In The News : 2005

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Big SDSU project one step closer

April 17, 2005
This article also appears on another site: Union Tribune

$332 million urban village proposed for campus

It's being billed as one of the biggest face-lifts to Montezuma Mesa since San Diego State moved in nearly 75 years ago.

Back then, all that surrounded the college was dirt. Now, the campus of 33,000 students is practically swallowed by urban sprawl. On April 5, the university took a major step toward bulldozing it all and erecting in its place a $332 million college-oriented urban village.

San Diego State University's plans call for building a combination shopping area-office complex, with restaurants and movie theaters that can double as classrooms. The 12-acre project with 280,000 square feet of proposed commercial space – the size of two Costco warehouse stores – will be topped with three to five stories of student apartments.

Horton Plaza East.

That's what San Diego City Councilman Jim Madaffer calls the proposed development that has been in the works for more than 15 years. His nickname refers to the project's architectural firm, Jerde Partnership International, which built the colorful Horton Plaza mall credited with helping revitalize downtown San Diego.

As the College Area's councilman, Madaffer favors razing the motley collection of fast-food outlets, gas stations, houses, apartments and small businesses that have sprung up around the campus – a swatch of real estate the city officially calls "blighted."

"A lot of that stuff should have been scraped long ago," said Madaffer, who knows it well because he attended SDSU. "What's been pathetic in this city is the piecemeal development so nothing works together."

He favors the unifying connection of entire city blocks this development will create, one architectural theme that provides a gateway into the campus, one-time tearing up of roads, and – because of the size of the project – enough financing to improve the traffic circulation in the whole area.

Plans call for widening portions of surrounding streets, including College Avenue and Montezuma Road, and closing part of interior streets to create a walkable plaza leading onto SDSU's campus. The development's very name, the Paseo, is Spanish for walkway or stroll.

So far, the project has not met major opposition. But some of the fine print has not been settled over the most controversial issues of traffic improvements, housing levels, financing and environmental concerns.

One worry for environmentalists is the fate of nearby Alvarado Creek, which flows into the San Diego River and is home to some rare birds and other species.

The environmental impact report, made available for public comment April 5, calls for biologists to search the creek bed for nesting gnatcatchers and move them during construction. But since it will take two to three years to build the Paseo, it is unknown whether the final development will swallow about the only open space in the urbanized tract. If the creek-bed area does get harmed, the developer is required to basically play Mother Nature and create similar green space three times as large.

Some of San Diego State's longtime neighbors who serve on the College Area Community Council, an advisory planning group, say they are generally supportive of the development. But they won't endorse it until they review the 400-plus-page report.

"We like the idea of a dynamic place in the community," said Steve Laub of the community council. "We all want the Paseo to go forward because of the housing it will provide. It's not enough housing to solve the problems overall of the area, but it helps."

Their chief concerns remain the increased traffic the center will bring into an already jammed area. And they worry about the threat of eminent domain, the government's power to force the sale of private property.

While developers say they have peacefully negotiated sales of more than half of the 43 parcels of land in the development's path, they still have to settle with 14 property owners who own 20 parcels of real estate there.

Possible evictions

One quasi-landmark doesn't mind the eviction.

The second Rubio's restaurant ever built sits at the foot of the pedestrian walkway over College Avenue connecting students from the dorms and parking garages to campus.

The SDSU connection is a close one for Ralph Rubio, who launched his empire with family and friends from San Diego State. Their first fish-taco restaurant remains standing in Mission Bay.

"This shows progress and, as a graduate of the university, I am glad to see progress including expansion," Rubio said in a statement.

Rubio said he did have sentimental attachment to the place and his company is negotiating with the university to move to a potentially better location.

Not so lucky is Pablo Serrano.

For 25 years, he has run Pablo's Shoe Repair on Montezuma Place, in a little shop that has housed a cobbler for the campus community since the 1950s. Though he repairs all the nice shoes of the big shots at the university, that doesn't give him any sway. He still faces eviction, and he says he has been unable to persuade the developers to make room for him in the new urban village.

"I talked to the guy, but he says they don't need a shoe-repair shop," said Serrano.

Still, he's not panicking, or for that matter, packing.

Gentrification has been threatening to shove aside College Area businesses like his for as long as he can remember. Yet he's still there hammering away, fixing SDSU President Stephen Weber's shoes, he says, as he did the presidents before him, and the footwear of deans and professors.

The college community has seen other major investments in the area in recent years. The San Diego Trolley is linking to the university; its campus station is set to open in July, near the proposed Paseo off College Avenue. Less than two miles away sits the new Ray and Joan Kroc Corps Community Center, a vast Salvation Army-run center featuring an ice rink and Olympic-sized pool that SDSU aquatic athletes use for training. The center also has gyms and youth and senior programs serving the neighborhood.

Public-private partnership

The biggest benefit of the SDSU Foundation's proposed Paseo development is the student housing it will provide, said Mike Fortney, project manager of the college community for the city of San Diego's Redevelopment Agency. The city was able to boost the amount of housing being built by the developer to the currently proposed 470 apartments, housing 1,295 students in two-, three-and four-bedroom units.

San Diego State only has housing for 10 percent of its 33,000 students, and demand remains heavy for entry into one of the California State University system's most competitive campuses. Its growth will only increase the pressure for housing.

Over the past five years, the university's housing crunch has been assisted by its foundation, the nonprofit arm of the university that handles its more than $130 million in grants and research per year. In its role as developer, the SDSU Foundation built such university-related projects as a student housing complex, Fraternity Row and the now-under-construction Sorority Row.

The foundation also is serving as developer for the Paseo project, its most ambitious to date. It plans to pay for the project with the sale of bonds and redevelopment financing, if the public-private partnership is approved.

Using such university-related nonprofit corporations to develop moneymaking properties is part of a national trend for cash-strapped universities and colleges in the U.S. Some have even developed golf courses, equestrian centers, retirement homes and branched out beyond the academic role into HMOs to run their university-connected hospitals.

Dozens of colleges have built similar urban villages of housing mixed with commercial development, said foundation redevelopment manager Fred Pierce, a private developer, SDSU alumnus and former CSU trustee.

"We stopped counting at 50," said Pierce, who visited 16 campuses nationwide to see similar projects, including those at the University of Pennsylvania and Ohio State University.

The bulk of SDSU's Paseo project would be retail, featuring the trendy Urban Outfitters, which sells clothing and decor to the high school and college age demographic.

Pierce plans for a dozen open-air cafes and sit-down restaurants. And the foundation has signed a deal with a major theater chain, AMC, to build an approximately 14-screen movie theater, which will be designed to double as university classrooms.

Parking will be underground, with 1,922 spaces. Pierce estimates that with all the new shops, restaurants and office space, the project will provide 1,100 jobs for students and area residents.

The city's environmental report on the SDSU Foundation Paseo project is the result of years of negotiation and compromise, Pierce said. The report offers alternatives as well, including one with 30 percent more student housing, but that scenario crams more development into the blocks and brings more congestion and higher costs along with it.

The other alternative the report offers is to do nothing.

But Pierce notes that leaving the status quo will hardly solve the traffic and housing problems in the area. He said any future development will continue as it has been for the past half-century – piecemeal.

"We're the only ones who are going to address it all as a package – the traffic, the parking, the housing, the environmental issues," he said. "We're looking at something that will enhance the students' quality of life and give them a better college experience."

Related Images

Paseo at SDSU Plaza