Downtown Loft Dwellers Get City OK

Hoping to create a local equivalent of New York City’s bohemian SoHo district, the San Diego City Council on Tuesday approved an ordinance that will allow artists to live and work in industrial buildings downtown.

By a 9-0 vote, the council decided it was time to bend the building codes a little, bring the city’s several dozen warehouse artists out of hiding, and encourage them to live and work legally in buildings in and near the Gaslamp Quarter.

For all the unanimity at the final vote, council support for the new ordinance almost unraveled as discussion began. At issue was “amnesty” for 21 artists who had moved into an old factory at 8th Avenue and K Street, begun refurbishing it without city permits--and got caught.

Even with the new ordinance, city fire and building inspectors still were going to require major and prohibitively expensive renovations before the Candy Factory could reopen as work-live space, building general partner Linville Martin said.

But in the motion for the live-work ordinance, Mayor Roger Hedgecock pointedly directed the city staff to work with the Candy Factory owners so that artists can return to the building.

The new live-work regulations cover industrial and vacant buildings in San Diego’s Centre City. That area is bordered by Broadway, Interstate 5, Commercial Street, Harbor Drive and 4th Avenue.

Under the ordinance, artists and artisans are allowed some exemptions from the usual building code requirements for fire safety, structural engineering and so on. But city building inspectors are to decide on a case-by-case basis if a building requires additional fire or structural protection.