Kobey Signs Pact; Parking Fears Raised

Swap meet czar Monte Kobey signed a five-year lease Monday for the former Walker Scott department store downtown, but some merchants there are worried that the move will further aggravate the parking strain.

Horton Plaza merchants fear that Kobey’s planned swap meet, which is being marketed as “San Diego’s alternative to retail shopping,” will generate unwanted traffic at the mall’s 2,500-space parking garage.

“We’re very anxious that spaces are available to (Horton Plaza) customers when they want and need them,” the plaza’s general manager, Bob Dobson, said.

Horton Plaza already faces a growing problem with what Dobson described as “poachers”--office workers who abuse the mall’s offer of three free hours of parking by entering the garage in the morning, exiting before the limit expires, and returning for another three hours of free parking.

“That’s defrauding an innkeeper if we really wanted to pursue it,” Dobson said. “It’s become a rather severe problem during our first year and a half.”

Kobey has pledged to market his newest swap meet to people who work downtown and, consequently, are already parked.

Dobson added: “What also irritates me is that (Horton) was required by the city to provide a certain number of parking spots, and we don’t know that he was subject to the same requirement.”

Remodeling of the building, at 5th Avenue and Broadway, was to begin today, Kobey said. Kobey’s Downtown Discount Mart will initially fill at least three floors of the eight-story building, which has been vacant since the department store closed in February, 1985.