San Diego

A ground-breaking ceremony was held Thursday for the 452-room Omni San Diego Hotel, scheduled to open next to the Horton Plaza shopping center in mid-1987.

The $58-million hotel will be built on a 1.5-acre site next to Mervyn’s department store, between 1st Avenue and the new Broadway Circle. The building will also house meeting rooms, an executive business center and a health club. There will also be an outdoor swimming pool and two tennis courts.

The 15-story hotel was proposed in 1981, but financing wasn’t completed until November.

Councilman Uvaldo Martinez told those attending the ground-breaking ceremony that the hotel was a “statement by the private sector of . . . confidence in and commitment to downtown revitalization.”

Others on hand for the event included representatives of the Centre City Development Corp.; Py-Vavra Development Inc., developer of the project, and Dunfey Hotels Corp., parent company of Omni International Hotels.