless steel wrapped suspension cable railing, a 2-car glass elevator tower, landscaped plazas and public art installations throughout.

Omg. Omg. Omg. I cannot wait to make a bike ride through that bridge. I just wish it was bigger as well! It looks really awesome. I wish to god it spurs the artistic architectural movement in San Diego. Lastly, anybody have better pictures that puts this bridge to scale with the surrounding buildings?

Waterfront project closer to reality

Manchester lacks one key approval

By Dani Dodge
STAFF WRITER

September 12, 2006

Douglas Manchester is in the homestretch: a handful of meetings and one key approval away from turning the downtown waterfront's Navy Broadway Complex into a high-rise hotel, office and restaurant hub.

The biggest hurdle may be a Sept. 27 meeting of San Diego's downtown redevelopment agency board, which must decide whether Manchester's plan conforms to a 1992 agreement that governs development at the site.

After that, there will be issues to iron out with the California Coastal Commission and a presentation of the plan to the House Armed Services Committee.

“It may be one of those lost opportunities that the city looks back on 25 years from now and says, 'How could we have let that happen?' ” said Rep. Susan Davis, D-San Diego, who is on the Armed Services Committee and whose district includes San Diego's downtown.

The next big date would be a 2007 groundbreaking.

Manchester's plan to develop the Navy Broadway Complex into Pacific Gateway – 2.9 million square feet of offices, hotels, restaurants and shops – could forever change the waterfront.

In the short run, it's difficult to dispute that it would be an improvement: The Navy's 14.7-acre property, bordered by Broadway, Harbor Drive and Pacific Highway, currently hosts low-slung, unattractive concrete buildings. However, critics envision grandeur and legacy: a park, downtown library or a performing arts center.

The Navy gave Manchester the right to develop the land in exchange for building it a new Southwest Regional Command headquarters on the site. Before construction can begin, the Centre City Development Corp., the city's downtown redevelopment arm, must find that Manchester's plan conforms with a 1992 development agreement.

If a lease is not signed by a January deadline, the land may be disposed by the Department of Defense through its base realignment and closure procedures.

Among the issues that could cause Manchester to miss his deadline is the California Coastal Commission. Deborah Lee, the commission's senior deputy director, said commission approval is needed.

The Navy maintains it got that approval in 1991. Manchester's representatives argue the commission has previously approved similar projects.

“I don't want to make the assumptions that anything will be easy,” said Perry Dealy, president of Manchester Development. “But CCDC (Centre City Development Corp.) is our goal and the Coastal Commission is just a safety valve more than anything else; I want to meet with them and brief them on the project.”

If Coastal Commission approval is deemed necessary, the process could take about two months or more, Lee said.

That could cause problems for the Navy and the timing of its presentation to Congress. The 1987 law that allowed the partnership with a private developer says a lease can't be signed until 21 days after being submitted to the House Armed Services Committee for review. No vote is required.

Navy Capt. Mike Allen said he wants to get the plans to the Secretary of the Navy in early October to make sure all deadlines are met. He added that the proposal is much better than contemplated in 1992.

“We want to activate the waterfront with world-class hotels and retail,” he said. “We want to tear down the walled-off waterfront and open up the front porch to the public.”

---------------------------


a performing arts theater akin to the Sydney Opera House would be awesome, but that might not happen in the near future. The city doesnt have the money and I would rather see the downtown library build first. Hey, at least we still have those rent-a-car parking lots for future public grandeur works.

I really like the idea of a downtown performing arts center and although there's no reason why one couldn't be incorporated into the NBC project, it's probably a little late for an addition like that at this point. There are other spots nearby where something like that would work anyway (i.e, old police hq).

^ North Embarcadero.

I thought the old police hq is already going to be converted into a glorified strip mall or something(correct me if I'm wrong).

One more note: They had an earlier article in the Tribune about two days ago about how the architectural plans are likely to change after everything is all set and done(permits and approval wise). I read the head of of this project(from Manchester) say that they would likely alter the plans after the tepid response from the architectural crowd(I think they are also gonna hold public meetings or something for the changes).

I thought the old police hq is already going to be converted into a glorified strip mall or something(correct me if I'm wrong).

You're correct. IMO, it is the most underwhelming project currently happening downtown and I would have loved to see the site converted into some kind of world-class opera hall or performing arts center. How great would it be to see something like this on the waterfront?

http://www.dallasperformingarts.org/images/DCPAF_Winspear_Opera_House_Foster.jpg

Good news coming from uptown regarding the 12 story bldg on University. The original 15-story design looked better, but this sets terrific precedence for more midrises and highrises along University.

Of course the old "doesn't fit into the neighborhood" argument came up -- by that argument you'd never increase densities in a meaningful way. These people have no concept of "transition". Further, there are already towers and midrises sprinkled in all throughout Banker's Hill, Hillcrest and North Park. It's part of what gives these areas urban charm. If these people want the suburbs, they should move to the suburbs.

Fortunately reason prevailed by 7-1.

Hillcrest project to add parking

Council approves 12-story building

By Amy Oakes
STAFF WRITER

September 13, 2006


Owning one of four businesses sharing 10 parking spots in a Hillcrest shopping center, Alexandria Melchior constantly polices the lot.

She makes sure people are customers of the three restaurants or dry cleaners. If they are just looking for a place to park and go elsewhere, she moves them along.

“Parking has been a major detriment to businesses,” said Melchior, who owns Bambu Bistro restaurant.

Parking-starved Hillcrest soon will get 121 public spaces as part of a controversial 12-story housing and retail project the San Diego City Council approved yesterday. The council voted 7-1, with Councilwoman Donna Frye dissenting, saying the project didn't fit the neighborhood's character.

The project, named 301 University, calls for 96 condominiums with a ground floor of retail. It will be built on the south side of University Avenue between Third and Fourth avenues.

Two buildings will be demolished, including the shopping center that houses Bambu Bistro. Melchior said she hopes to open her Asian fusion restaurant in 301 University.

With more parking, Melchior said, she expects a boost in business.

To many who opposed 301 University's height – 12 stories among mostly one-to three-story buildings – the addition of public parking was the selling point. The developer, La Jolla Pacific, will build an underground public parking garage separate from residential parking.

To others, 301 University will hurt the neighborhood.

“It's just too big,” Tom Mullaney told the council. “It's overly massive.”

The project meets land-use and zoning requirements for the neighborhood. Hillcrest is one of several neighborhoods in what is called the Uptown Community, which has its own land-use plan.

Most of the project is on land that allows buildings to be up to 200 feet high.

Since the project was introduced, people have fought passionately for and against it. They filled the council chambers yesterday. Supporters held white fans with “Yes on 301” printed on one side, and opponents wore on their shirts round yellow circles with a line through “301.”

Some spoke for needing more parking in Hillcrest. One woman said she closed her shop because business was slow, which she partly attributed to a lack of parking.

Others said the project was too large and would increase traffic on an already congested portion of University Avenue. An organized group of opponents have said they may file a lawsuit against the project.

John Taylor, who helped organize an anti-301 University rally Saturday, said the project won't fit in with the rest of the neighborhood. Taylor told the council that he collected 1,873 signatures of people against it.

“This does not contribute to the neighborhood character,” Taylor said.

Frye said 301's long-term effects need to be analyzed before similar projects follow.

“Once the door is opened, it's very difficult to close it,” she said.

Lynne Heidl, an attorney representing La Jolla Pacific, said the project fulfills the mixed-use, high-density plan for that area of Hillcrest.

“The project is going to absolutely improve this area,” Heidl told the council.

Councilwoman Toni Atkins, whose District 3 includes Hillcrest, said she has been approached by residents and business owners for months about the project. Atkins, too, has concerns about the height and traffic.

“This is a big transition for this community,” Atkins said before making a motion to approve the project.

Construction could begin within a year. Council members asked the developer for a plan to help alleviate traffic congestion during work.

http://www.301support.org/siteimages/viewatuni&3rd.jpg

http://www.301support.org/siteimages/Retails&ResidentEntrance_1.jpg

http://www.301support.org/siteimages/nik'sviewatcafeplazasmall1.jpg

I agree with the city council on their approval of this project. The original design was much better and the community complained it was a slender tower that stepped back after a 3 story podium. Now they have a 12 story wall. along that narrow strip that is totaly architecturally insignificant. Serves those NYMBY's right! It is ridiculous that even though the City Council overwhelmingly approved, that group is now going to try to file lawsuits and waste more money!!!

Do you have the original renders?

Here's a model pic: http://www.hillquest.com/a/blog139.html

It's in the middle of the page, and you can see the Hillcrest sign for reference. The tree line street at the lower left is Fifth Avenue. And please ignore the campy nimby cartoon at the top.

ETA: I read hngcm wrong. OOps.

You're correct. IMO, it is the most underwhelming project currently happening downtown and I would have loved to see the site converted into some kind of world-class opera hall or performing arts center. How great would it be to see something like this on the waterfront? That is to die for. Now I feel sad that even Milwaukee, Wisconsin has a more recognizeable skyline and public art than us. Those folding wings on the Milwaukee Art Museum (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milwaukee_Art_Museum) are awesome.

That Hilcrest project kinda matches the movie theater/24Hr fitness facade on 5th.

That Hilcrest project kinda matches the movie theater/24Hr fitness facade on 5th.
I was thinking the exact same thing -- I think this will fit into the neighborhood a lot better than some folks think. I just wish they would use something other than stucco.

Those folding wings on the Milwaukee Art Museum are awesome.
Agreed. Although Calatrava's stuff is starting to get a little tired (IMO), I think that Milwaukee project would really look great/fit in well in downtown SD.

Omg. Omg. Omg. I cannot wait to make a bike ride through that bridge.
Same here! It sucks when you're near Petco and the only way to get to the bay from there is ride up to 5th Ave to cross Harbor Drive. The new pedestrian bridge will definitely provide an easy access to the bay once again.

Good news coming from uptown regarding the 12 story bldg on University. The original 15-story design looked better, but this sets terrific precedence for more midrises and highrises along University.
While I'm happy that the project was approved, I have big reservations about the design - it's so fricken generic. As some of you already said, it looks like the Uptown project, which is fine but do we really need another one? Why can't we get something different? They need to take it to the drawing board again. :gaah:



It appears that all of us here had valid gripes and praises regarding NBC. Check out what the experts said -


Designers, Architects Critique Waterfront Plan

By Dani Dodge
STAFF WRITER FOR THE SAN DIEGO UNION-TRIBUNE

September 13, 2006

Nationally renowned urban designers and architects, along with an architectural critic, gathered in San Diego yesterday to consider the potential of the downtown waterfront and the Navy Broadway Complex that sits upon it.

The eight experts toured the area, spent five hours debating possibilities and then made a unanimous pronouncement about the development plans: They could be better.

When asked whether developer Doug Manchester's vision for the 14.7-acre Navy Broadway site displayed “high-quality design,” each of them said no.

“We think this needs to be porous so we are bringing the city to the waterfront, and the waterfront back to the city,” said Mark Johnson, a Denver urban designer.

As the architectural experts showed how the project could be better, they moved the buildings around a map like chess pieces. The Navy building went from the middle to the Harbor Drive curve. A park went from the edge to the middle. They suggested taller, more slender buildings along Pacific Highway; an eight-block area instead of four; a street through the project lined on both sides with retail stores rather than a promenade; and better architecture.

The Centre City Development Corp., the city's downtown redevelopment arm, organized the event after board members asked for some expert opinions on Manchester's proposed Pacific Gateway.

The Navy is giving Manchester the opportunity for a long-term lease on the land in exchange for building the Navy a new Southwest Regional Command headquarters on the site bordered by Broadway, Harbor Drive and Pacific Highway. Manchester has proposed 2.9 million square feet of hotels, offices, shops and restaurants.

Many members of the public have been concerned that Manchester's project walls off the bay from downtown; they want a performing-arts center or park there instead. The experts, though, agreed with one thing Manchester wants – buildings.

“Cities are made up not just of parks, but of buildings,” said Paul Whalen, a New York architect. “You need both. . . . It's OK to have buildings touch the water.”

The experts suggested that a performing-arts center be built nearby.

The CCDC board will consider whether to approve Manchester's plan Sept. 27.

That's what I've been saying all along. If I were to grade the architecture of the proposed NBC bldgs I'd give it a D at best. I mean. . .What the hell is that? A bunch of blocks at different heights with a couple of domes plunked on top of them? Everyn time the words "World Class Architecture" is brought up it seems to swoop over these Manchester people's heads. My dog probably has a more creative vision than these guys.

But it's alright. Maybe these bland looking buildings will force architects to think up something more iconic, more striking over at Lane Field next door.

I would definitely support taller, more slender buildings. I personally liked the buildings' architecture but was disappointed by how short they were in relation to other nearby towers.

In other news, there has been a lot of debate (mostly on another forum) about the central library, and I wanted to share what private donations are doing in another city.

Pay particular attention to post #1325:

http://forum.skyscraperpage.com/showpost.php?p=2313785&postcount=1325

Here's the original, more unique, rendering of the 301 University project in Hillcrest. As it stands now, the developer increased the number of residential units from 51 to 96.

http://i107.photobucket.com/albums/m312/coastalsd/301University.jpg

Rendering of another Uptown development project, directly across from Balboa Park, that is in the works on 6th Ave between Nutmeg & Olive.

http://i107.photobucket.com/albums/m312/coastalsd/StPaulsCathedral.jpg

What the fuck?

We went from that to what we have now?

Ugh.....

What's the status of the Nutmeg and Olive development? I'd like to see that one go up.

Here's the original, more unique, rendering of the 301 University project in Hillcrest. As it stands now, the developer increased the number of residential units from 51 to 96.

http://i107.photobucket.com/albums/m312/coastalsd/301University.jpg


That's true, but if you notice the original rendering, it was only going to be half of the lot. Now, the developer is building all the way from 3rd to 4th along University. The original project was going to be 2 towers, phased. The 1st one was soooo much better, but like I said before, it serves those stupid uptown NIMBYs right!!!

Anyone hear any current news about Bosa's Bayside, Library Tower or Cosmo Square. All three should have started well before now and there is no movement on these projects yet. Still on life-support or dead projects now since they've past the "must break ground before summer" rule that many said needed to happen, if built. I'm thinking all three DOA now? :?

Anyone hear any current news about Bosa's Bayside, Library Tower or Cosmo Square. All three should have started well before now and there is no movement on these projects yet. Still on life-support or dead projects now since they've past the "must break ground before summer" rule that many said needed to happen, if built. I'm thinking all three DOA now? :?

Lord, I hope those three aren't dead. Next to Electra, those were some of my favorite projects. Poop! :)

About the Hillcrest project, that's what the NIMBY's get. I like the size/scale of the new development but I prefer the design and materials from the original. Either way, it's a step in the right direction. Hopefully this is just the start of things to come.

Yeah, they were among some of my favourites too, which is why I ask. At least the Convention center bridge looks a little closer to being built. They've been doing some work around the new US Federal Courthouse space recently.....a start time on that yet? I agree with most of what has been said about the hillcrest project, however with a nearly dead condo market now, I'm doubting it even gets built. Really I keep hearing over and over now from many sources that ANY condo project in san diego now, probably won't be built. I find myself looking at new hotel,business, or other various projects with interest instead. If a condo project comes up, I won't believe it until I see a fair amount of structure up. Really as we've seen now, even a hole started in the ground means little. Like everyone else, I think were going to have to wait a few years for the high-rise condo market to return. But hey, our ballpark area is starting to look real chill lately with the projects already started there.Can't wait for 2007 season now! :)

I'm sure BOSA is proceeding with Bayside. They're downtown's development stalwarts and I don't think a little down market scare will stop these guys. Cosmopolitan Square is too close to the Ballpark to NOT get built soon. But I'm quite concerned about the Library Tower. I think that project is pretty much tied up with the Main Library's fate.

Did anyone notice that CCDC updated their site? They've given the developers the ability to edit their own updates.

And here's a project I've never heard of:

South side of Beech between 7th and 8th avenues

http://www.ccdc.com/images/propertyImages/777%20Beech%20NW%202.5x4.jpg

JSD1, LLC is planning to construct a 7-8 story mixed-use project on the south side of Beech between 7th and 8th streets in Cortez Hill. The project will contain 84 residential units and 5,700 square feet of retail space. Completion for the project is set for fall 2008.

Nice, um, 30's design :|

I actually like that design so long as it is actually brick.


Hopefully this is just the start of things to come.



The densification of the urban mesa is already on the way. La boheme is almost done, and the other project on 30th st in North Park is about 99% done. Even City Heights has quite a few high-rise projects up and running now and starting to gentrify, in part because North Park is getting a bit more expensive for the poorer hipsters. Overall, I like what I'm seeing in terms of density in the urban ring surrounding downtown.

I'm sure BOSA is proceeding with Bayside. They're downtown's development stalwarts and I don't think a little down market scare will stop these guys. Cosmopolitan Square is too close to the Ballpark to NOT get built soon. But I'm quite concerned about the Library Tower. I think that project is pretty much tied up with the Main Library's fate.

Did anyone notice that CCDC updated their site? They've given the developers the ability to edit their own updates.

And here's a project I've never heard of:

South side of Beech between 7th and 8th avenues

http://www.ccdc.com/images/propertyImages/777%20Beech%20NW%202.5x4.jpg

JSD1, LLC is planning to construct a 7-8 story mixed-use project on the south side of Beech between 7th and 8th streets in Cortez Hill. The project will contain 84 residential units and 5,700 square feet of retail space. Completion for the project is set for fall 2008.

Nice, um, 30's design :|

This must be that project some Cortez Hill people are worried about. Its right next to the El Cortez Hotel so they naturally think its going to ruin the entire block. I like the design, its SO different from a lot of the other more "modern" styles out there.

I hope its gets built, be nice to see some brick, even if its fake.

Damn, the original project in Hilcrest was MUCH better and like someone said, MUCH more unique. I wish there was jus a better way to stop NIMBYism influence! Thank God there's only ONE Donna Frye in the council. I mean, i know she does a lot of great things for the parks and environment, but damn she can be a pest sometimes.

Personally, i dont care too much for the look of the Library Tower, but i still do hope it's being built and i thought it definitely would get started with construction by now. But i would doubt if Bosa cancelled Bayside cuz they have enough money in their company to where they dont really have to worry too much when they get their projects started. And i REALLY hope COSMO square doesnt get cancelled. I think we all are crazy bout that project.

I asked about the Bayside project because Bosa also has another project in the works after it. There was a small piece that caught my attention in the reader that made the comment on downtown that even Bosa was having a hard time selling units to get things built. You have to admit that, like Library Tower, that lot has been ready to go for some time with no movement. As far as Cosmo Square goes, a friend lives right by the sales office and he told me the project has been slow going interest-wise so far.These projects may still get built but do seem to be having problems. Anyone have a clearer picture on these projects yet....

^^Not a clue. Sorry.

- edit

^^Yay. Some attractive architecture! Hope the bridge is as good as the renderings.

Definitely cool renderings, and it's great that they show the bridge in comparison with other structures like Petco Park around it.

Wait..............I won't be able to bike on that thing, huh? :(

^^ Just bunny-hop up the stairs!

And I don't see why Library Tower would be tied to the central library.

Just in name...

Wait..............I won't be able to bike on that thing, huh? :(
Yes you will, there are glass elevators on each end. Look at renderings again and you'll see the towers.

A positive article regarding retail activity for downtown and the surrounding uptown neighborhoods -


Downtown retail vacancy dips to low 6.6%, fueled by steady demand, diminishing space options

By SANDRA GROVE and MARY HANEY, Special to The San Diego Daily Transcript
Thursday, September 21, 2006

Burnham Real Estate reports that downtown San Diego retail vacancy has dropped more than a full percentage point during the first six months of the year, currently standing at 6.6 percent following 39,428 square feet of year-to-date net absorption.

According to the Burnham Urban Retail Group, demand for retail space shows no sign of slowing, even though condominium construction has cooled. Instead, the group reports that increased hotel, office and apartment activity is fueling near- and long-term interest by retailers eager to capitalize on downtown's urban lifestyle.

"Retailers want to be downtown to be in the center of activity," said Bill Shrader, senior vice president and principal with the Burnham Urban Retail Group. "Downtown San Diego has made the successful transition to a vital urban core with thousands of new residential units, new hotels and new office space. Retailers recognize that a downtown location puts them in the midst of a captive and shopping-friendly market."

According to a recent Burnham report, the downtown retail market totals over 4.5 million square feet of space, just 302,821 square feet, or 6.6 percent, of which is vacant. This is a decrease from summer 2005, when the market totaled 4.37 million square feet of inventory with 7.8 percent vacancy.

"The new space that has come on line is being absorbed quickly," Shrader said. "With little new space breaking ground this year and next, and with construction taking over two years, the market could see a notable lack of supply by late 2007 and 2008. The postponement and cancellation of new projects has caused the majority of the reduction in planned retail space this year." Currently, the Burnham study shows just 459,791 square feet of new retail space planned or under construction, compared to 1 million square feet a year ago.

The Gaslamp District in downtown San Diego added several new tenants in recent months, including Volcom, Soho Lab by Skechers, G-Star, Helio and Oakley. "The Gaslamp area -- particularly along Fifth Avenue -- is hotter than ever," said Corinna Gattasso, an associate vice president with Burnham Urban Retail Group. "The block is hip and trendy, with retailers actively vying for locations. With vacancy at just 4 percent, opportunities, especially on Fifth Avenue, are increasingly scarce."

The Horton Plaza area, the largest downtown retail market with 969,375 square feet of inventory -- most of which is inside Horton Plaza itself -- reports the lowest vacancy rate of all downtown retail neighborhoods at just 0.8 percent.

The East Village -- which has seen an increase in inventory since the completion of Petco Park - reports the highest vacancy rate of all downtown submarkets, at 15.1 percent based on 716,064 square feet of existing retail inventory.

"This is a temporary upswing as new space in this area is leasing well, with the synergy of new residential, the recent completion of TR Office and TR Retail, and of course, the ballpark," Gattasso said. "There is more retail under way along with Retail on J at the Park, which will add 250,000 square feet of office space, 184 condominium units and 125,000 square feet of retail space."

Other downtown retail highlights include Little Italy, which has emerged as a residential neighborhood and boasts restaurants, cafes, pubs and services. This neighborhood reports 4 percent vacancy based on 405,723 square feet of retail inventory, and is followed by the Marina District, with 5.1 percent vacancy based on 428,694 square feet; Cortez Hill, with 10 percent vacancy based on 124,274 square feet; and Columbia, with 8.7 percent vacancy based on 318,700 square feet.

The Burnham Urban Retail Group report has expanded this year to include the uptown area, which includes Bankers Hill, Hillcrest, Mission Hills and North Park. "Totaling 1,663,144 square feet of retail space with 9 percent vacancy, this area is poised for strong retail growth due to its central location, proximity to downtown and strong residential base," said David Maxwell, an associate with the Burnham Urban Retail Group.

"These established neighborhood communities are seeing a wave of mixed-use redevelopment in keeping with the City of Villages concept that has been endorsed and promoted by the city of San Diego," said Maxwell. "The uptown area is definitely a market to watch over the next few years."

The largest of the uptown markets is North Park, which totals 650,086 square feet with 7.4 percent vacancy. Hillcrest is next, with 630,927 square feet and 9.1 percent vacancy, followed by Bankers Hill, with 191,331 square feet and 15.8 percent vacancy, and Mission Hills, with 190,800 square feet and 7.3 percent vacancy.

The Burnham Urban Retail Group offers a range of mixed-use retail leasing and advisory services to clients throughout the West, with expertise in new and revitalizing urban areas. The group is a team within Burnham Real Estate.

Headquartered in San Diego, Burnham Real Estate has six regional offices in Southern California and one in Las Vegas. Company services include traditional brokerage along with corporate services, asset services, capital markets, advisory services, strategic corporate consulting and project management. Visit www.burnhamrealestate.com.

Thats not good for Hillcrest but good for me! I live in North Park and the more hip stores moving to North Park from Hillcrest, the better! And new hip stores in Downtown?? Even better. I'm so glad to see the retail and office market is following suit. I'm crossing my fingers that this would encourage more office towers getting built in the near future!

I didnt see the elevators, thats very cool. I thought they were retail or something.

That bridge is just gorgeous. Now if they can put cool stuff like that in the Columbia or Core Districts to balance it out.

Just found this in CCDC. . .
CCDC BOARD CHAIR POSTPONES DECISION ON NAVY BROADWAY COMPLEX

Board to be updated on latest plans and public meetings on September 27

San Diego, CA — The Centre City Development Corporation (CCDC) Board of Directors will postpone a final consistency determination on Manchester Financial Group’s development proposal for the Navy Broadway Complex site, announced CCDC Board Chair Jennifer LeSar. While the Board will not take any formal action at its meeting on September 27, there will still be discussion on the issue.

“This is such a vital project for San Diego,” said LeSar. “In light of all the latest input from multiple sources, I felt it was best to have an informational meeting first to bring our Board, including our two new members, fully up to speed on the input we received last week from our consulting architectural panel and information gleaned in the last few days from public meetings held by the City Council, Centre City Advisory Committee and the Broadway Complex Coalition. I believe that additional time is needed to evaluate this input. Clearly, we heard at this week’s City Council meeting that taking additional time for review will not hinder the ability for the Navy and the developer to continue their lease negotiation process.”

The September 27 meeting will include presentations by the following:

Manchester Financial Group regarding latest development plans;
CCDC staff summarizing the process and ideas put forward by the Western Waterfront/Navy Broadway Complex Expert Design Panel held on September 9;
Navy Broadway Coalition summarizing their September 16 workshop; and
Centre City Advisory Committee summarizing discussion at September 20 meeting.
The Board will then take public comment and have Board discussion.

The regularly scheduled meeting of the CCDC Board has been moved to Noon on Wednesday, September 27, and will include Navy Broadway Complex as an agenda item. The entire meeting will be held at the Westin Hotel, 910 Broadway Circle in the Library Room. Among other items, the agenda will include consideration of the siting of the VOA’s Inebriate Reception Center. No formal date for a consistency determination meeting has been scheduled.

I was thinking the exact same thing -- I think this will fit into the neighborhood a lot better than some folks think.


I agree, I think it fits in nicely, though the original plan looked much better. The reality is they’re just using that as a subjective argument against it – it makes no sense.

The opposition doesn’t like it because it’s dense - they don't want the urban core to feel urban; they want it to be more like the suburbs. They fight anything more than a few stories using subjective arguments like fitting in, historic value, heritage blah blah blah.

^^Agreed.

My thoughts exactly! :yes:





Finally, some good news!


http://i4.photobucket.com/albums/y120/Jaygergon/downtown%20development%202/hdbbf_2.jpg

http://i4.photobucket.com/albums/y120/Jaygergon/downtown%20development%202/hdbbf_1.jpg

http://i4.photobucket.com/albums/y120/Jaygergon/downtown%20development%202/hdbbf_3.jpg

PEDESTRIAN BRIDGE REACHES MAJOR MILESTONE

Downtown Harbor Drive Pedestrian Bridge Obtains PUC Approval


San Diego, CA— The California Public Utilities Commission (PUC) formally approved construction of the Pedestrian Bridge at Park Boulevard and Harbor Drive at their headquarters in downtown San Francisco on Thursday, September 7. The Commission voted unanimously to grant the request of the City of San Diego, submitted by the Centre City Development Corporation (CCDC). The PUC is the regulatory agency which governs rail crossings in the state of California.

“This is an exciting and important infrastructure project that will improve pedestrian access to the highly used area near PETCO Park,” said CCDC President Nancy Graham. “The bridge’s world-class design will add an artistic focal point and gateway to the city. The PUC’s approval is a pivotal step in completing this important project.”

The pedestrian bridge will complete a 100- year old vision of a Park-to-Bay Link, connecting Balboa Park and San Diego Bay. It will provide a safe crossing over a heavily traveled Harbor Drive and existing train and trolley tracks. The bridge will improve traffic circulation and access to and from the waterfront, Barrio Logan, and a rapidly developing East Village neighborhood. It will also connect the 2,000-space Hilton San Diego Convention Center Hotel Parking Facility with Park Boulevard.

The project is expected to begin construction in 2007, with completion targeted in 2008. The self-anchored suspension bridge design features a 500' curved span, stainless steel wrapped suspension cable railing, a 2-car glass elevator tower, landscaped plazas and public art installations throughout.
WOW.. That's so cool..

Looks like Manchester is willing to make more park space if it means the project can go ahead.

From http://www.signonsandiego.com

In a key concession, developer Doug Manchester has agreed to a tentative deal with the city to boost the amount of park space in the controversial Navy Broadway Complex project.

The proposal, which still is evolving, calls for Manchester to sell about a half-block along Harbor Drive to the Centre City Development Corp., the city's downtown redevelopment arm.

Jim Waring, chief operating officer for land use and economic development for San Diego Mayor Jerry Sanders, announced the deal yesterday at the redevelopment agency's board meeting.

If it goes forward, the agreement would open more park space in the nearly 15-acre project, quelling one of the top criticisms from opponents who say Manchester wants to build too many bulky, high-rise towers at the bayfront.

“The major thing is the recapturing of public open space and the reduction of density,” Waring said.

The concession may make it easier for the agency's board to approve the project. The board scheduled a meeting for Wednesday, possibly to vote on Manchester's plans for offices, hotels and shops.

The property south of Broadway between Harbor Drive and Pacific Highway is home of the Navy's Southwest Regional Command and is considered one the best redevelopment parcels on the West Coast.

In March, Manchester was chosen by the Navy for exclusive negotiations to develop the property. Under terms of the deal, Manchester must build the Navy a 360,000-square-foot office building at a cost of at least $150 million. In exchange, Manchester would receive a long-term lease to develop hotels, offices and shops on the rest of the site.

Manchester and the Navy say they are under pressure to get redevelopment agency approval so that a binding lease can be signed by Jan. 1. If a lease isn't signed by the deadline, the Navy will begin the process of closing the site as outlined by the federal Base Realignment and Closure legislation.

At one time, the downtown redevelopment agency's board was expected to vote on the project at yesterday's meeting.

With opposition growing, board Chairwoman Jennifer LeSar announced last week that she was postponing the vote.

That decision sparked a flurry of talks between Manchester and the city about what could be done to move the project forward.

Those discussions resulted in Manchester agreeing to shelve a proposed 250,000-square-foot office building along Harbor Drive and sell the long-term lease rights for the roughly 40,000-square-foot site to the redevelopment agency.

Waring said the agency could use money set aside for parks to acquire the property. That would leave Manchester with rights to build 2.65 million square feet of buildings to offset his costs for constructing the Navy offices.

Asked by agency board members how much the property would cost, Waring said it was too early to know. The city is trying to have the property appraised, said Perry Dealy of Manchester Financial Group.

At least one top-quality condominium site downtown sold recently for roughly $300 per square foot. At that price, the land would cost the redevelopment agency $12 million.

The acquisition would give the agency control over land along the eastern edge of Harbor Drive spanning two full blocks. A 1.9-acre park is planned along Harbor Drive at Broadway, just north of the land involved in this tentative deal.

Waring told the redevelopment agency board that details will be worked out quickly.

“If we can't put this together because of some technicality, you'll know it before you vote,” he said.

^^Having more green space is great, but it still needs ALOT of work. IMO, it's gone from a mediocre design to outright bad. Check out the short twin towers on the right! Ugh!

How about bringing in a new developer, along with a new design team?? ;)


http://i4.photobucket.com/albums/y120/Jaygergon/downtown%20development%202/060928broadway460.jpg

The taller towers on the left are ok. If I had it my way I'd revamp the tallest one and make it iconic. But I'd agree with sd urban on the buildings on the right closest to the water.

I just don't get the logic: Once in a lifetime opportunity, prime lots fronting the bay, a chance to give San Diego a worldclass landmark. . . . SO LET'S PUT SOME BLAND BLOCKY BUILDINGS THERE! :weird:

Where did you find those renderings sd urban?

CCDC held their monthly meeting yesterday. Here's the link (http://www.ccdc.com/index.cfm/fuseaction/news.NewsDetail/newsID/259).

Some notables:

The former KUSI development. Looks like it will be mixed used still. :)
First and J – Marina Development Permit for 172 condominiums and 22,600 sf of street level retail in a 38-story, 438 feet tall building located on the full block site bounded by J Street and First, Second, and Island avenues. The project will involve an Owner Participation Agreement and the vacation and conversion of J Street into a public park/plaza – Marina

Another Lankford project in the works.
15th & Market (CJUF II Lankford Market LLC) – Centre City Development Permit for a mixed-use project consisting of 274 condominiums and 25,000 sf of retail space in a 5-22 story (240 feet tall) building on the 60,000 sf site along the west side of 15th Street between Market and G streets - East Village

I keep seeing this name pop up nowadays.
Wonderbread (CityMark) – Centre City Development Permit for a mixed-use project consisting of 200 condominium units and 44,500 sf of commercial space in a 19-story (209 feet tall) building located on the east side of 14th Street between L Street and Imperial Avenue - East Village

And more mentions of Riviera (37 stories), Monaco (34 stories), 45 West Ash (Metrolive), and Pacific Pointe (39 stories). . . .

Where did you find those renderings sd urban?
It accompanied the U-T article posted by obenega a few posts earlier regarding NBC.



Here's a new proposal! From CCDC's October 3, 2006 Agenda document -


16th & G Gateway (S.D. Mega Block, LLC) – proposed mixed-use project containing 525 condominiums (including 10% affordable units), 113,064 square feet of office space, and approximately 11,100 square feet of retail use in a 35-story building (500-foot tall) with 674 parking spaces; the proposed rehabilitation of the historic Snowflake Bakery building for retail and office uses; and, approximately 35,200 square feet of “urban open space” (over non-buildable areas due to seismic faults) on the 55,200 square foot project site on the block bounded by 16th, 17th, F and G streets (East Village).

My prediction:



ravens-30
chargers-24 OT:D:D:D:D:D:D:D


any predictions, anyone?

:nono: San Diego Chargers,24
Baltimore Ravens 13.....:bow:




PS: The NBC looks like s-h-*-t now. Kill it....:toilet:

It will be a battle of defensive powerhouses. My Prediction:

Merriman sacks the QB for a safety in overtime.

2-0. San Diego.

SUPER game!!!

despite OUTGAINING us, despite OUTPASSING us, despite OUTCOACHING us, despite OUTRUSHING us, despite OUTPLAYING us in every phase of the game, we somehow find a way to pull it out. great game fellas!!!!!
:dance:

GTFO.

Anyways.

Can somebody please post updated pics of projects u/c?

kthxbai.

The Donald seems to be getting closer. I think the article meant to say that it's 30 minutes south of the border, not south of downtown.

Article from today's SD Business Journal-



Trump to Build ‘Condotel’ Near San Diego

Executive Donald Trump and a Los Angeles-based developer have announced plans for a 526-suite “condotel” 30 minutes south of downtown San Diego.

Trump Ocean Resort Baja Mexico will be situated on cliffs overlooking the Pacific Ocean in Rosarito, Mexico. Developer and investment company Irongate partnered with the Trump Organization on the project. The cost of the project is undisclosed.

Trump said in a press release that the resort’s proximity to downtown San Diego increased the property’s appeal.

“Being just 30 minutes from downtown San Diego makes this an ideal locale for a premier resort property,” said Trump.

Prices for the condo/hotel’s studio, one-, two- and three-bedroom residences start in the mid-$200,000 range. Room sizes range from 532 to 2,200 total square feet of indoor and outdoor space.

Construction is scheduled to begin in late 2006, with the first of the 25-story towers of the condotel slated for completion in late 2008.

— Andy Killion

Here's a lengthy, but informative article regarding the future of downtown's office market from the latest issue of SD Metropolitan Magazine. A new 34-story office tower would be nice! :okay:


The Irvine Co. Leads 92101’s Office Revival

Newport Beach company’s move into San Diego
and other investors spark renewed interest in
Downtown as a major office hub

By Manny Cruz

Charles Black and his wife, Donna, own a home in Jamul but spend a couple of nights a week at a Downtown condominium they purchased in 2004. The Grand South is one of two high-rise residential projects built on Pacific Highway near the Santa Fe Depot by developer Nat Bosa, with whom Black is well acquainted, and is within strolling distance of Petco Park, home of the Padres, with whom Black also is familiar.

Black, 58, former president of the Padres and leader of the development team that created the ballpark, was lured away from JMI Realty in March by the privately held Irvine Co. to become senior vice president of its San Diego region, which owns 7 million square feet of Downtown and suburban office properties and five apartment communities. Its Downtown properties total 3 million square feet; suburban office properties 1.8 million square feet.

“It was an opportunity I couldn’t refuse,” says Black, an Air Force captain and practicing Downtown attorney before he fell in love with real estate. “I have long been a fan of The Irvine Co. It is a model of master planning.”

While Black declines to discuss any possible deal with Bosa, it is known that The Irvine Co. has come to an understanding with Bosa that would lead to Irvine’s early 2007 purchase of the block just west of the Santa Fe Depot for development of about 650,000 square feet of office space in about 34 stories. If that deal goes through, The Irvine Co. — already Centre City’s largest office landlord with six towers — will reinforce its belief that the Downtown market is on the cusp of significant growth. Adding to that notion is the development of other new office buildings such as the 15-story DiamondView Tower overlooking the ballpark that is set to open in spring.

While Black envisions greater future office growth Downtown, he isn’t about to describe it as a renaissance. “It’s premature to use that term in this market,” he says. “There are a lot of factors in play here. But I should emphasize the support the office market has gotten from the government and the public. CCDC has been the shepherd. Office development has been a high priority for the CCDC.”

Black also sees a “fair amount of evidence” that Downtown office growth has lagged behind the regional growth in the market and that it has continued to lose market share. “Only about 450,000 square feet or 500,000 square feet of office has been developed Downtown over a 15-year period and 70 pecent of the office inventory is over 20 years old,” he says.

Kraig Kristofferson, senior vice president with CB Richard Ellis, calls the changes taking place Downtown a “revival” rather than a renaissance. “Downtown San Diego has always had the largest inventory of office space and Class A office space among the San Diego submarkets,” Kristofferson says. “It has always been the governmental, financial and cultural hub of the city. There has never been a major exodus from the office market, and the cyclical downturns in the market have been no different than those in the suburban markets, except perhaps during the ‘tech wreck’ when the suburban markets experienced more difficulties because of their more technical tenant base.”

The Downtown market, Kristofferson adds, enjoys low vacancy and increasing rents. “The real revival,” he says, “has been related to investor interest. The institutional pursuit of Class A core assets in the central business district has been the most significant because Downtown has the largest number of large trophy properties allowing for significant amounts of money to be placed in a market in sought-after Southern California.”

Although The Irvine Co. has been investing in San Diego property for more than 25 years, it did not start acquiring Downtown office buildings until 2003, when it purchased Symphony Towers for $134 million. (See chart on Page 49.) That was followed in 2004 with its purchase of Wells Fargo Plaza for $48 million, the acquisition of 101 W. Broadway and 225 Broadway for $263 million in 2005 and this year’s acquisition of 501 W. Broadway for $150 million and One America Plaza for $300 million. (Outside of Downtown, the company owns the 352,000-square-foot La Jolla Gateway and 734,000-square-foot Eastgate Technology Park in University City and the 610,000-square-foot Canyon Ridge Technology Park and 75,050-square-foot Cornerstone Corporate Center in Sorrento Mesa. La Jolla Gateway was its first investment in San Diego, purchased in 1982. All of its suburban offices are mid-rises or shorter.)

Black says a number of factors influenced The Irvine Co.’s investments Downtown. “San Diego’s gross regional product is growing at a faster rate than California’s and the nation’s and we have one of the youngest populations in the nation,” he says. “We have a strong university system, and a lot of recreational and cultural amenities. Some 22,000 jobs were added in 2005 and the expectation is for an additional 23,000 jobs in 2007. We have a low unemployment rate. There are very strong indicators that the economy is going to be strong.”

To Kristofferson, the most significant impact on the Downtown office market has been in the acknowledgement of redevelopment efforts, particularly residential growth, which has become a true renaissance. He says $6.5 billion in private capital has been invested with 11,000 new residential units, 4,000 new hotel rooms, the 42,000-seat ballpark, the San Diego Convention Center doubled in size, 75,000 miles of underground fiber optic cable “and a trolley system used by 25 percent of the work force.” Like Black, Kristofferson’s optimism about Downtown office market growth is based on projections of the population tripling to 90,000 in the next 25 years, the work force more than doubling, from 75,000 to 165,000 and the privately held office space tripling from 10 million square feet to 30 million square feet.

Broker Jason Hughes, a principal with Irving Hughes, which represents only tenants, offers a cautionary word about such optimism. “The issue,” he says, is: “If you build it, will they come? If you remodel it, will someone pay for it? If you buy it at crazy purchase prices, will companies rent it at high enough rents to justify the investment?”

The “craziness” that has gone on with commercial building purchases “has been nothing short of a frenzied bidding war,” Hughes says. “All of the justifications are done through assumptions. Magically, assumptions just keep getting more and more optimistic, meaning investors assume higher rents, less tenant concessions, quicker lease up rates, in order to rationalize higher purchase prices.”

Most of the new investors in Downtown are realizing not everyone can or will pay the new rents, particularly when parking expenses are going up as fast as rental rates, claims Hughes.

“What Downtown landlords are finding is that Downtown is mostly a big game of musical chairs. In order to fill vacant space, the landlords need to be very aggressive in their deals. Otherwise, tenants simply renew or move to another part of the county. This has led to an average ‘time on the market’ for vacant space in Downtown of nearly two years.”

Despite his pessimism about the market, Hughes says he is a big fan of The Irvine Co. “I think they are the most professional landlords Downtown, and they have a great portfolio of buildings. They also, thankfully, insist on keeping their properties in Class A condition, constantly spending money to maintain their position as the best buildings in Downtown.” (The Irvine Co. has budgeted $43 million in 2006-2007 to bring its Downtown and suburban office properties up to its standards out of a total $63 million in renovations for all its properties.)

If The Irvine Co. is bullish on Downtown, so too are others. “What we have been talking about the last five years has arrived,” says Frank Wright, a broker with Grubb & Ellis|BRE Commercial. “There’s been so much investment activity and with residential growth — all the cranes in the air — and the Hilton under construction…you can’t help but talk about it. We’ll see some growing pains strictly from supply and demand. But the long-term prognosis is very good. The short term is stable.”

Legacy Partners, a privately held real estate company headquartered in Foster City, purchased the 24-story 600 B Street property in July for $95.5 million and is planning more than $3 million in capital improvements to the building’s exterior and common areas. Wright says the building is 98 percent leased with the city of San Diego occupying nearly 50 percent of the space. But Comerica Bank will vacate its space there to move into DiamondView Tower in mid-2007, leaving the ground and second floors available for lease and an opportunity for top signage on the building.

Recently, there have been many big deals, but many small deals too.

At the 12-story Columbia Square, brokers have negotiated 15 leases since the beginning of the year that are valued at $8.2 million, raising occupancy to more than 90 percent. Anderson Mann & Hilbert, a law firm, is taking 3,200 square feet in the 143,574-square-foot building.

Indeed, while only one building, Broadway 655 with less than 400,000 square feet of office space, has been added to the Downtown office inventory in the last 15 years (while 57 million square feet of office and light industrial space have been added to San Diego’s clogged suburban markets in the same period), Howard-Sneed Interior Architecture has found itself increasingly busy in the Centre City. In the last two years alone it has designed 370,000 square feet of law firms’ office space Downtown, including 170,000 square feet for Lerach Coughlin Stoia Geller Rudman & Robbins on seven floors of B-655, 25,000 square feet for Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman in the Koll Center, 60,000 of remodeled space in One America Plaza for Luce Forward Hamilton & Scripps, 30,000 square feet in B-655 for Best Best & Krieger, 72,000 square feet in One America Plaza for Latham & Watkins, and 12,000 square feet in the Union Bank Building for Procopio.

Broadway 655, Rob Lankford’s new $140 million office tower, is approaching 90 percent occupancy. Ed Muna, senior vice president at Lankford & Associates, says 10 lease transactions have been completed this year. “When we opened less than a year ago, our goal was to have a fully leased project within two years,” says Muna. “It looks as if we will be almost one year ahead of schedule.” The building was aggressively marketed as the first new Class A office building opened Downtown since 1991 and Muna says potential tenants who toured the place liked the idea of building their offices from scratch. The building will be renamed Advanced Equities Plaza after the Chicago-based Advanced Equities Financial Corp., which signed a 10-year lease for 50,000 square feet.

Downtown will see its first Class A high-rise office condominiums when the $25 million Metrowork is completed in January. Developer Howard Berkson, managing member of Berkson Realty Advisors, says final units are being released for sale. Twenty-seven condo office suites range from 1,188 square feet to 2,752 square feet and prices start in the low $600,000s. The nine-story building is going up at the midpoint of the block bounded by India, Columbia, A and Ash streets.

“Nearly 80 percent of office space Downtown is leased by companies occupying less than 10,000 square feet,” says Berkson. “There are no small buildings left to buy in the Downtown core and the demand for high-end office space, particularly under 5,000 square feet, outstrips supply as well as affordability.”

Cruzan|Monroe’s TR Produce office condo project, which was completed earlier this year across from centerfield at Petco Park, has sold more than half of its 28 units. The three-story building, formerly the Wellman-Peck Building, was purchased by Cruzan|Monroe in 2003.

Cisterra Partners’ Diamond-View Tower is scheduled to open early next year with major office tenants Cox Media, Comerica Bank and CB Richard Ellis. The building just acquired its first retail tenant, It’s A Grind, a coffeehouse, which took a 10-year lease for 1,420 square feet on the ground floor. Jason Wood, director of development for Cisterra Partners, says more office leases are in the works.

Manchester Financial’s Pacific Gateway plans for the 14-acre Navy Broadway Complex could add another 400,000 square feet of office space in the near future, and 1.6 million square feet at build-out, if the proposal survives scrutiny from the Centre City Development Corp. Other potential office development sites include Westfield’s Horton Plaza property, the city-controlled land immediately north of One America Plaza, and JMI Realty’s Ballpark Villages, which has a minimum of 300,000 square feet of office space penciled in. However, John Kratzer, president and CEO of JMI, says through a spokeswoman that there hasn’t been any significant interest in the office land. Even though office rental rates have risen, the increases in construction costs make it difficult for office development to pencil out, Kratzer believes.

Black says The Irvine Co. has no plans for the property north of One America Plaza. Nor does it have any interest in Ballpark Villages’ planned office space. “We view that as primarily a residential area,” he says. “That’s not the kind of uses The Irvine Co. is interested in.” The company, adds Black, will continue to consider other acquisitions Downtown as they come available.

Black works out of an office at 101 W. Broadway, which the company acquired this year. His San Diego team includes Thomas Sullivan, a real estate consultant hired at the same time Black was, as senior vice president of development; Steve Center, regional vice president for leasing; and Pamela Van Nort, senior director of operations. The team spends more than half its time on the company’s Downtown properties.

Black earned his law degree from UC Davis in 1978 and practiced law Downtown before turning to real estate, but says it doesn’t necessarily take a law degree to understand the complexities of real estate projects. “More than anything, it takes the ability to move projects ahead and to learn how to work with government agencies and the public,” says Black.

Black says The Irvine Co.’s suburban office projects are not necessarily competitive with its Downtown properties.

“Typically, the users Downtown are heavy into financial services, government and the law,” he says. “The suburban tenants are in biotech, defense and technology.”

But should tenants worry that the company will force lease rates up because of its large Downtown holdings? “I don’t think so,” says Black. “There are so many choices in San Diego County. They (tenants) have the ability to go to the suburbs and to other Class A buildings.”

Despite his concerns about rising leasing rates and the high cost of Downtown parking, Hughes says The Irvine Co.’s move into Downtown is good for the area and good for the company.

“The company is privately owned and not at the mercy of Wall Street or pension funds,” Hughes says. “It owns most, if not all of its buildings debt free. They can do whatever ‘deal’ they want. There is no risk for them at all. Maybe they won’t make as high of a yield as planned originally, but The Irvine Co. typically buys and holds forever. Long-term owners like them are in a league of their own. I think they feel that Downtown San Diego has great long-term prospects, and economies of scale only help them reduce their operating expenses and help to be market makers.”

^^Read that and Im optomistic about the office potential. Although there are possible problems (uh...companies?).

^^Read that and Im optomistic about the office potential. Although there are possible problems (uh...companies?).

Its funny how Mr. Hughes is always the naysayer, but one must remember that his interest lies with tennants only, so a strong office market, means his clients must pay more for space. Companies will locate where the talent is, and as more creatives move into downtown, I think companies will follow.

^^^Good point.


Despite an awful performance by the home team yesterday, I was able to snap a few shots of the evolving skyline from the cheapseats.


View from my seat
http://i4.photobucket.com/albums/y120/Jaygergon/downtown%20development%202/IMG_5307-1.jpg

Southwest Airliner on approach to landing
http://i4.photobucket.com/albums/y120/Jaygergon/downtown%20development%202/IMG_5309.jpg

Bleacher and lawn seats
http://i4.photobucket.com/albums/y120/Jaygergon/downtown%20development%202/IMG_5301.jpg

Even the construction workers at DiamondView and ICON took time off to watch the game
http://i4.photobucket.com/albums/y120/Jaygergon/downtown%20development%202/IMG_5297-1.jpg

http://i4.photobucket.com/albums/y120/Jaygergon/downtown%20development%202/IMG_5302.jpg

http://i4.photobucket.com/albums/y120/Jaygergon/downtown%20development%202/IMG_5306.jpg

Rooftop fans at the neighboring Marriott
http://i4.photobucket.com/albums/y120/Jaygergon/downtown%20development%202/IMG_5291-1.jpg

lol @ the construction workers putting the striKeout count. great pics!

Awsome lol
What should i see in san deigo if i go there

ok so i spent the morning in sketchup and made my little drawing 3D. i want to first say, yeah i know it is dumb being that it is strictly fantasy, but who cares really. check it out. forgive me for the two sail like structures, but im a novice with sketchup and couldnt get the curved surfaces to actually show a surface. so they look like skeleton buildings. but just use your imagination on those. i also made a few other drawings in paint i did for another site, to show you what some of the buildings may look like with color.


underground parking throughout, ditching the penninsula park(parking lot mostly) for an opera house, removed harbor drive after one block veering it eastward. lots of great view corridors, and MUCH MUCH more open space. the navy pier is also renovated for open green space with a maritime museum next to where the midway would be.

First the overhead view:
http://img81.imageshack.us/img81/8172/nbc5ro5.png (http://imageshack.us)

A northwest vantage point:
http://img225.imageshack.us/img225/7687/nbc1gp2.png (http://imageshack.us)

A shot from perhaps coronado:
http://img149.imageshack.us/img149/1671/nbc2lg6.png (http://imageshack.us)

Southwest aerial vantage point:
http://img149.imageshack.us/img149/3136/nbc3pm1.png (http://imageshack.us)

Northeast vantage point:
http://img227.imageshack.us/img227/7082/nbc4ep8.png (http://imageshack.us)


and lastly: what i thought the opera house would look like, and the sail like structure(sort of), and the building on the souther edge of the property.

the opera house:
http://img227.imageshack.us/img227/8710/andersonconcerthallbz9.png (http://imageshack.us)

the sail like buildings (general idea):
http://img90.imageshack.us/img90/1170/spinakertechnologieshqlv2.png (http://imageshack.us)

the southern edge building(not as tall but same shape):
http://img301.imageshack.us/img301/9655/missioncenterfinalbf7.png (http://imageshack.us)


ok that is it...my vision...after doing this, i really do hope the proposal for NBC gets scrapped. i just realize now that there is much more that can be done for the site. like for instance, mine. haha.

^^Very Nice! I envisioned something similar to the "sail-like" buildings you rendered but right next to Broadway. Your southern edge bldgs are nice too. For some reason it reminds me of some of Singapore's tallest towers.

I personally would leave Harbor Drive the way it is but with only 2 lanes stretching all the way from Grape St. near Little Italy.

Why can't Manchester, or Gensler for that matter think up of something at least as creative as that?

Reflecting On An Urban Miracle
Why other cities aren’t duplicating
Downtown San Diego’s success

San Diego’s remarkably vibrant Downtown is really a major miracle. As part of my firm’s consulting practice, we conduct studies in the downtowns of most of the Western and Southwestern metropolitan areas. It is no secret that not one of these has pulled off what San Diego has. Not San Jose; not Irvine, not Phoenix, not Sacramento; not a whole bunch of places that would like to emulate Downtown San Diego.

Most of those places have far more downtown office space and employment than San Diego does, and many have ballparks, too. But for some reason the fire has not been ignited.

While it is hard to avoid the appearance of bragging about Downtown San Diego, I want to marvel at the amazing efforts of the development and finance industries that have risen to the occasion and taken the risk to make the redevelopment of Downtown happen.

Since 2000, remarkable risk takers like John Moores, Nat Bosa, Keith Fernandez of Intracorp, Doug Wilson, Joe Werner of Intergulf, Dene Oliver and Jim McMillan of OliverMcMillan, Mike deCotiis of Pinnacle International, and a host of truly gutsy individuals have made it all come true.

In that time frame, more than 5,000 condominium and rental units have been built and occupied. That is twice the number of market-rate units that existed prior to 2000.

Better yet, another wave of construction is under way that will add 2,000 more units by the end of 2007. Look at the holes in the ground: Electra, Icon, The Mark, Park Terrace and Smart Corner to name a few. And there are rentals underway, too, like OliverMcMillan’s G Street Lofts and Hanover’s Firenza.

Back to condominiums: The market has been absorbing more than 1,000 new condos annually. Virtually every new project has been sold out prior to completion. Most of those now under construction are selling well.

Don’t forget the hotels. While they are, by nature, extremely difficult to finance, since 2000 San Diego’s Downtown has added the W Hotel, JMI’s Solamar, Stanford’s Marriott Gaslamp (née Clarion), and is now in the early construction stages of Tarsadia’s Hard Rock, Marriott’s Residence Inn and Marriott’s Renaissance. The open hotels are running full and at full rack rates. Wow.

This phenomenon would not have happened without Petco Park, a miracle in its own right. With its Park at the Park and musical and entertainment events, it is the highlight of Downtown. And cheap fun, too.

A kind word also is due CCDC. The agency is the catalyst responsible for the parking garages, the planning of the parks, the financing that made the infrastructure possible and the effective condemnation procedures that cleared the way for development.

Now let’s talk about value: the condominiums Downtown are not exactly cheap. In fact, they are downright expensive. The good news is that there are more than enough affluent San Diegans to partake in the acquisition of these vertical homes, at least as long as interest rates are modest.

By nature I look at the good side of things. But there is one bit of gloom on the horizon. It has to do with rising construction costs. The main ingredients of most projects Downtown are concrete and steel, two commodities that have been rising in price at an unreasonable pace. The result? Tomorrow’s condominiums are going to be far more expensive than today’s. In addition, new building regulations have driven up the basic cost of design and getting started.

What this means is that for the most part, the first-time buyer will be shut out of future rounds of development Downtown. In the past few years, it was still possible to produce condominiums for a reasonable cost, but that situation is fading fast.

The last hope for affordability lies in several East Village projects that nailed down their costs prior to construction. Thus, Smart Corner, Vantage Pointe and one or two others can still produce units for a modest price.

On balance, the miracle that is Downtown San Diego will continue, albeit probably at a slower pace than in the past five years. In the next few years, we will see the maturity of East Village with its full complement of retailing and services and even a park or two.

Look around. Not many downtowns can boast being on the water, being within walking distance of a 1,200 acre park and zoo, having a first-rate ballpark, being five minutes from an airport. And oh, yeah, the weather’s not so bad either.

http://nggpartners.com/portfolio/index.php?id=24

Never heard of it. Looks kind of boring in all honesty, so if its a dead project then Im not upset.

http://nggpartners.com/portfolio/index.php?id=24


The link doesn't provide an address for that project. I wonder where this "gateway to downtown San Diego" is. Uptown? Golden Hill?

The new bayside Charger stadium proposal has picked up steam.

Port panel says waterfront site could accommodate Chargers stadium

SIGNONSANDIEGO NEWS SERVICES

4:00 p.m. October 10, 2006

SAN DIEGO – A 52-acre waterfront site in National City could accommodate a stadium that would serve as the future home of the San Diego Chargers, the Board of Port Commissioners was told Tuesday.
Port Commissioner Stephen Cushman presented a study to the board that concluded the property is big enough to fit a stadium, but he stressed that the preservation of nearby maritime industry jobs would take priority, according to Irene McCormack of the Port of San Diego.


The site, west of Interstate 5 and south of Bay Marina Drive, is owned by the Port of San Diego, which leases it out to businesses.
Chargers attorney Mark Fabiani, the team's point man on stadium issues, applauded the determination.

“We are encouraged by the Port Commission's preliminary conclusion that it is possible to include a Super Bowl-quality professional football stadium on the port's National City site while continuing to maintain and enhance the port's maritime mission on the site and the work of the waterfront businesses located there,” Fabiani said.
The Working Waterfront Group, a coalition against building at the site, has said a stadium is inconsistent with maritime use and could cost jobs.

“Water-dependent businesses can only exist on the waterfront,” the group stated on its Web site, adding that unlike condominiums or sports stadiums “working waterfront businesses have no place else to go.”

According to McCormack, it is now up to the Chargers and National City to see if a stadium project at the site is viable and could be financed.

The Board of Port Commissioners did not take a vote at Tuesday's meeting, and no endorsement of the site was made, McCormack said.

Any potential development proposal would require the port's approval.

The Chargers are obligated to stay at Qualcomm Stadium in Mission Valley until after the 2008 season, when the franchise is free to negotiate with cities outside the region for a new home.

In the interim, the San Diego City Council has agreed to allow the football team to initiate talks with other cities in the county about the possibility of building a new stadium.

Both National City and Chula Vista are in discussions with the Chargers about a stadium deal in those cities.

Notable project updates. . .

Bayside Bosa
http://live6.truelook.com/timages/live6/ecodb/ecodb_1amnorth_camera1/imgbuf/buf_4291/1160590826394006.jpg

Hard Rock
http://live6.truelook.com/timages/live6/ecodb/ecodb_omni_camera1/imgbuf/buf_5676/1160590826394385.jpg

Aria
http://live6.truelook.com/timages/live6/ecodb/ecodb_evillage1_camera1/imgbuf/buf_2628/1160590826394510.jpg

Saphire
http://live6.truelook.com/timages/live6/ecodb/ecodb_1amnorth_camera1/imgbuf/buf_4291/1160590826394654.jpg

Courthouse
http://live6.truelook.com/timages/live6/ecodb/ecodb_oneamerica_camera1/imgbuf/buf_2002/1160590826394940.jpg

so is bayside officialy under construction?