Major Hotel, Homes Highlight New Plan for Seaport Village
The owners of Seaport Village announced plans Friday to build a 25-story, 750-room hotel and a 150-apartment residential complex on two downtown blocks between 1st Avenue and Front Street near the bay.
The plans are expected to rekindle debate among Centre City Development Corp. directors over the issue of high-rise structures blocking downtown views of the bay.
The $116-million project would occupy blocks south of Martin Luther King Way within the downtown redevelopment area and across Pacific Highway from Seaport Village and the convention center. Developers Roger Manfred and Morris B. Taubman plan to contribute their first names to the development,which would be known as Roger Morris Plaza.
Manfred, a 30-year veteran of the hotel management industry, said that the hotel is a necessary adjunct to the nearby convention center, and the adjacent 15- or 16-story apartment complex can be built without the public subsidy generally deemed necessary for downtown south-of-Broadway housing projects. He said plans call for breaking ground late next year and completion of the hotel by 1991, in time for the opening of the convention center.
The 25-story hotel would feature room rates of $85 and $90 a day, lower than the luxury bayfront Hotel Inter-Continental towers nearby, Manfred said.
The proposal, which has financing from the Bank of Tokyo, will go before the CCDC board next month for approval of a six-month negotiation period between the developers--Seaport Manfred Co. Inc.--and CCDC officials. The project also must gain approval from local and state regulatory agencies, including the San Diego City Council.
Transition Area
Manfred said that the hotel-residential project is designed to provide “a transition between the convention center and downtown development,” including Horton Plaza Shopping Center three blocks away.
The residential units, averaging 1,200 square feet, would be two-bedroom, two-bath units renting for $1,200 to $1,500 a month, he said, and could be sold as condominiums at a later date. Both projects would have a total underground parking capacity of 800 spaces.
CCDC Executive Vice President Gerald Trimble praised the plans presented by the developers and called the two-block site “at present, probably about one of the worst eyesores in the redevelopment area . . . full of beer cans and dead cats.”
The hotel frontage on the inland side of Pacific Highway is expected to be the site of one of three stations for the Bayside Line of the San Diego Trolley. A park and a pedestrian crossover to the bayfront side also will be located there.
Manfred said the development will employ about 350 workers during the construction phase and about 650 when in full operation. Property taxes are expected to be about $1 million a year; transient occupancy taxes (hotel-motel tax), $1.3 million, and annual sales tax, $350,000.
Plans call for 60,000 to 100,000 square feet of retail commercial space on the lower floors of both the hotel and the apartment complex, Manfred said.
He and Taubman, a real estate developer and retired oil company executive, formed the Seaport Manfred Co. with attorney Lee Stein last year to build and operate hotels and specialty real estate in California, Arizona and New Mexico, as well as in Pacific Rim countries.
Roger Morris Plaza is the third major residential high-rise proposed for the Marina redevelopment area, which lies south of Horton Plaza toward the water. The 28-story, 172-unit Meridian condominiums at 700 Front St. are now complete and are partly occupied. A 21-story two-tower office-commercial-residential project proposed by Los Angeles-based developer Neil Senturia for a block at 3rd Avenue and J Street is still in the planning stages.
Manfred estimated that it will be 18 months to two years before construction can begin on Roger Morris Plaza.
