Council Passes Strict Zoning, Building Rules for Eastern Downtown

Horton Plaza is a financial success. The topless bars and hash joints along 4th Avenue have been evicted, and the buildings are getting a face lift. Stretches of pavement on Broadway have been replaced with spiffy red bricks.

For the most part, redevelopment in downtown San Diego has worked. The results have been roundly praised by civic and political leaders as the centerpiece of an urban renaissance.

Yet just a few blocks east of the redevelopment area, there is little evidence of change. City blocks are occupied by warehouses, junkyards, bus barns. Winos and transients displaced by the redevelopment have come to take advantage of the new soup kitchens and shelters there.

The area is Centre City East, and it has remained a virtual stepchild to progress. On Tuesday, however, the San Diego City Council took a step it hopes will change that, halting what one council member called the “deterioration” of prime inner-city real estate.

By a unanimous vote, the council adopted an interim ordinance that places restrictive zoning and development requirements on Centre City East--the roughly 350-acre area whose borders are Interstate 5 on the east, Russ Boulevard on the north, Harbor Drive and Commercial Street on the south, and a zigzag of 11th Street, Broadway and 6th Avenue on the west.

The ordinance, a year in the making, is intended as a temporary measure until the council can revise the community plan for the area and adopt it. The plan is to be ready by mid-1988, in time for the opening of the convention center.

The ordinance is yet another signal that City Hall is turning its attention to the tattered eastern edge of downtown, said Ella Paris, city planner for Centre City. The council passed a “live-work” ordinance in early 1985 to encourage artists’ lofts in the area.

“Now that the convention center is coming, it becomes critical,” Paris said. “Now that we’ve become successful with the other portions (of downtown), it is logical that we come next.”

Currently, nearly 70% of the land is zoned for industrial use, a liberal category that, in some areas, would allow a slaughterhouse or a petroleum refinery or a plant that makes explosives. In addition, there have been no standards to dictate, for example, how far a building should be set back or how big it can be.

Much of the land--about 40%--is owned by public and semipublic entities such as San Diego Gas & Electric, the San Diego County Community College District, and the Metropolitan Transit Development Board. A main post office and the central library are in Centre City East, as is the new police headquarters building.

About 4% of the land is designated for residential use. The 1980 census showed that there were only 647 housing units in the area, according to a city Planning Department report.

With its liberal zoning, Centre City East had become a catch-all for many of the businesses deemed undesirable for central downtown. The result is an urban hodgepodge: pool halls, auto repair shops, food and merchandise wholesalers, soup kitchens, manufacturing plants and construction contracting firms.

That meant that people with money weren’t willing to invest in Centre City East, said Michael V. Dyett, a San Francisco consultant the city hired to help write the interim ordinance.

“Why would anyone get a limited partnership to invest if there were unregulated soup kitchens . . . and there were storage tanks for gasoline?” Dyett said.

Councilman Uvaldo Martinez, whose district includes the area, told his colleagues Tuesday that the city has “permitted real shabby development practices and underutilization of some of the prime property in the city today.”

The interim ordinance rescinds the industrial zoning and places an emphasis on housing. Property north of Martin Luther King Way is designated for new residential buildings, which may reach as high as 90 feet. Commercial uses--artists’ studios, car rental offices--are permitted on the ground floors of the residential high-rises.

A business such as a hotel, motel or restaurant would be allowed north of Martin Luther King Way with a special permit.

Property south of Martin Luther King Way is designated for businesses such as wholesale outlets, print shops and for light industry. New buildings there may reach heights of 50 feet. Developers can exceed the height limits with permission from the city planning director.

The ordinance also establishes requirements for off-street parking and loading as well as for screens around new junkyards, parking lots and repair shops. It also sets standards for noise, lighting and odors emanating from new businesses.

In addition, the interim measure makes an attempt to regulate the operation of new shelters and kitchens for the homeless by requiring that the sponsoring social service agencies obtain permits from the city. Paris said the city could require the shelters to keep transients inside a building or an interior courtyard.

“It’s not the homeless that’s the problem,” Paris said. “It’s that they are sleeping on the sidewalks and the doorways.”

Although the ordinance received unanimous approval from the council, some at the meeting raised objections to it.

Tom Hom, whose family owns four blocks in the area, said he was worried that the height limit would hurt his chances for building a 17-story, 192-unit apartment building at 9th Avenue and F Street, across from the post office. Hom has yet to apply for a building permit. He was assured that his project could be given a height exemption.

Commercial real estate broker Brian Walsh said that the ordinance’s emphasis on residential development may be wrong for downtown, where land costs are high.

“Residential is, economically, a use downtown that costs a heck of a lot of money,” Walsh said after the meeting. “You can go up to El Cajon Boulevard in North Park and you can buy land at $10 a square foot. Downtown, you buy it at $50 a square foot, so that means you have to go pretty high up to make it pay. My problem with the plan is . . . that they’re imposing residential really in an area that is not desirable for residential.”

Mayor Maureen O’Connor said those kinds of objections could be addressed in forthcoming public hearings about the Centre City East community plan.