Doug Manchester is San Diego’s greatest modern-day developer. There, it’s said. Let the grousing begin by those who allege he has wronged, knocked aside, sued or otherwise bested them. And end. It is Manchester that his-tory will remember. The facts, in the form of more than 3.5 million square feet of architectural landmarks, speak for themselves.

    Even many of those bruised by Manchester over the years offer praise, sometimes grudgingly, of his ability to succeed against the odds. "He is tremendously gutsy," says Frank Hope, a retired prominent architect who was cut out of design duties on Manchester's later projects. "He has done things that obviously nobody else in town has done before. And has done them on a scale that when you look back on it you wonder how it ever happened."

    Attorney Louis Wolfsheimer served on the Port Commission during a particularly confrontational time with Manchester. "He is a very tough and difficult negotiator, but a guy who has a ton of guts," says Wolfsheimer. "Although I found him sometimes to be a difficult person, I would say the city is much better off for having him here." Sharing that sentiment is Reint Reinders, president of the San Diego Convention & Visitors Bureau. "He is a little bit of a free spirit, but you have to give him credit for what he has done," says Reinders. "In 30 or 40 years you are going to read about Doug Manchester in history books. He is like a modern-day Alonzo Horton."

    Of course Horton never got the chance to sue the San Diego Unified Port District for being late with the Convention Center or Host Marriott Corp. to turn over a bigger slice of its waterfront hotel revenue pie. Manchester did. Legalese and settlement language aside, he won, too.

    Peering into Manchester's arrival in this city 48 years ago, it is somehow fitting that the spectacular views from his 33rd-floor Hyatt Regency offices today include a sweeping vista of Coronado. When Manchester, 54, moved from Los Angeles to San Diego with his family as a 6-year-old boy, Coronado is where the clan settled and where he, four years later, learned to enjoy the hard work that epitomizes his success. Coronado also is where Manchester moved from when his father lost his job at Rohr Aircraft Co. and the family moved into, and took over management of, the La Jolla Apartments.

    A good athlete who had his college football dreams quashed by a life-threatening illness, the La Jolla High graduate went to San Diego State University to become a coach. He held a myriad of jobs — at Firestone Tire Co., Baskin-Robbins and as a city lifeguard — but saw the first glimmer of financial riches as a campus representative for Northwestern Mutual Life Insurance Co. and Connecticut Mutual Life Insurance Co. Those experiences caused him to pursue a business degree with a major in insurance and minor in finance.

    After five years of selling insurance, in 1970 Manchester turned to where the action was: real estate. "Most of the people I was dealing with were heavily tilted toward real estate because of the expansion of California and San Diego particularly," Manchester says.

    In the 26 years since, his portfolio has developed impressively. A short list of projects includes the Torrey Pines Business and Research Park, the cliff-side Torrey Executive Center and Torrey Financial Building in the heart of La Jolla. His out-of-county holdings include the Shore Lodge, a resort in the recreational community of McCall, Idaho, where large numbers of San Diego movers and shakers vacation, and the Meadow Creek Golf & Field Club, 15 miles from McCall.

    Yet it is Downtown San Diego where the Manchester stamp is most prominent, and where the developer has flirted most strongly with failure. While the late Ernie Hahn is rightly credited with reviving Downtown with Horton Plaza, it was the construction of Manchester's hotel that Hahn sent his lenders to view as proof the urban core was coming back. Manchester's first Centre City project was the 27-story First National Bank building which, when it opened in 1982, was San Diego’s tallest building (Manchester's Hyatt now vies with One America Plaza for that honor).

    "I purchased the block where the First National Bank building now stands after I completed the Torrey Pines Business and Research Park," Manchester recalls. "One of the people at Copley Press sort of challenged me to get involved in downtown San Diego because, quote, anybody can do development in the suburban areas but it is more difficult to take on the challenge of developing Downtown. So I bought the entire city block from Frank Hope with the understanding that his firm would be the architect and also a major tenant."

    First National was not only Manchester's initial Downtown foray, it was the start of his connection to convention center planning. "The reason I stair-stepped the First National Bank building was I was going to have a connection at the fourth or fifth level, over the street to a walkway that would connect with a proposed Hyatt hotel which would be where (One America Plaza) now sits," he says. That walkway was to have crossed a $225 million convention center later rejected by San Diego voters.

    While First National was under construction, Manchester and Frank Hope had lunch at Lubach's, the dearly departed, red-leather boothed power restaurant on Hawthorn and Harbor Drive. Frank Hope had served on the Port Commission when it acquired Navy Field at the foot of Fifth Avenue. After leaving the Port, Hope and his brother, Chuck, took out a Request For Proposals from the Port on the muddy site.

    "One day during lunch at Lubach's, I told Doug I would sell him half interest in the RFP for $50," Hope recalls. "It was a $100 RFP."

    As the office building was finishing up, Manchester and Hope turned their energies to plans for a resort built around an Intercontinental Hotel. The competition before the Port was fierce.

    "I remember we spent, on the come, over $300,000 just to make the presentations," Manchester says. "Of course at that time I didn’t really understand the complexities and the risks that would be in front of me once I did win the rights to develop. In those days inflation was running in the high teens and so were interest rates. A lot of people shook their heads and said, 'You may be a visionary, but you may not be too smart, either.'"

    It was after Manchester won the Navy Field RFP that voters turned down the proposed convention center near the Santa Fe Depot. And that got Manchester to thinking.

    "Here we were without a convention center and I had control of 29 acres of land and 15 acres of water," he says. "I got together with the architects, mainly C.W. Kim who deserves a lot of credit for what happened down here. I said, 'C.W., let's see if we can move the entire twin tower (hotel) project to the west. And let's change our emphasis as far as meandering waterfalls, retail entertainment and the like and see if we can program in a convention center.'"

    In 1982, Manchester took to the Port the concept of moving the hotels closer to Seaport Village and freeing up space for a convention center. The Port paid attention. "Don Nay was quoted as saying, 'Manchester has a germ of a good idea here,'" Manchester recalls, smiling about the former Port director who was one of his chief antagonists. "It was probably the only praise I ever received from Don Nay." (Nay could not be reached for comment for this article.)

    In mid-1983 that idea was formalized, with the Port agreeing to build the center. The hotels were shifted and, in exchange for giving up about 11 acres for the center, Manchester was granted the rights to develop a 5.1-acre parcel that is now the Hyatt.

    From there things got ugly. In 1985, first the Port, and then Manchester, got started on their projects. By April 1986, the Port was dead in the water, with Manchester moving ahead. Instead of trailing the convention center, the Intercontinental opened first in October 1987. The Convention Center, delayed first for de-watering problems and then by Maureen O'Connor when it went out for a re-bid to lower the cost, hosted its first piece of business in January 1990.

    "We lost between $50 million and $75 million because of the delay, and never really recovered from that," Manchester says. "It has only been in the last couple of years that we have been able to say we are beyond hanging on by our fingernails."

    It was during this period that Marriott came in and took over operations from Intercontinental and the second tower was built.

    Manchester was not done. His original deal with the Port required he meet certain milestones for building what is now the Hyatt or the lose the property. "When it came time for the option agreement to expire on Aug. 7, 1990, I either had to commence construction or give up the option and basically lose a couple of million dollars... I had really mixed emotions. If you counted up all of what we had done, it was about $6 million that we would have had to write off. I was thinking seriously about writing it off.

    "We decided to hang in there and go forward," Manchester says. "I invested a lot more of my personal money and also signed on the dotted line. We recorded the last loan of any major importance in California subsequent to the Persian Gulf War."

    Today the Marriott and Hyatt employ 2,200 to 2,500 people at any one time. Man-chester estimates his hotels have paid the Port about $57 million in rent and contributed more to the city than $60 million in hotel taxes. The Marriott and Hyatt alone generate about $10 million a year in Port rent, trailing only Lindbergh Field. Manchester long ago became the county's largest private property taxpayer.

    If the expansions of the Hyatt and Marriott proceed, Manchester estimates the annual payroll of the two projects will hit $53 million.

    While the convention center expansion remains held up by activists advocating a public vote, Manchester says he will go forward with a second tower for the Hyatt that will add 700-750 rooms to the existing 875. The other two hotels — a 1,006-room proposal by Campbell Industries and third tower for the Marriott (Manchester remains a 49 percent owner in that project following a lawsuit settlement last year that increased his share of the cash flow) — won’t move until the expansion is a certainty.

    The reason the Hyatt can go forward is the expansion will make the property a true headquarters hotel able to compete on its own for the lucrative echelon of conventions that traditionally require 1,000 to 1,200 rooms. When that business comes to town today, the hotel must team with a competitor like the Embassy Suites or the adjacent Marriott.

    Manchester's vision to push ahead when others would fall back isn’t always a winning formula. Before settling with Host Marriott Corp., he struggled with owning hotels where debt exceeded value and cash flow wasn’t covering the payments. He also drove a campaign to relocate Lindbergh Field to Miramar after the Navy, which said it would never leave, said it was leaving and before the Marines, as ordered, were coming. The effort failed to garner significant political support and died when, in an advisory vote, strong turnout from opponents in the areas immediately surrounding Miramar was deemed more significant than the support of a majority of San Diego County voters.

    "My whole concept when I got involved in that situation was based on five Marine Corps generals telling me that it was a flawed plan to bring these Marines here," Manchester says. Ultimately, he believes a new airport will be built, somewhere, but not with him in the lead. "The bottom line is San Diego is too great a city not to address its airport needs." (Ironically, Manchester is a new member of the Greater San Diego Chamber of Commerce's 15-member Executive Committee. The Chamber was the strongest advocate in the most recent campaign to ensure the Marines and their helicopters indeed came to San Diego.)

    As much as Manchester is a driven businessman, he quickly calls his wife of 31 years, Betsy, his best friend, and talks fondly of his five children, four daughters ages 15, 26, 28 and 30, and a son, 13. It is a sentiment confirmed by orthopedic surgeon Jim Schultz, who Manchester met more than 30 years ago and who he calls his best friend outside of family.

    "To those of us who know him well, he is most thoughtful, caring and generous," says Schultz. "He is a very strong family man and his children are the most loving and mannered children you would ever meet. The one thing that I guess astonishes me about Doug is he is such a visionary. He can look at anything and realize what it can become with some energy and development. He just astounds me."