Big Oceanside Overhaul Gets Out of Blocks : Redevelopment: Agreement is signed on $305-million project designed to replace sleazy downtown district.

In the most important project in the city’s redevelopment history, Oceanside officials Wednesday signed an agreement with developers to build a $305-million commercial hotel-residential project on several vacant downtown blocks near the Oceanside Pier.

The ambitious, two-phase project, scheduled for completion in 1999, will include a 239-room hotel, more than 80,000 square feet of restaurants and retail space and 415 time-share residential units--most built on oceanfront land that was once housed sex shops and strip joints, according to James Keenan, landowner and partner in the proposed development.

Officials said the development, known as the Pier Project, will be the centerpiece of a long-term plan to revitalize a flagging downtown and perhaps change the way people think about downtown Oceanside.

“In the past, Oceanside has been judged on what its downtown has looked like--and it hasn’t been pretty,” Keenan said. “We view our project as a family-based place for everyone to go--not just outsiders, tourists and the like, but local residents as well. We’re planning some pretty exciting changes.”

The project, the development of which was slowed by a sliding economy and efforts to persuade the state Coastal Commission to lift an 11-year-old ban along the South Strand in Oceanside, will include several medium high-rise buildings of 12, 11 and eight stories.

“I think you realize the kind of work that went into the planning of this project,” Keenan told a meeting of the city’s community development commission Wednesday, which heard details of the project. “I think I’m about 2 inches shorter than I was when this thing started.”

Patricia Hightman, the city’s redevelopment director, said the Pier Project, to be built on three blocks surrounding the city’s pier, is a signal that Oceanside is serious about bringing changes to a downtown area much-maligned for its blight and crime.

“I think it’s a beautiful project,” she said. “It will be an asset to the city, a prime use for a part of the downtown, some of which has sat vacant for the past 17 years.”

On Wednesday, the community development commission voted to direct the city staff to review the terms of the project, setting the stage for numerous forums for public comment. The city council is scheduled to vote on the project next March.

Hightman said she expects little community opposition to the Pier Project, other than that from residents who have complained that some elements of the project will be too tall.

“Some residents have raised concerns about the height,” she said. “But, since there are no residentially zoned areas behind the project, I think most of that is aesthetics.”

Planners say the Oceanside project will be geared toward the pedestrian. With all of its parking spaces underground, it will employ numerous outdoor marketplaces and courtyards as well as 1,100 feet of beachside access between 1st and 4th streets.

The new project is a milestone in Oceanside’s often-frustrating struggle to return its coastal downtown to a safe and economically thriving area. During the 1960s and ‘70s, the area slid into blight, worsened by such social problems as drug dealers, gambling interests and prostitutes who catered to young Marines during the Vietnam War.

City officials say the Pier Project will bring in more than $1 million annually in transient occupancy taxes and $3 million more in other taxes.

Larry Bauman, the city’s public information director, said: “This thing by far is the most important project in terms of the city’s redevelopment. It’s going to put Oceanside on the map as a tourist destination.”