Project May Put Downtown Into the Swank of Things

Once again on the cutting edge of ritz, developer Walter Smyk is trying to make downtown San Diego home to such posh establishments as Cartier, Gucci and Ferragamo.

“These stores usually try to get on the best shopping streets in a city. San Diego really doesn’t have those, so we’re going to make them,” Smyk said Monday in describing plans for a four-story, $33-million commercial center between Horton Plaza and his Meridian luxury condominiums tower.

Smyk said the three fashion giants, together with anonymous others, have expressed “strong interest” in The Paladion, proposed for the block bounded by 1st Avenue and G, F and Front streets.

Although no leases or loan deals have yet been signed, the design of the project is well under way, he said, and Gucci has selected a 6,600-square-foot, two-story space across from Nordstrom in Horton Plaza.

A Cartier spokesman said only that the site is a “possibility,” but Smyk said the New York-based jewelry concern’s top two officers flew to San Diego for a day last week and came away favorably impressed.

Pending financing arrangements and Smyk’s purchase of a 12,500-square-foot parcel owned by the city, ground breaking is scheduled for next summer, and the opening of the Art Deco complex is planned for the fall of 1990.

“I think it’s an aggressive project, and if anyone can pull it off it’s him,” said Pamela Hamilton, acting executive vice president of the nonprofit Centre City Development Corp.

Hamilton said the CCDC, the redevelopment agency for downtown, is preparing an agreement to guarantee Smyk the land, which lies within the Horton Plaza project area. After CCDC

approval, the plan would still require the OK of the City Council.

“This would be very unique, it would bring the kind of shopper downtown that we just haven’t had,” Hamilton said. “It would offer conventioneers and their spouses an opportunity to shop in the kind of stores that aren’t anywhere else, not even in La Jolla.”

Smyk’s previous projects include the 3-year-old, 28-story Meridian on Front Street--which he said cost $71 million and is now about 75% sold--and industrial parks in Kearny Mesa.

“We want to have 30% to 35% pre-leased before we begin construction,” Smyk said. The majority of the 60 projected shops will be “upper-middle- to upper-upper-” range retail outlets, with an emphasis on fashion and accessories.

“We really have to start humping” in order to get enough stores lined up to begin building on schedule, Smyk said. Since many fashion chains will open a store only in the fall, any delays might push the project back a full year, he said.

“We want a coterie of high-end stores to anchor the project to create the critical mass” necessary to draw other retailers, he said.

The 120,000-square-foot design, by Los Angeles architect Gerald Allmand, features polished granite and marble, an atrium, roof garden and two floors of below-ground valet parking.

Although Smyk said he is unsure who his partners will be, he said financing should not be difficult.

“Being a reasonably skilled developer that I am, the numbers are good, and it’s a fairly slam-dunk financial package,” he said. “It’s not a stretch.”

Smyk said the large number of affluent San Diegans and tourists make the site an attractive one for “high-end” retailers.

“As much as half or more of their business is visitor traffic, and 75% of San Diego’s luxury hotels are within five minutes” of the project, he said.

Gucci and Ferragamo are Italian makers of clothing and leather goods.