CCDC Praises Hahn Committee’s Draft Plan for Downtown

The Centre City Development Corp., the agency responsible for downtown redevelopment, Friday got its first close look at the draft plan being forged by a city committee led by Horton Plaza developer Ernest Hahn, and it liked what it saw.

The plan, designed to be downtown’s development blueprint for the next 50 years, has been in the works for about a year and a half, and it probably won’t be finished for another year. But, based on the general ideas in the plan’s conceptual draft, the CCDC board of directors had nothing but praise and a few suggestions.

Hahn said the idea behind the plan is that, as downtown grows, an overriding guide will be needed to provide for and protect public amenities--such as open space and dramatic links to Balboa Park. It is also meant to give developers consistent rules as to where high-rises and other projects are acceptable.

Already Threatened

The CCDC board was told by Hahn and Larry Monserrate, chief city planner for downtown, that pressure to develop already threatens to undermine the concepts in the plan, specifically in areas outside the CCDC’s three redevelopment areas and especially in the Harbor View neighborhood on the northern end of town, where there are few land-use constraints.

(The City Council, at the urging of Hahn and his committee, has been asked to protect the plan, and is scheduled to vote on an emergency ordinance Tuesday that would require all development projects proposed in the Harbor View, Cortez Hill and central business core to be referred directly to the council. The council would then judge whether the projects are in compliance with the conceptual plan. Such an ordinance would stay in effect until the Hahn committee finishes its work.)

The essence of the plan is to create neighborhoods and sub-neighborhoods by governing the size, bulk and type of development in each area of downtown. This entails, for example, determining where high-rises are appropriate and where, conversely, such a building would cripple the intent of creating a low-scale residential neighborhood.

That the CCDC would find the Hahn committee plan acceptable is really no surprise. Not only is one of its board members, Tom Carter, a member of the committee, but the CCDC also has long been an advocate of tight development controls governing design, size, location and types of downtown projects.

Although a major component of the plan calls for extensive public amenities, the problem is how to pay for them, Hahn said. Noting that the costs of various infrastructure needs may amount to hundreds of millions of dollars, he said he favors the creation of special facilities assessment districts downtown. Developers within these districts would be assessed a fee to pay for the needed public improvements.

Hahn likened the revenue-raising proposal to assessment districts created in San Diego’s Golden Triangle, which have been used to pay for infrastructures such as roads.

Avoiding Gridlock

“We all want development downtown, but we have to make sure we stay up with the infrastructure . . . so we don’t have gridlock,” Hahn said.

He also said he believes it’s unfair to assess only businesses closest to some proposed amenities, such as the proposed 5th and 6th avenues bay-park link, because such a facility helps all businesses downtown.

Patrick Kruer, a CCDC board member, suggested that something be done as quickly as possible to set up some sort of fee system to capture money now being lost from new development. He recommended that some “interim fee” be imposed until a more permanent financing package is created.

Another board member, Gil Ontai, said the Hahn committee plan should contain provisions for an Asian thematic district, a recommendation Hahn said he would take back to the committee.

In other action, the board was told that the owner of three Gaslamp Quarter properties who has come under fire for not moving fast enough to renovate and rehabilitate the properties has agreed to make improvements worth more than $4 million.

The owner, Walnut Properties of Hollywood, which owns several properties in the historic district downtown, said it will make the changes to the William Penn Hotel building on F Street, the Nesmith-Greeley Building on 5th Avenue and the Foxy Theater, also on 5th Avenue, beginning next year.

And, in a another bit of good news for the agency, which has worked for several years to clean up both the properties and image of the Gaslamp, Walnut Properties told the CCDC it has leased the Aztec, Casino and Foxy theaters to an operator who is required to show only general-release films. The operator has failed to comply with the lease at the Foxy, but Walnut said it intends to enforce its lease.