Most Stores Will Be Closed at Opening of Horton Plaza

Fewer than half of Horton Plaza’s 150-plus stores will be open when the $200-million retail and entertainment complex opens next month, officials of the project’s developer, Ernest W. Hahn Inc., revealed Tuesday.

But San Diego city officials and the Hahn company, seeking to put the best possible face on yet another delay in the already much-delayed project, argued Tuesday that the incomplete Aug. 9 opening could enhance, rather than detract from, the downtown center’s impact.

At a news conference Tuesday at which a series of festivities intended to raise public interest in the 6 1/2-block complex to a crescendo prior to its scheduled opening were unveiled, Hahn officials disclosed that only about 60 of the center’s 150 stores and restaurants will be open next month.

“Maybe we’ve got a lemon and we’re trying to make lemonade out of it, but I don’t see that as a serious problem,” said Peter Q. Davis, president of the Centre City Redevelopment Agency, the city’s redevelopment arm. “Rather than just one big bang on Aug. 9, we’ll still have that and a series of smaller bangs throughout the rest of the year. Every time people come to orton Plaza, there will be something new to see.”

Hahn spokeswoman Kim Wenrick said Tuesday that an additional 40 specialty shops and restaurants are expected to be completed within six weeks of the center’s opening, and that, by year’s end, all of the project’s stores likely will be open for business.

Nearly 90% of Horton Plaza’s 900,000 square feet of retail space is leased, which Wenrick called an “astounding figure for any shopping center.” Many suburban shopping malls open with only 60% to 75% of their retail space leased, according to redevelopment officials.

“That really shows tremendous support for the concept of a downtown center,” Wenrick said. The center’s lease rate, however, reflects only retailer interest. Public interest in the project will remain an untested proposition until Aug. 9--and what first-day shoppers will find will be a considerably less-than-complete product.

Under the timetable disclosed Tuesday, Horton Plaza’s projected 25,000 daily visitors will not be exposed to the full breadth of the project until at least early next year. (Indeed, two other components of the mixed-use project--an adjacent hotel and office space--will not be completed until later this decade. The 15-story Omni International Hotel is scheduled to open in early 1987, while construction of the office space faces an uncertain timetable.)

In addition to the four-month phasing-in period for the center’s smaller shops and restaurants, one of the project’s four major department stores--The Broadway--will not open until October. The three other department stores--Robinson’s, Mervyn’s and Nordstrom--will open Aug. 9.

Wenrick said “it looks doubtful” that any of the center’s six major restaurants will be open on Aug. 9, though the sale of catered food in what she described as a “restaurant-like atmosphere” is envisioned as a temporary substitute.

Construction of two theaters is expected to be completed in November, but the first stage productions probably will not be offered until January, and a seven-screen

cinema is scheduled to open in December, Hahn officials said. In addition, because of the ongoing interior construction during the center’s initial months, it is not known whether three major public sculptures to be displayed there will be in place on Aug. 9.

The center’s failure to be completed by Aug. 9, Wenrick said, stems primarily from the architectural complexity of the project, minor snags in individual stores’ building permits, and the “careful, methodical method” used to solicit retail tenants.

“We won’t just lease space to lease space,” Wenrick said. “Some retail uses wouldn’t work in this kind of a center, so we’ve tried to be very deliberate in matching up the right kind of store with the right space.”

Hahn and CCDC officials, however, profess to be unconcerned that San Diegans’ first glimpse of Horton Plaza, widely viewed as the cornerstone of downtown redevelopment, will reveal an unfinished shopping center.

“It’s taken us 10 years to get this far,” said Horton Plaza project manager Sonny Sturn. “What difference does a couple of months make?”

Perhaps none--at least that is the fervent hope of both public and private officials who have invested nearly $200 million in the project. The Hahn firm’s investment totals about $140 million and the city spent $33.2 million to purchase and improve the site. The rest of the cost is in individual stores’ design, fixture and merchandising expenses.

However, city officials have long characterized Horton Plaza as the magnet that will draw many San Diegans who rarely, if ever, visit downtown back to the center city --overcoming a suburban-oriented public’s long-held attitudes and skepticism about downtown.

While acknowledging that shoppers’ first impressions of Horton Plaza undoubtedly will influence whether and how frequently they return, city and Hahn officials contend that the center’s incomplete status will not dampen visitors’ enthusiasm.

“Admittedly, this wasn’t the way we originally saw the grand opening,” said Davis. “The original plan was that the whole center would open at once and, in an ideal world, that probably would be nice.

“But in the real world, it’s almost inevitable that you’re going to have some delays on any project 10 years in the making. So now the second option is to stage the opening over several months.

“Maybe we’re just rationalizing, but the more I think about that, I think that’s going to be an advantage. People are going to be able to watch this center grow week by week. That’s going to be exciting.”

Gerald M. Trimble, CCDC’s executive vice president, also emphasized the silver lining in the cloud, describing Horton Plaza’s months-long “opening” as “a chance for everyone to experience progress in action.”

“I think it’s going to be much better this way,” Trimble said. “This in an excellent opportunity to prolong the excitement and focus on Horton Plaza and downtown.”

Wenrick stressed that when the center opens on Aug. 9, “it’s definitely going to have the feel of a finished project.” Decorative barricades will be placed in front of unfinished stores, she said, to reduce the construction to a “very minor inconvenience” for shoppers. The unopened stores, which include some on street level, will be scattered throughout the center, rather than concentrated in certain areas, Wenrick said.

The post-August store openings represent only the latest in a long series of delays that have plagued the Horton Plaza project virtually from its inception.

First proposed in the early 1970s, the development’s transformation from dream to reality has been repeatedly postponed by myriad factors, including several major design changes, high interest rates, battles over whether to preserve or raze several historic buildings situated in the 6 1/2-block site, and the city’s own fiscal constraints since the 1978 passage of Proposition 13, the massive property tax-cutting measure.

When ground was finally broken on the project in November, 1982, the target opening date was the spring of 1985. However, that projection, too, was later pushed back to mid-summer 1985--a target that Hahn officials began conceding months ago would not be fully met.

“I’ve learned to be a patient man,” developer Ernest W. Hahn said in a recent interview. “If I weren’t patient and didn’t believe so strongly in this project, I would have walked away from it long ago.”

At Tuesday’s news conference, city officials and the Hahn company also unveiled details of a publicity blitz aimed at heightening public interest in the center’s impeding opening.

A brochure entitled “Horton Plaza, Here We Come” will be mailed to 215,000 San Diego residences along with water bills over the next month. The brochure describes Horton Plaza with effusive prose, explains how to travel downtown via public transit, and includes a downtown map showing more than 18,500 off-street parking spaces in addition to the center’s 2,400-space public parking lot.

CCDC also will spend $20,000 on 214 bright orange, pink, yellow and purple banners to be hung along major streets leading to Horton Plaza. The banners, intended to be both decorative and directional, will be affixed to light posts and utility poles on Aug. 1 and are expected to remain up for at least two months.

Other plans designed to highlight Horton Plaza’s opening include a 40-page promotional brochure to be inserted in local magazines and mailed to targeted areas, free coloring books for children, sales of a CCDC-commissioned poster and a charity gala at the center the night before it opens. City officials said they expect about 5,000 people to attend the $50-per-person party, which will benefit St. Vincent de Paul, the San Diego Zoo, the Combined Arts and Education Council of San Diego County (COMBO), the USO and the Armed Services YMCA.

Local, state and national public officials and dignitaries are expected to participate in the official opening ceremony on Aug. 9. President Reagan has been invited to the ceremony, but Wenrick said that Hahn officials have not yet received a reply to their invitation. U.S. Sen. Pete Wilson (R-Calif.), who played an instrumental role in downtown redevelopment during his years as San Diego’s mayor, will be at the ceremony.

The opening weekend also will feature various concerts, fashion shows and a series of celebrity appearances both in the center and Horton Plaza Park.

“Aug. 9 is just the beginning of the celebration,” Sturn said. “An urban environment is an ever-changing world, and that’s how Horton Plaza is going to be. A year from now, no one’s even going to remember that all of the stores didn’t open at once.”