Construction Plans Unveiled : Tenants Lining Up for Symphony Towers Suites
The long-awaited announcement of construction of the Symphony Towers office and hotel complex, including the tallest high-rise in San Diego County, was made Tuesday in the baroque and gilded lobby of Symphony Hall.
Representatives of Charlton Raynd Development Co., which heads the project, said demolition of buildings surrounding the newly refurbished Symphony Hall will begin next week. Construction is slated to start next summer, leading to a late fall 1988 completion of the 34-story office and 24-story Marriott Suites hotel. Symphony Hall will remain as the heart of the unique project.
Already, the developers have leased more than a third of the office tower’s 516,000 square feet of net leaseable space, mainly to three tenants--AT&T; (the building’s prime tenant), the Los Angeles-based law firm of Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher, and the public accounting firm of Peat Marwick Mitchell & Co.
Rumors about the Symphony Towers complex have abounded for 2 1/2 years, since Charlton Raynd first approached the San Diego Symphony Assn. about its plans. But after a six-month delay in the expected construction announcement, Tuesday was the first time that solid information about financing, prime tenants, design and a construction schedule were made public.
By most urban standards, and certainly by those of downtown San Diego, the combined 1.1-million-square-foot, $143.5-million project will be massive, taking up the entire block bounded by B and A streets and 7th and 8th avenues, in downtown’s emerging Banker’s Row along B Street.
Architecturally, the edifice, designed by the Los Angeles office of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, will consist of two stark towers, consisting of alternating vertical columns of Spanish pink granite and 35-foot-wide bay windows, a departure from the mirrored and reflective-glass buildings that now dominate the skyline.
The centerpiece of the project will be a 12th-floor “sky lobby” with an atrium, the hotel’s front desk, and restaurant and retail space that links the two towers. The office tower, 34 stories, is to run parallel to B Street and the hotel tower, 24 stories, will front on A Street.
But with the exception of entrances to Symphony Hall, the ground-floor office lobby on B Street and a hotel entryway on A Street, the project is devoid of pedestrian-oriented amenities, such as restaurants, shops or galleries.
Mike Stepner, San Diego assistant planning director who has strongly promoted a set of as-yet-unadopted urban design standards that stress ground-level, people-oriented activities in new buildings, said in an interview Tuesday that the inclusion of Symphony Hall in the project is more than enough in itself to satisfy the proposed city requirements.
Once built, the main entrance to Symphony Hall is expected to be moved to the office building’s B Street lobby.
“I think it fits in quite well,” said Stepner. “The design standards are in line with what we’ve been talking about.”
Stepner explained that the topography of the block--on one of the steepest hills downtown--makes it difficult to put more pedestrian-type activities along the 7th and 8th Avenue sides of the complex.
A project of the size of Symphony Towers obviously wouldn’t be possible without major financing. In this case, permanent financing will come from the Teacher Retirement System of Texas, according to Douglas Wilson, one of three managing partners of Charlton Raynd.
Under an agreement between Charlton Raynd and the San Diego Symphony Orchestra Assn., the symphony will receive 1 cent a month for five years for every square foot of leased office space. That means, for example, the symphony will receive about $16,320 a year from the combined leases of AT&T;, Gibson Dunn & Crutcher and Peat Marwick Mitchell. After five years, the rate paid to the symphony increases to 2 cents a month.
(The project is independent of the San Diego Symphony Orchestra Assn. Charlton Raynd bought the block--except for Symphony Hall--from the symphony in 1985.)
Wilson, the Charlton Raynd managing partner, told a press conference that his company had been told that “San Diego was overbuilt . . . (and) not ready for a structure of this sophistication and density.”
“But contrary to detractors . . . this downtown is the emerging downtown,” Wilson said, speaking in the ornate lower Symphony Hall lobby, behind him a large, gilded fireplace framed with vases.
Calling Symphony Towers a “once in a lifetime project,” Wilson said the development has undergone changes during its planning. For example, the Marriott company replaced Westin Hotels as the hotel operator. Instead of a 450-room convention center-type hotel, Charlton Rand opted for a smaller, suites-oriented inn.
Thus, although the hotel building is to be 24 stories, only the top 11 floors will have rooms, specifically 207 suites. Beneath the “sky lobby,” the rest of the building will be used for parking and the hotel’s mechanical equipment.
The developer, Wilson said, felt more “compatible with a down-size hotel that didn’t compete with convention hotels like the Hotel Inter-Continental” or have large public gathering areas.
As far as the 34-story office tower, AT&T; has agreed to a 10-year, 60,000-square-foot lease on floors directly above the 12th-floor sky lobby. The San Diego office of Gibson Dunn & Crutcher will lease 38,140 square feet, occupying the 32nd and 33rd floors. Peat Marwick Mitchell will also lease two floors, the 28th and 29th.
On the office tower’s top floor will be a 12,000-square-foot private dining club operated by the Dallas-based Club Corp. of America, which operates 150 similar clubs nationwide.
The signing of the companies to leases is considered “a major coup,” said Dennis Hearst, office leasing specialist for the real estate firm of Grubb & Ellis. It’s very rare these days for large office projects to get major tenants to commit to a lease based on what an office will look like when built, he said.
“The preleasing puts a whole ribbon around it. That’s almost never been seen before in the county,” Hearst said.
One of the structurally important aspects of the complex is the 775-car, 5-floor parking garage that will be built above Symphony Hall, linking the two towers.
The general contractor for the project is the Walsh Construction Co. of Sacramento, a division of San Francisco-based Guy F. Atkinson Co. of California.
