Your Home Will Be Your Computer
Assessing The Way To A Vital Downtown
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Helping San Diego gain a new kind of prominence in the wireless world is attorney Carl Hilliard. Dubbed by one publication the Ralph Nader of wireless, he leads the Del Mar-based Wireless Consumers Alliance. Fresh from its success in lobbying the FCC for improved completion of wireless 911 calls, the WCA now is making noise about suing wireless service providers for the "dead spots" in their coverage areas. *** Both the San Diego Chamber and Economic Development Corp. are sticking a toe back into the airport debate. EDC directors adopted a resolution supporting work going forward on expanding Lindbergh Field "to the fullest extent possible." At the same time they favor moving forward to identify a new airport site, with the understanding that environmental considerations, or the selection of a new site, may require plans for Lindbergh be scaled back. The Chamber has passed a similar resolution, calling for a second runway at Lindbergh if plans for a new airport fail. "We do not want to miss our flight to the 21st century because we were stuck at the gate of our aging airport," says Brian Seltzer, the Chamber's president. *** As Lindbergh talk continues, Mexico has accepted bids from teams proposing to partner with a Mexican company and operate 12 of the nation's airports, of which Tijuana's Rodriguez Field is one. The effort is being watched keenly in San Diego by the South County Economic Development Council, which is resurrecting the early 1990s idea of adding a pedestrian terminal from the U.S. side of the border. Profile Research & Marketing, an SCEDC consultant, reports 1.1 million people cross the border in San Diego to fly out of Rodriguez each year. Steve Castaneda, a principal in the firm, says an $11 million, 60-80 acre complex with structured parking and a 50,000-square-foot terminal on Otay Mesa would handle those passengers and services, while at the same time reduce auto border crossings 3 percent to 6 percent. Offering access to international and cargo service from Rodriguez, the project would take pressure off Lindbergh while other options are considered. "I don’t care what you are talking about or where, any airport expansion proposal in Southern California is, even on the rosy side, 10 years off," he says. "This is the only thing that can be done now." Castaneda, who worked seven years ago on the ill-fated TwinPorts idea as a staffer for then-San Diego Councilman Ron Roberts, says he's talked to Mexican government officials, and members of teams bidding on the airport contract, and that all are very interested in the pedestrian terminal. Mexico is expected to release details on the bids, expected to be in the $600 million to $800 million range, this month. *** After six years of struggling to get airplay for his artists, Arthur Mitchell, the chief executive of Deemo Records, has seen the light: MP3.com. The first artist Deemo placed with the e-music company, Harold Whaley, shot to the top of MP3's soul chart in less than two weeks. Mitchell has been following MP3.com for the last year and a half and attended a seminar to learn more about the technology and the company’s relationship with artists. While artists such as Whaley have gotten coverage and airplay nationally, the hometown market has proven impossible to crack, Mitchell says. "Now, with MP3.com, maybe the people will get to hear our music in San Diego." *** Once upon a time, PointCast was the darling of the Internet world, praised for being the visionary behind the effort to "push" customized information to people, eliminating the need to hunt down data on the still-wild Web frontier. *** With the life sciences investment pool shallow these days, some biotechs are aligning themselves with cosmetic surgery firms to drum up dollars. In a $20 million deal, Advanced Tissue Sciences will collaborate with Santa Barbara breast-implant maker Inamed to develop aesthetic and reconstructive surgery products. "We’re taking what we already have and expanding, which is very exciting," says Cheryl Monblatt, director of investor relations with ATS. "It will be minimal cost to us to get into a completely different field." The first product from the collaboration is expected to be a skin patch that speeds healing after a laser peel. *** Real estate analyst Sanford Goodkin is being inducted into the California Building Industry Foundation's Hall of Fame. Goodkin, one of three writers of San Diego Metropolitan's Real Property column, has spent the last 40 years as an analyst, author, economist and futurist. His work has involved him with more than $38 billion worth of real estate development and studies. Goodkin's induction takes place June 23 during a foundation dinner at the Westin St. Francis Hotel in San Francisco. *** General manager Eric Van Den Haute is opening another Sevilla, a restaurant and tapas bar, this one at 3050 Pio Pico Drive, off Carlsbad Village Drive. Similar in theme to Sevilla in the Gaslamp Quarter, the Carlsbad Sevilla will seat about 110, will include a full bar, but will lack a club. The new executive chef, Christian Vignes, will serve both restaurants. He's late of The Lobster Co. on Fourth Avenue, previously from the Ritz-Carlton in San Francisco. Van Den Haute plans a third domestic Sevilla in Riverside, under construction, where a September opening is targeted. *** Notes from the Gaslamp Quarter: Retailers will hawk their wares on the sidewalks and offer a festive atmosphere each Sunday in July to generate daytime traffic. It’s called The Urban Market. Independent proprietors are becoming increasingly irritated with the big out-of-town chains moving in. *** Teaming with 25 nonprofit and public cultural arts institutions, Installation Gallery and the Instituto Nacional de Bella Artes are working on inSITE2000, a binational cultural event that will open in fall 2000. The project will feature commissioned works by 30 artists of the Americas, who will participate in a program of residencies in the region during the 18 months leading up to the event's debut. *** The Navy is sending 125 divers, 30 boats and three landing craft to help with the ninth annual Operation Clean Sweep. Set for 8 a.m. to noon on June 5, the event pairs Navy and civilian divers and boaters in removing trash from San Diego Bay and surrounding tidelands. *** In one way, veteran p.r. man Todd Gottlieb will be very much alone as the new public policy manager for the Downtown San Diego Partnership: He's the office's only male. *** It’s a given that San Diego’s biotech industry offers lots of economic opportunity. It’s also a given that few nonscientists really understand biotech. Biocom San Diego is out to change that with its second Principles of Biotechnology, a one-day session June 18 at the UTC Radisson Hotel. Featuring scientists and educators, the session — $200 for Biocom members; $225 for others — is geared toward life science workers who are not scientists and those who provide products and services to the industry. Call (619) 455-0300 for information; the first one sold out. *** Speaking of biotech education, the Center for Bio/Pharmaceutical and Biodevice Development at SDSU this fall launches a master's of science in regulatory affairs degree program. It’s the first of its kind in California. Courses in the two-year program are designed to accommodate students will full-time jobs. Call (619) 594-2822 for more. *** An electric go-cart company, Speedworld San Diego Amusements, has signed a five-year, $1.8 million lease for 50,600 square feet of industrial space at 1040 Sherman St. *** Sunroad Enterprises has sold the 121,500-square-foot first phase of the under-construction Sunroad Corporate Centre in UTC for $16.6 million to LMC-Shoreham Investment Co. with Lee Chesnut as managing member. The sale was followed by CombiChem signing a 15-year, $34 million lease for 75,000 square feet. CombiChem, which had leased space for the last four years in a Mira Mesa building Chesnut owns, moves into its new space in November. The building is being renamed UTC Executive Plaza. *** Kinderview, a company that allows parents to use the Internet to access a live video camera that shows their child's preschool classroom, was the grand prize winner in the Internet/virtual category of the 1999 Inc./Cisco Growing With Technology Awards program. *** Copper Mountain Networks, a maker of DSL modems and one of San Diego’s fastest-growing companies, has signed a 74-month, $8.7 million lease for the first three floors in the former Uniden Financial building, now called Pacific Tower, in Sorrento Mesa. *** Sales start next month for 7 on Third, a development of seven detached single-family homes in the Banker's Hill area on Third Avenue, between Spruce and Redwood streets, just outside Downtown. The canyon project is being built by Keystone Communities. Prices start in the mid- to high $300,000s. *** Mexico's leading business magazine, Expansion, named Tijuana as the country's best place for business. The city of 1.8 million is attracting 35,000 new residents each month to go with its 25,000 annual births. Cited among Tijuana's pluses is its regional planning efforts with San Diego. The magazine also says that because so much electronic equipment is produced in the city, it is sometimes called "TVjuana." *** Work has begun to convert the former Scripps Memorial Hospital between Prospect Street and Coast Boulevard into a 47-unit luxury condominium complex. The Desert Troon Co.'s project, called 464 Prospect, will feature units ranging in size from 1,500 to 6,000 square feet and cost from $650,000 to more than $4 million. *** Randall Lamb, San Diego’s largest homegrown mechanical and electrical consulting engineering firm, is celebrating its 25th anniversary. Mary Ann Guerra, the firm's accounting manager and first employee, started out 25 years ago as a part-time secretary. Kurt Hohler, president, joined the company straight out of college in 1980. A new logo was unveiled during an anniversary party at Randall Lamb's Downtown headquarters. *** The San Diego Chamber has redesigned its Website www.sdchamber.org and added a shopping cart to its CyberStore for the ordering of various Chamber publications. *** McMillin Realty is the 1999 recipient of the Cendant Mobility Cup, the highest national distinction given to members of the top 350 U.S. brokerages. The cup is presented to only one company each year. *** NewsClippers is giving the long-time San Diego Clipping Service a run for its money. Liise K. Davis operates the business from her El Cajon home, with the help of husband Cole, a marketing guru. So far, she's lined up 32 clients including Matthews/Mark, San Diego Chamber, NBC 7/39, National University, County of San Diego, Spear/Hall, Marston & Marston and Heying & Associates. NewsClippers reviews all local print media, clips stories and sends them to clients for a monthly fee starting at $35. *** It was a long time ago, but it was not a galaxy far away. It was Mission Valley. And the movies were "Star Wars" — the episodes we know as IV, V and VI — which were being shown in first run on the big screen, the really big screen of Cinema 21. Two decades later, "Star Wars" Episode I is being shown on MV's many smaller big screens, which did not exist when the Cinema 21 opened in the Cinemascope, Technicolor days of 1962. Last autumn, the Cinema 21 finally closed; it had been San Diego’s last big-screen theater. Today its only life is as an off-price cap store, Sports Palace, in its former lobby. There's a Goodwill donation center in the parking lot. As for its future, San Francisco-based Handlery Hotels, which owns the theater, a neighboring recreation club and the adjacent recently renovated Stardust Hotel on Hotel Circle North, has filed an application with the city to demolish the theater and recreation club and develop Presidio View, a 350-unit apartment complex, with a hotel remodel scheduled later. A public hearing on the proposal has not yet been scheduled. *** The two-building, 126,243-square-foot Kearny Mesa Crossroads office complex at 3750 Convoy St. has sold for $12.95 million to Brookwood Financial. John Hancock Mutual Life Insurance Co. was the seller of the 1983 development. Burnham * Oncor International brokers Rob Hill, Jim Laing, Steve Rowland and Phil Monroe handled the deal for both parties. *** An intensive event management summer program begins June 14 at USD. The university is one of three nationally selected to present the George Washington University Certificate in Event Management, a course designed for hospitality professionals or those seeking to break into the industry. *** Robyn Scherer, marketing director at Grice, Lund & Tarkington, will serve as a delegate to the 1999 Accounting Firms Associated's Accounting & Auditing/Management Consulting Services/Marketing Conference in Lake Tahoe. Scherer will chair the marketing conference division. *** After running family-owned JC Resorts for the past 10 years, Gus Colachis is teaming with his wife, Terri, a former marketing executive with Cobblestone Golf Group, to open ARC Consultants. The firm specializes in hotel, resort, golf and real estate development. With 1,500 employees and eight properties, including the Rancho Bernardo Inn, JC Resorts is Southern California's leading independent resort and golf operator. *** San Diego County boasts more than 14,000 acres of land that could be developed for employment uses, reports Marney Cox, Sandag's chief economist. That's the good news. The bad is that only 2,000 acres is immediately available. While that’s enough to last three years, Cox says action needs to be taken by government officials to bring infrastructure improvements to the remaining 12,000 acres or severe shortages will occur, especially north of Interstate 8. Sandag created a database on the land at the request of the Economic Development Corp. *** Kensington Park Plaza, a 23,000 - square-foot live/work/retail/office building under construction at the northwest corner of Adams Avenue and Marlborough Drive, is the first new "urban village" concept development in the Adams Avenue Redevelopment Area. Slated for a fall opening, the $1.6 million project was designed by Kensington resident Allard Jansen, who also is the project's lead general partner. *** How hot was the residential market in 1998? Home loan fundings at Dick Palmer's General Mortgage in Mission Valley more than doubled to about $444 million. The average loan amount funded decreased for the third consecutive year, dropping $368 from 1997's $161,340 to 1998's $160,972. Palmer suggests previous higher-end buyers have not recovered enough from the equity free-fall earlier this decade, leaving this market driven by first-time buyers taking advantage of low interest rates. *** San Diego-based First Dental Health, a dental care management company with a network of more than 4,500 dental offices statewide, has hired Bobbi Brown to lead its push into the Northern California market. *** Beach towels sporting a design by San Diego’s Laura Birns, as well as her signature, are being sold at Wal-Mart. *** The homepage for Rep. Brian Bilbray www.house.gov/bilbray/ is best of the 551 offered by members of the 106th Congress, says a survey conducted by American University. *** Philanthropist of the Year in Tijuana is Don Luis Fimbres Moreno, the founder of meat cold cut processor Empacadora Rosarito. He focuses on education, providing scholarships and helping fund the construction and equipment for elementary schools and university buildings. The award is sponsored by Iberoamericana University, Associations United for Development and Social Action of Tijuana and the International Community Foundation. *** Pete Davis' latest granddaughter, born last month, is Caroline Quincy Sanborn, daughter of Susan and Rick, he a banker with Palomar Savings, she a former banker. Born recently was his first granddaughter, Emily Claire Bowden, daughter of Jennifer and Brian Bowden, he a Navy pilot, and she a former public affairs executive. Quincy and Claire are Pete Davis' grandmothers' names and one is his middle name. *** Among the newest businesses Downtown is Sab-Duprety Euro-Fitness Plus. Located at 837 G St., it’s an exercise studio with a holistic approach and a French coffee/juice bar. *** Says the Diana Clark Co.'s self-employed CEO, "My boss is one tough bitch." *** Barbara Summers, the professional matchmaker and proprietor of Healthy Professional Singles, says the romantic hot spot is Coyote's in Carlsbad. "They have an outside fire pit; people sit around with drinks; the band plays and it’s a blast," she says. Asked how that squares with her ethic that pooh-poohs singles bars, she retorts, "It’s a restaurant! You go there with someone you want to sit and goo with and dance." |
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