Plan for City-County Complex Revived

In an effort to encourage city and county officials to solve their growing office-space shortages together, San Diego County Supervisor Susan Golding has resuscitated a proposal to consider building a city-county complex on Front Street.

Golding intends to ask that the county’s administrative staff begin discussing the possibility with city officials, because both the county and city are independently looking into expansion options and future uses for existing space.

“I made the proposal now . . . so we would be informed of any possibilities for joint cooperation,” Golding said Thursday. “Otherwise, I know the city and the county are capable and more likely to make their decisions in a vacuum.”

Under the proposal, to come before the supervisors in two weeks, county and city officials would consider a joint facility on two parcels at A and B streets owned by the county and used primarily for parking.

The building, which supervisors said could save taxpayers money and consolidate services, might include court and jail space and perhaps a public hearing hall. However, Golding said the proposal is not yet specific and is presented as a long-range possibility.

“The complex would offer to the citizens of the entire county a truly regional government facility that would integrate and focus into one downtown location county and city facilities and services,” Golding wrote to Supervisor Leon Williams, sketching the suggestion.

Several supervisors said Thursday they would agree to consider the concept. But they said similar schemes had been proposed and died. They said such a complex could be prohibitively expensive and might not be the best use of the space.

“There’s been a notion of having a government complex for many years, but it didn’t come to fruition,” said Williams, the board chairman. “I don’t see where we’d get the money now to do that kind of a massive realignment of facilities.”

Others said there is support for distributing facilities throughout the county, and the land might prove more valuable if it were sold to buy cheaper land. In the meantime, Williams said, the county is well-served by the County Administration Center on Pacific Highway.

The Front Street properties, totaling almost 100,000 square feet, are already being studied by the county to determine whether they would be best used for offices, retail stores, a hotel or restaurants.

The county staff has also said the county courthouse could expand into one of the parcels if the courthouse were to be enlarged.

City officials are contemplating the future of the Community Concourse, a new central library, and where they might expand office space downtown. And the county is contemplating uses for the parking lot next to the County Administration Center.

State officials say they will need an additional 162,000 square feet of downtown space by 1995. The need for Municipal and Superior Court space downtown is expected to increase by 316,000 square feet by 2000, said Chuck Pennell, a planning analyst for the county.