Huge Project Planned for Barrio Logan

A group of San Diego businessmen will make public today plans for a $300- to $400-million redevelopment project in Barrio Logan that would include a massive parking garage, a retail center, an international trade complex and possibly a sports arena.

The proposed Barrio Pacific Rim Project, which would cover a 17-to 20-acre tract near the waterfront in Barrio Logan, is dependent upon the group winning low-cost bonds that would reduce land acquisition and construction costs, said Luis Garcia, one of the businessman involved.

The proposal calls for the project to include a 6,800-car garage, a retail center, 500 owned and rental housing units, office space, a hotel and an entertainment complex that might include a sports arena. The site was not specified Tuesday, but it would be near the waterfront and the Barrio Logan trolley stop.

The project’s office space would be dedicated largely to international trade, its backers said. The parking garage would serve shipyards in the neighborhood as well as commuters who would park there and take the trolley to jobs elsewhere in the county, according to Garcia.

The project would be 51% owned by minority businesses and individuals, he said. Backers also hope that nonprofit organizations, such as the Chicano Federation of San Diego, will own as much as 15% of the project, Garcia said.

Garcia, the owner of a San Diego construction company, and San Diego businessman Mateo Camarillo have formed Barrio Enterprise Zone Inc. to develop the project. Camarillo, who owns restaurants and a wholesale fabric company, also serves on the San Diego Convention Center’s board of directors. Joseph Martinez, a San Diego architect, is acting as architect and project manager.

The plan is to be unveiled today at a 6 p.m. meeting of the Barrio Logan Project Area Committee, an organization that was formed to consider redevelopment plans for the neighborhood.

“We’re talking about a Cinderella project,” Garcia said, adding that it would transform Barrio Logan, long used by San Diego as a dumping ground for “wrecking yards and toxic chemicals,” into a “showcase.”

The project’s backers have won the support of Harry Cooper, the La Jolla businessman who wants to build a sports arena in San Diego.

“I think these guys can make things happen down there,” Cooper said. “I want that site as an option. It’s a possible site, even though I know it has lots of (construction-related) problems.”

Cooper earlier this year won City Council approval to consider building a sports arena on land he owns in Sorrento Valley. But Tuesday he said he would keep the Barrio Logan site as an alternative.

“This project should happen,” Cooper said. “And it’s not dependent upon a sports arena.”

With or without an arena, the project faces several substantial obstacles. Perhaps the largest is winning congressional approval to use development bonds the federal government earmarked in 1983 for construction of the controversial Sander project, a proposal for a trash-to-energy plant that voters defeated in 1987.

The bonds were authorized by the federal government, but most of them were never sold. An estimated $225 million worth of the bonds are still available for use in San Diego, Cooper said.

BEZ Inc. is pushing the city of San Diego to obtain congressional approval to reappropriate or redesignate those unsold bonds, Garcia said. A San Diego tax attorney said that Congress might be willing approve the redesignation even in the midst of the current budget crunch because the action “would be revenue neutral” and would not hurt the federal budget.

Several weeks ago, the San Diego City Council authorized city staff members to seek federal approval to “somehow take advantage of the bonds that were allocated but never utilized,” said Mike Jenkins, an official in the city’s property department. “We think there may be a chance of getting them reauthorized.”

However, city officials Tuesday made it clear that the reauthorization is independent from the Barrio Logan project. The city hopes to win the reauthorization, which would clear the way for the bonds to be used for some redevelopment projects, Jenkins said.

Rep. Jim Bates (D-San Diego) is working to win reauthorization of the bonds, a spokesman said.