It’s Padres’ Pet Project

The spectacular new home of the San Diego Padres has risen out of what was the decay of the East Village landscape and the delays of a legal quagmire.

An architectural combination of old and new, seating 42,000 and shoe-horned to a degree into 18 acres near Harbor Drive and the historic Gaslight Quarter, Petco Park is as impressive as the development it has generated in a neighborhood that was previously vacated warehouses and empty lots.

Now, amid a skyline of construction cranes and the beat of jackhammers, John Moores drives through a building boom in the very shadow of Petco’s looming white steel, blue seats and sand-colored stone imported from India to match the cliffs of La Jolla.

From behind the wheel, would it be wrong if his view of all this -- both the artistic and financial -- incorporates vindication?

“I don’t think of it as vindication in the context of ‘I told you so,’ ” says Moores, the Padre owner. “At the same time, it’s pretty obvious that the ballpark and the redevelopment project appear to be overwhelming successes, far exceeding what we first talked to the city about.

“I’m pleased and gratified, and I suppose that’s a form of vindication. It’s been an extraordinarily difficult process but immensely rewarding. We could not have survived in Qualcomm, and none of this [development] would have taken place without the new park -- at least not to this accelerated degree.”

There is already $1.2 billion in private investment -- hotels, condos, offices, retail facilities -- planned, completed or in the process of construction in the ballpark neighborhood, and the Padres might draw 3 million fans for the first time in 2004.

The cash register that figures to be Petco Park opens officially with an exhibition game against the Seattle Mariners on Saturday night.

If Moores is downplaying vindication, there is a sense that he can’t help but be feeling it considering what he has weathered during the six years that the ballpark has been on the drawing board.

Among the hurdles:

* An ethics scandal involving gifts to Councilwoman Valerie Stallings at a time when ballpark financing was still in front of the council. Two misdemeanor charges were filed against Stallings for failing to report the gifts. She resigned and was fined $10,000. Neither the San Diego district attorney nor U.S. Attorney pressed charges against Moores.

* A total of 17 taxpayer lawsuits, all of which Moores and/or the city won but which set back the ballpark two years after voters approved financing in 1998 and which now have him suing San Diego activist Bruce Henderson for malicious prosecution.

* Accusations of avarice, among other greed-related name-calling.

There also has been the ongoing hangover of a federal probe into accounting irregularities at Peregrine Systems Inc., of which Moores was the board chairman before disassociating himself and selling $600 million in stock between 1997 and 2001, most of it shortly before the irregularities surfaced.

Three executives of the software company pleaded guilty and are cooperating with federal officials, but two lawyers with knowledge of the situation said there has been no indication that Moores is a specific target of the investigation.

In addition, more than 30 class-action suits filed by Peregrine stockholders in federal and state courts have resulted, to this point, in favorable rulings for Moores, with the dismissal of fraud claims against the Padre owner and others. However, many of those suits are expected to be refiled with amended allegations, and “the unfortunate reality,” said one of the lawyers, “is that we’re still at an early procedural stage.”

Moores, of course, refuses to talk about the ongoing legal situation, which has been warily and closely followed by high-ranking baseball officials.

Acknowledging that he has been a victim at times of “my own stupidity and naivete” during the six years needed to get Petco built, he has remained undaunted by the hurdles.

The largest, he suggested, might have been “the risk-averse political climate here. San Diego is a city that is still far too sleepy.”

Whether the jackhammers will awaken it to other possibilities remains to be seen.

Whether the arrival of thousands of people by train, trolley and other transport in the downtown vicinity dispels that aversion to risk is still to be determined.

Moores knows what he has been through, knows how gratified he is now as he pulls into Petco’s private parking lot.

“With due modesty,” he said, “I think a lot of people would have dropped out early in the process because it was so difficult, but my wife has often said that I can be the most stubborn person she knows.

“Don’t get me wrong. This wasn’t accomplished because of a personality quirk, but a lot of days I drive in here shaking my head because I never thought it was going to get done.

“It was torture, and some of it was self-inflicted, but amnesia causes all of those things to fade away. My grandchildren will be able to tell their kids that Grandpa built a ballpark, and that’s pretty cool.”

*

Of course, who isn’t building a ballpark?

Counting Petco and the Philadelphia Phillies’ new pad, Citizens Bank Park, there have been 15 since the 1991 opening of the new Comiskey Park in Chicago, now U.S. Cellular Field.

The two newest have changed the landscape in more ways than one.

Both the Padres and Phillies have increased their payrolls and improved their products based on the anticipated increase in revenue.

The Padres could vault from the bottom third of baseball’s 30 teams in revenue to the top third and become a club that writes revenue-sharing checks instead of receiving them.

“This will be the first year of no cash calls,” said Moores, beginning his 10th year as owner. “My goal year in and year out will be to pay $1 into the [revenue-sharing] system and be competitive. If we can do that from a small-market environment it will exceed my fondest expectation.

“It is just so much harder in an environment like ours and it means so much more when you win than it does for the [New York] Yankees or [Boston] Red Sox.”

Of course, the Angels and Florida Marlins have won the last two World Series on comparatively modest revenue, and the Oakland A’s have dominated the American League West in recent years despite their small-market resources.

The new bargaining agreement, with its tax on large payrolls and enhanced revenue-sharing, has contributed to widening parity, but Moores said it hasn’t slowed the Yankees or Red Sox and didn’t stop the Angels or Baltimore Orioles from spending big in the off-season.

There are still too many clubs showing a lack of responsibility, he said, and there still needs to be a tighter control on salary growth.

Similarly, the increased revenue of a new park needs to be augmented by sound decisions. A new park wasn’t and hasn’t been the answer in Milwaukee, Pittsburgh, Detroit and Cincinnati. The honeymoon was short-lived.

“I think you could write a book on the mistakes made in those cities,” Moores said. “The bottom line is that you have to remain competitive to sustain fan interest. The ballpark gives us a seat at the table [financially], but you can’t expect the park alone to carry you.”

*

It has long been said that San Diego has few directions in which to grow, being boxed in by the ocean, desert, Mexico and Vin Scully.

If Petco expands the borders, attracting summer tourists in the same way that the zoo and Sea World do, the stadium’s financing plan, tying redevelopment to public funding, also could become the national model.

It’s a dual and complex arrangement.

Including land, infrastructure, construction and delays, Petco came in at $498 million. The Padres paid $202 million, while public entities contributed $296 million, including $225 million from the city.

In addition, Moores and the Padres are obligated to develop or cause to be developed $311 million in private projects (they are already at $595 million) in the area of the ballpark, and are obligated as part of that to raise $4 million a year (escalating to $5.3 million a year) in hotel bed taxes to help the city repay its bond obligation.

At this point, according to John Kratzer, president of Moores’ JMI Realty Inc., the Padre owner has a $120-million equity investment in the redevelopment phase on top of his $202-million ballpark debt.

“It’s safe to say that no sports owner has ever committed to an ancillary development project to help fund a stadium and to commit as well to a separate component [the bed tax] of that project,” Kratzer said.

While Moores and the Padres assumed considerable risk (“We basically assumed all of it,” the owner said), there could be huge rewards in time -- given the population growth and soaring value of ocean-area property.

“There are a lot of development opportunities in America,” Moores said. “If the only motivation was financial, this wouldn’t have been my top choice.”

Moores, who serves as chairman of the University of California Board of Regents and has been publicly critical of the system’s entrance policies, made his fortune in software-related fields.

He was ranked 347th on Forbes’ 2003 list of the 400 richest Americans with estimated worth of $740 million, and he has shared generously in San Diego and his former hometown of Houston. His charitable donations have been estimated at more than $250 million.

If the ballpark and redevelopment project were not really his top investment choice, his credit rating doesn’t figure to be hurt.

Take the Omni Hotel that is about to open across from Petco as example.

Moores is a partner in the hotel and the primary equity holder in a condo development on the top 11 floors. He and his wife, Becky, will soon sell their Rancho Santa Fe house and move into one of the condos, from which they can walk across a sky-bridge to Petco, where business is also booming, starting with the $60 million that the pet-supply chain is paying for naming rights over 22 years.

Almost all of the 50 luxury suites have been sold, and the 180 club seats at $275 a game are going quickly. The club has an advance sale of 2.1 million, and Moores has vowed to sell 17,000 tickets at $20 or less for every game.

Included in that allotment is a unique viewing area on a hilly greenbelt beyond the center-field fence called the “Park at the Park.”

Tickets for the area are $5 and fans can watch the game with an obstructed view or on a large screen affixed to the back of the batter’s eye.

The one clear view is that Petco escapes the cookie-cutter blueprint of the replica ballparks that are aimed at recalling another era.

Aside from refurbishing the Western Metal Supply building, a 90-year-old landmark, and using it for shops, restaurants and to comprise the left-field corner and foul pole -- “a controversy waiting to happen,” a grinning Moores said of the yellow pole painted on the corner of the building -- architect Antoine Predock incorporated little of the throwback design first popularized by Camden Yards.

Offering vistas of the ocean, Coronado bridge and neighborhood building boom, Petco is more California earth tones than nostalgic brick and green steel.

There is a waterfall tumbling down a wall at the main entrance, jacaranda and palm trees throughout, a cactus garden on an upper level, and plush living in the Padre clubhouse, where there are overhead TVs in every direction, two hydrotherapy pools in the trainer’s wing, and a weight room that is so large it would be the envy of many fitness centers.

How the park plays is still to be determined.

General Manager Kevin Towers is hoping it becomes a pitcher’s park compared to hitter-friendly Qualcomm. But the significantly larger dimensions in center and right-center loom as a challenge for his outfielders and have already been criticized by two of his key power hitters, Phil Nevin and Ryan Klesko, after winter workouts at Petco.

Small change. By any measure, the Padres are happy to be out of the deteriorating Qualcomm and clearly in a different time and place.

And if it appeared on occasion that the new park would never be built, if even now Moores says the city should have shown the aggressiveness and foresight to support a broader redevelopment that encompassed the entire downtown and included a new sports arena and football stadium for the Chargers (“It still may be doable,” he said, “but it would have had far more impact coming right out of the box with the ballpark.”), there’s definitely enough vindication in view to satisfy and gratify one man for one very long time.