Carving His Niche Out of the Chaparral : Mini-City Developer Has Attracted Many Friends and Foes
In one corner of the room, tucked in the depths of a plain-looking office building in San Diego’s Golden Triangle, hangs a pair of horns from a Longhorn steer. Next to it, on another wall, is a large painting of sailboats. And behind the dark-wood desk in his small but comfortable office sits Harry L. Summers, Texan by birth and upbringing and, for the last 33 years, Californian by choice.
This mixing of Texas and California goes beyond Summers’ taste in art to his distinctive, resonant drawl and his customary open-collared, informal business attire, which gives him a casual, sunsets-at-the-beach look.
Behind his gracious and soft-spoken exterior churns a shrewd business mind that has made Summers rich and carried him through a development career resulting in the construction of more than 20,000 homes, town houses and condominiums valued at more than $500 million, plus more in commercial facilities and industrial projects.
And he isn’t finished yet. Summers is one of the principal developers responsible for the transformation of the Golden Triangle from a wind-swept expanse of chaparral into the hotbed of residential, commercial and industrial development it is today.
“All this development has sort of taken off at the same time; that’s where we are today,” said Summers, who is 61. “Everything is now at a certain size where everybody notices. We always had a feeling, because of its location, that things would work here. The truth is, it’s taken a long time to get here.”
Summers has two major office projects in the triangle--the 57-acre Summers Governor Park designed for scientific research and development companies, and the upscale Plaza at La Jolla Village, a complex of high-rise towers that Summers is building in partnership with another Golden Triangle pioneer, shopping center magnate Ernest Hahn. When finished, Plaza at La Jolla Village, at the busy corner of La Jolla Village Drive and Genesee Avenue, will be worth $250 million, Summers says.
Summers’ legacy in the Golden Triangle, however, will be more than simply the construction of buildings. Perhaps more than any other developer, he has injected his company directly into the fundamental planning process for the area by having representatives of his organization take a leading role in the University Community Planning Group, a citizens-developer group responsible for devising a master plan for the triangle.
His critics, mainly residents of the area, say the triangle’s transformation into a budding mini-city, with resulting traffic congestion and loss of rural character, has occurred at the unceasing lobbying of Summers, who stood to profit from decisions allowing more intense development.
His supporters, and there are many, defend Summers’ activist role and say the Golden Triangle will end up better off for his involvement because he is a disciple of master planning. They say he will try, as much as possible, to harmonize the often disparate elements of the large development with its surroundings.
“I personally think he’s a reputable builder, and he has a lot of respect in the community, but it’s equally clear he wants to make sure his business interests are protected before anything else,” says Harry Mathis, president of UCARE, University City Area Residents for Equity, a community group formed in response to the problems associated with the Golden Triangle’s rapid growth.
Ted Owen, head of the Chamber of Commerce’s Golden Triangle office, says, “He’s a visionary, so to speak. He’s honest and forthright. He makes money developing property--that’s his business--but at the same time he’s saying, ‘I want something I’m proud of.’ ”
Summers is perhaps best known as one of the founders and developers of Rancho Bernardo, northern San Diego’s 5,900-acre planned “new town,” whose trademarks are red tile roofs and underground utilities; accomplishments that by today’s standards seem rather tame, but which in 1960, when faceless tract housing and forests of television antennas were the norm, were startling.
His initiation to San Diego was considerably less auspicious. In 1952, he came here from Texas and helped build and operate 1,600 rental housing units at Camp Pendleton, eventually selling them to the Navy. For the next eight years, as the first wave of a residential building boom fueled by the military’s increased presence and the Korean War hit San Diego, Summers was responsible for the construction of 5,000 houses in La Jolla, Clairemont and the South Bay.
And while Summers has turned his attention to commercial and office developments, he is still very active in residential construction, in Rancho Bernardo, Rancho Santa Fe, Cardiff and Poway.
As for the Golden Triangle, Summers says the real pioneer was Ernest Hahn. “Without University Towne Centre (Hahn’s regional shopping center) as the focal point for this community . . . it would have been impossible for the rest of us to prosper and succeed here,” Summers said.
His company’s involvement in the Golden Triangle’s master planning, he said, was spurred by the belief that “by setting higher standards than normally are set for these types of projects, it would benefit all of us, residents and developers alike.”
Summers’ community activities go beyond his planning efforts in the triangle. He sits on the board of directors of the Scripps Clinic and Research Foundation, the UCSD Cancer Research Center and the La Jolla Cancer Research Foundation, and he was chairman of the San Diego committee that sponsored the Olympic torch run in the summer of 1984.
His financial success has carried this Rockdale, Tex., native to a beachfront home in Del Mar, where he often jogs on the beach.
He knows all too well that his shiny buildings are another man’s lost open space. “When we had 500 homes here (the Golden Triangle), it was a very rural area,” he said. “It isn’t that way any more. That seems to be the way of development, and the way of life.”
