Plans for $425-Million Resort in Mission Bay’s De Anza Cove Outlined
A proposal to turn a section of De Anza Cove in Mission Bay into a $425-million tourist resort with hotels, shops, public bicycle and jogging paths, a 13-acre botanical garden and an improved golf course was unveiled Tuesday.
The plan by the Beverly Hills-based De Anza Group, which operates a mobile-home park and campground on the property earmarked for development, would require approval of the City Council and a change in state law because the land is designated as public tideland.
The De Anza Group now holds leases with the city for the park and campground and would need to have them renegotiated for another 50 years, to the year 2053, in order for construction of the resort to occur.
Such an extension would also need the concurrence of the Legislature, which in the early 1980s placed restrictions on the length of the leases.
$125 Million for 1st Phase
If the approvals are made, the first phase of construction would begin as early as 1992 and would consist of 400 hotel rooms, two miles of bike and jogging paths around the bay, retail shops beside Rose Creek and a bridge over it, and improvement to the Mission Bay Golf Course, which the De Anza Group is in escrow to buy. This first phase would cost $125 million, according to the developer.
The second phase would cost $300 million and would include 1,000 more hotel rooms, the botanical garden, a cultural arts center, shoreline park areas, open space and a greenbelt. This phase of construction would occur after 2003.
That’s a key date because that’s when the current lease on the De Anza Harbor Resort trailer park expires, and the 1,000 residents who make the park their home would be gone. In a complex arrangement negotiated over 19 months, the De Anza Group has promised to stabilize rents at the trailer park until 2003 and to pay for both the tenants’ equity in their mobile homes and their relocation costs.
“The critical component was the needs of the residents,” said Michael Gelfand, De Anza Group’s senior vice president. For years, residents of the mobile home park, most of whom are older than 65--though young families also live there--have feared that commercial development of the park would lead to their early “economic eviction,” despite their leases, which stretch into the next century.
Most Back 1st Phase
Ted Ball, a resident of the park and president of the park’s chapter of the Golden State Mobilehome Owners League, said a majority of residents supports the first phase of the construction plan, which would occur while those living in the 510 mobile-home spaces are still there.
Ball characterized the compromise agreement as an adequate safeguard for the residents. Key points of the agreement, he said, include a reaffirmation that residents can stay until 2003; “predictable and reasonable” rent increases; the construction of a new clubhouse and swimming pool if Phase 1 of construction occurs; the developer paying for moving about 115 mobile homes affected by construction to other parts of the park, and a pledge by the developer to pay for relocation expenses and equity in 2003.
Gelfand declined to say how much it will cost his company to take care of the residents, but he said it would cost the city of San Diego about $25 million to do the same thing. The city would be on the hook for the expenses, according to Gelfand, because of existing state law governing the closure of mobile-home parks.
In this case, the city as landlord of the tidelands would be forced to pay to relocate the residents when the lease expires in November, 2003, Gelfand said. In lobbying for its plan and renegotiated leases, the De Anza Group emphasized that, without such approvals, the city faces a $25-million expenditure.
Councilman Bruce Henderson represents the area encompassed by the proposal. He was not available for comment Tuesday, but a spokesman said his office hasn’t had time to analyze the proposal and has no position on it. The spokesman said Henderson has been concerned about the fate of the mobile-home residents and had been involved in an earlier rent-protection agreement. He also said that a final decision may be a few years away.
Plan to Consolidate 3 Leases
Although the mobile-home park would eventually cease to exist under the De Anza Group’s proposal, the affordable Campland on the Bay site, used by campers and recreational vehicles, would be reduced by two-thirds, from 900 spaces to 300. The lease for Campland on the Bay doesn’t expire until 2017, but the De Anza Group’s plan is to consolidate all three leases--for the mobile-home park, the campground and golf course, which would be upgraded and kept open to the public--into one lease expiring in 2053.
Gelfand stressed that his company’s proposal would provide significantly expanded public access to Mission Bay, would rehabilitate parts of Rose Creek and wouldn’t make traffic worse in already congested Pacific Beach. He claimed that, as a destination resort, traffic generated by the development would be minimal and that the construction of a new bridge over Rose Creek would help circulation in the area.
“We don’t want people to think we’re rushing into this,” said Gelfand, explaining that his company hopes to circulate its proposal in the Pacific Beach community and elsewhere and reach a consensus of support. “We want to take this to the community to get their input . . . so that what we propose makes sense.”
A first step in that process will occur tonight, when the plan is outlined at a Pacific Beach Town Council meeting.
