Census Bureau to Move to S.D. for 1990 Count

In a move that will create more than 1,000 jobs in San Diego, the U.S. Census Bureau has decided to locate its Western regional processing center for the 1990 census in a huge warehouse off Mira Mesa Boulevard.

The bureau confirmed Friday that it has signed a three-year lease on a 140,000-square-foot building at 5995 Pacific Center Blvd. The center will be one of the seven regional census processing centers to open early next year.

The bureau will hire 1,000 to 1,100 workers to enter census information into the bureau’s data base via computer keyboards, said a bureau official, who asked not to be identified.

The employees will have jobs only for a maximum of three years, however, and will be let go when the census winds down in late 1991.

“We will close down in 1991 and go away until the next census,” the official said. Most of the 1,000 to 1,100 San Diego jobs will not be filled until 1990, the official said.

The bureau is spending $5 million to convert the warehouse-distribution building into office space, a process that will involve installing glass in place of 24 doors used for semitrailer truck unloading. The structure is located in the Mira Mesa Distribution Center business park, a project built on surplus school acreage leased for 55 years from the San Diego Unified School District.

During the 1980 census, the bureau’s Western regional center was in Laguna Niguel. Why San Diego was selected over other Southern California locations was unclear Friday to several sources involved in the deal.

Bill Haines, a broker with Coldwell Banker commercial real estate in San Diego, said the bureau selected the Mira Mesa space over competing San Diego buildings because it was “the biggest one-level, vacant building around.”

Owner of the building is Richardson/GADCo-PPC, a partnership of R. G. Richardson development firm of San Diego and Great American Development, the real estate development subsidiary of San Diego-based Great American First Savings Bank.

Haines, who with fellow broker Pat Collins helped handle the lease, said the bureau considered a site in Poway, a building in Santee formerly occupied by the Price Co., and the former Sanyo manufacturing plant in Kearny Mesa before settling on the Mira Mesa site.

The processing center will handle census data from seven Western states. The bureau also leased an adjacent 4-acre site for employee parking.

Other regional processing centers for the 1990 census will be in Kansas City, Mo.; Baltimore; Jacksonville, Fla.; Austin, Tex.; Albany, N.Y., and Jeffersonville, Ind.