Office Depot is opening a second Downtown location, this one at the corner of C Street and Fifth Avenue in the old Marston Building. The 16,000-square-foot store will occupy the former Paradise Bakery space and a basement below. Look for a second quarter 2000 opening. The $2.5 million lease Ð it’s for 10 years with a pair of five-year options Ð was negotiated by veteran Downtown broker Jim Walsh, president of Walsh Property Group, in behalf of the Marston owner, Point Loma Harbor View Association (Dan Webber). Jerry Pollock from Patrick Anthony Properties represented Office Depot.
    Why a second store? "They really wanted to protect their share in this market," says Walsh. "There have been other stores, like Staples, that wanted to make inroads into this area." In addition, while the Pacific Highway location has ample parking and a friendly delivery policy, walk-by traffic is nonexistent. It’s those customers this new Office Depot will cater to by offering traditional supplies and the newest gadgets, such as phones, electronic organizers and laptop computers. "They are hoping to capture the executive on his or her lunch break who walks in and sees a choice of four or five digital cameras and makes a purchase," Walsh says.

***

    As civilization slowly creeps east Downtown along Broadway, Mike Viscuso, who created E Street Alley in the Gaslamp Quarter, is turning 20,000 square feet of the old HomeFed Bank Building at Sixth Avenue and Broadway into an event center. Michael Hogue, the brilliant coordinating designer, says the center will feature a restaurant and entertainment space able to accommodate up to 500 people. Set for a spring opening, it will serve the convention and hotel industry, not function as an open-to-the-public restaurant.

***

    In partnership with Hillwood Development Corp., McMillin Commercial has begun construction on its third spec building in the Parkway Business Centre in Poway, this one called Parkway Centre Three. Completion is scheduled for the first quarter of 2000. Construction began before the company had even finished work on Parkway Centre Two, which has leased more than half of its space to Mitchell Repair Information Co., a subsidiary of Snap-On Tools. Mitchell is the nation's largest publisher of repair manuals for the automotive industry.

***

    San Diego’s agile $4.7 billion tourism industry got a big boost when Bob Payne, the principal owner of the Mission Valley Hilton and Hanalei hotels, pledged $1.1 million to seed a four-year hospitality degree program at SDSU. Payne kicked off a $10 million, three-phase campaign that will take five years. "San Diego’s tourism industry is in need of trained management professionals and SDSU is ready to work with them to fill that need," says Stephen Weber, SDSU president. SDSU will become the third local college to focus on hospitality. USIU has long offered bachelor's degrees in hotel and restaurant management and tourism management. Last year, USD started a well-received event management certificate program in partnership with George Washington University.

***

    David Bilbe is standing in the lobby of his newly opened Courtyard by Marriott, the one in the old San Diego Trust & Savings building, when a woman from a Downtown office building walks up to him and congratulates him for a fine-looking hotel. It’s something the inn's g.m. is hearing a lot of these days. Then, gazing across the lobby, she asks the No. 1 question: "When's the bar going to open?" Soon, Bilbe says. The hotel expects to secure a liquor license this month. And the Sixth Avenue and Broadway bar should prove hot out the gate, with its counters and tables in the lovingly restored area where tellers once conducted business with customers. In the meantime, there's still much to admire, including a poster sized photo of the lobby taken 71 years ago on the day it opened. It looks remarkably the same today.

***

    Demolished and then rebuilt to be bigger and better, the Costco on Market Street near the junction of SR-94 and I-15 reopens Nov. 22. New to the warehouse store at that location will be a gas station, pharmacy, optical department, rotisserie chicken, gourmet deli, fresh bakery and food court. Meanwhile, Costco is seeking a conditional use permit from the city to include a gas station as part of the warehouse store it will build in Mission Valley at the southwest corner of Friars Road and Northside Drive.

***

    In last month's cover feature, Steve Roel lamented the departure of the big San Diego family-owned contracting firms. Wait a minute, says David Randal, executive v.p. with Hazard Construction Co. The original R.E. Hazard Contracting, which incorporated in 1926, was split in July 1998 into a real estate developer and a construction company. Randal says Bruce Hazard remains president and majority owner of the 200-employee construction spin-off. (Employees own the rest.) While Roel builds the above-ground portion of the projects, Randal says Hazard Construction remains quite busy with the street, water, sewer and other infrastructure work that allow projects like Roel's to come alive.

***

    Sandy Purdon, general partner of Shelter Cove Marina, says Steve Roel's "pretty face on the (October) cover and Page 31 shows no less wear and tear than when we played ice hockey on the San Diego amateur team in the early 1970s..." But he takes exception to last month's publisher's column that claimed Downtown’s Zip code 92101 hosts 2,688 pleasure craft, more than Point Loma's 92106. Purdon says 92101 hosts 2,309 slips and moorings and 92106 hosts 3,071.

***

    The East Village Assn. hosts its EVA Awards luncheon at noon Nov. 12 at the Clarion at Sixth and K. Three nominees have been selected in seven categories ranging from the ever-popular blight removal, called Urban Relief, to the Pioneers and the Urban Eyesore. The nominees for Urban Eyesore are Mr. Clean Auto Detail, Ralph's Used Building Materials and Valu Mart Market. Tickets are $25 by calling (619) 237-8885. Keynote speaker is Metropolitan's Real Property columnist Sandy Goodkin.

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    The Bitter End celebrated its third anniversary last month by kicking off live music and reopening the renovated downstairs dance club called the Gaslamp Underground. Thursdays are dubbed "ThrowBack Thursdays" and will feature hits from the '70s and '80s by the band Knight Fever. Sundays are named "SIN Sundays" and will feature San Diego’s best up-and-coming bands.
    The renovation at the three-level upscale bar at Fifth Avenue and F Street added a state-of-the-art lighting and sound system, tufted leather bench seating all around the dance floor, an onyx bar lighted from below, a stage for live entertainment and triple the air conditioning capacity. Click on www.thebitterend.com for more.

***

    Look for urban retail redevelopment specialist DDR OliverMcMillan to move next month from UTC into Eagles Hall on Eighth Avenue Downtown.

***

    A development team headed by Lankford & Associates has completed - eight months early - One Cray Court, a $43 million, 110,000-square-foot science center for The Scripps Research Institute.

***

    When the $40 billion jewelry industry focused its attention on Carlsbad last month, more than 800 people turned out for the Gemological Institute of America's Career Fair '99. Held for the first time at the Institute's headquarters in Carlsbad, the event attracted 29 recruiters, a field that included long-established retailers like Tiffany & Co., Zale Corp. and Macy's, and new e-commerce players such as Internet Diamonds and Mondera.com.

***

    The sixth annual Irving Hughes Child Abuse Prevention Foundation Gift Drive is set for Dec. 1-21. The drive solicits donations of new, unwrapped clothing, toys, games and sports equipment for young people in the A.B. and Jessie Polinsky Children's Center, who range in age from newborn to 17. Collection bins will be placed in office buildings throughout the county.

***

    The California Real Estate Inspection Assn. has picked San Diego as the site of Inspection 2000, the largest annual conference and exposition for home inspectors in North America. The expo is co-sponsored by the American Society of Home Inspectors.
    More than 1,200 individuals from the home inspection industry, as well as the building and home trades, are expected to attend. The event runs Jan. 16-19 at the Town and Country. Delivering the keynote address is Robert Kriegel, author of "If It Ain't Broke....BREAK IT!" and "Sacred Cows Make The Best Burgers." Click on www.inspection2000.com for more.

***

    A $50 million restoration effort at the Hotel del Coronado is resulting in the closing or relocating of various restaurants at various times during the project. While the Crown Room will be mostly out of service, it will continue to host its famous Sunday brunch.

***

    Canadian tenor Richard Margison, who sings the lead role of Manrico in Verdi's "Il Trovatore" with the San Diego Opera in January, is serving as the singing voice of Mario Lanza in a movie shot in Canada. Lanza, a silver screen operatic superstar, died suspiciously in the 1950s. The movie will allege he was killed by the Mafia.

***

    Twelve seats are up for grabs in the Centre City Project Area Committee elections set for Nov. 17-19. An election kickoff celebration is set for 4:30-6 p.m. on Nov. 17 at the Lyceum Theatre. Voting continues 9 a.m. to 7 p.m. on Nov. 18 at the Downtown Information Center, 225 Broadway, Suite 160, and 9 a.m. to noon the following day at the same location. For information about being a candidate, call 533-7142. For information about registering to vote, call 235-2222. Downtown residents, property and business owners are eligible to run and vote.

***

    The California Energy Commission meets Nov. 15, 4 p.m., in the Chula Vista City Council's chambers to discuss the Otay Mesa power plant project. Shortly after the meeting starts, buses will leave to view the proposed 15-acre site of the 510-megawatt natural gas-fired power plant.

***

    The San Diego Software and Internet Council has named MediaVision its new advertising agency.

***

    The husband and wife team of Dave Shifflet (he knows construction) and Catherine Shifflet (she's an architect) have changed the name of their Miramar-based firm from D Shifflet Co. Inc. to Select Source Building Products Inc. The company is a full-service speciality commercial building products rep and distributor.

    After 20 years on the bench, Superior Court Judge Anthony C. Joseph retires his robes Nov. 6. Among the cases he handled was the infamous Pioneer Mortgage case that scorched dozens of local investors, land owners and banks, and the suit against expanding Qualcomm Stadium.

***

    The Center for Creative Leadership, which operates one of its four main schools in San Diego, was ranked seventh by Business Week in a listing of the top 20 providers of nondegree programs for executives. It was the only nonbusiness school ranked in a field that includes Harvard, Michigan and Wharton. In the report, corporate management development executives ranked the Center first for its leadership programs. The Center's other locations are in Greensboro, N.C.; Brussels, Belgium; and Colorado Springs, Colo. It also has more than 20 network associates and other partners.

***

    Originally scheduled to run Nov. 5-7 on the roads within the closed Naval Training Center, the inaugural San Diego Grand Prix has been rescheduled for Feb. 25-27. Event organizers say the delay was prompted by difficult construction schedules at the new track.

***

    After showing the world how to run private postal centers with his Mail Boxes Etc., Tony DeSio has turned his attention to the art and photography industry. His new company, PixArts, opens a franchise store Nov. 20 in the Ralph's Center on Mira Mesa Boulevard just west of I-15. PixArts stores offer digitally reproduced prints on artist canvas and other substrates, custom and ready-made framing, retail and commercial signs and a digital photo studio. For those interested in franchise opportunities, a seminar is set for 7 p.m. on Nov. 19. Call Rick Nestor at (800) 865-4333 for more.

***

    While San Diego struggles to improve Brown Field's cargo capabilities, the mother of all Southern California cargo airports has quietly added another major client at its new Victor Valley operation. Stirling Airports International, which operates the South California Logistics Airport at the former George Air Force Base in the desert off I-15 outside San Bernardino, has inaugurated scheduled air cargo service with SwissGlobalCargo. Initially, the effort will involve importing 100 tons of electronic and computer equipment, and apparel each week, from Hong Kong and South China.

***

    Expecting to grow 200 percent by the year 2002, 3E Co., a hazardous materials compliance company, has nearly doubled the size of its office space, moving into 37,000 square feet on Aston Avenue in Carlsbad. "We’re getting additional high-tech equipment, faster data and communications lines," says Jess Kraus, CEO of the 13-year-old company.

***

    Arthur J. Devine, the founder and president of Magnetic Arts Corp., has received a diploma certifying his inclusion at the prestigious level six of Internationally Registered Technology Specialists. Thirty years ago Devine, 66, pioneered recording head improvements that enabled the compact disc drives of today. Last year his company delivered a laser micro-machining system for Hawaii's 8.1-meter Gemini Telescope, the world's largest.

***

    Once home to many of the world's toniest retailers, The Paladion is being reborn as a 155,000-square-foot office building with a single tenant, American Specialty Health Plans and its 400-plus employees. New owner Brown Colarusso LeBeau of La Jolla is making it happen. Located at 777 Front St., across the street from the Nordstrom side of Horton Plaza, the project was built for $42 million and opened in 1992 by developer Walt Smyk. At the same time, San Diego’s economy was tumbling into depression, and Mexico's economy went sour, cutting off what marketers had projected to be a major source of customers. The building was reportedly sold in 1992 for $7 million to a Los Angeles owner. Sanwa Bank of California is providing the new owner $17.65 million in acquisition and development financing. (About $8 million will be spent on the remodel.) Among the new owners, San Diego partners are Tom Blake of Coast Income Properties and Darrell Gary of Nexus Properties. Brian Paul & Associates is handling the project's considerable architecture and design work. For American Specialty Health, it’s a homecoming of sorts. President George DeVries moved the company and its three employees from an executive suite Downtown to Mission Valley in 1990. Now his company will be Downtown’s fourth-largest nongovernment tenant.

***

    Suits You San Diego, a nonprofit that last year provided more than 100 disadvantaged women with appropriate clothing for job interviews and the first day of work, is now offering its services to men, too. "We are expecting many of our gentlemen clients to come from incarceration/state parole departments, homeless shelters or welfare-to-work programs," says Sylvia Evans-McKinney, founder of the Lemon Grove-based agency.

***

    About 80 volunteers from the Building Owners and Managers Assn. spent six hours one day last month doing $20,000 worth of repairs on the Downtown YWCA, including painting the exterior. In addition, BOMA donated clothing, furniture, toys and basic necessities. BOMA also has registered the YW at Bed Bath & Beyond to make it easy for its members to donate needed items.

***

    S.D. Malkin Properties Inc. has appointed Chip Rome of San Diego Commercial Real Estate as the exclusive office leasing agent for the 22,000 square feet of high-ceilinged space available in Bridgeworks on Fifth Avenue in the Gaslamp Quarter. The project will open in the spring.

***

    The News Tribune in Tacoma is reporting that Regal Cinemas, the movie half of a proposed downtown Tacoma theater and retail development proposed by San Diego-based DDR OliverMcMillan, has pulled out of the deal. That leaves the Antique Row project in jeopardy, the paper writes, and the city of Tacoma shifting its theater focus elsewhere. OliverMcMillan's chief development officer, Paul Buss, told the newspaper the plans were in trouble. "It’s a real threat to the project. We’re all trying to see whether we can go on an alternative route," he says. Dene Oliver, firm principal, tells Metropolitan the project is far from dead, but plenty of challenges remain. "The city still needs to figure out resources it has and whether those resources will be able to subsidize the project."
    Tacoma has tried to lure a multiplex development to its Antique Row for more than five years, the last three of which have been spent negotiating with OliverMcMillan. In interviews earlier this year with Metropolitan, Tacoma officials spoke about visiting Downtown San Diego and being impressed with OliverMcMillan's work on the Pacific Gaslamp theater at Fifth Avenue and G Street. In an effort to revitalize its Downtown, Tacoma passed a law in 1996 that required all large theaters be built in its urban core.

    McQuertergroup has landed the national trade advertising campaign for NeoPoint, San Diego’s hot developer of moderately priced super-smart wireless phones. In addition, the agency will provide a wide range of marketing communications programs to build the NeoPoint brand, including strategic planning, collateral development, sales/merchandising support, trade show booth design and logistical support.

    Homegrown Proflowers.com is the Internet's No. 1 floral site, reports P.C. Online following a September survey. "Proflowers.com is the only pure Internet business model and the market has responded," says Bill Strauss, president of Proflowers. "Because we ship directly from the grower, our product is fresher, lasts longer and is less expensive."

***

    San Diego filmmaker Paul Alexander has received a grant from the Eastman Kodak Co. for "Salton City-Miracle in the Desert," a documentary about the history of the Salton Sea. The film should debut this summer.

***

    Procopio, Cory, Hargreaves & Savitch has acquired the intellectual property firm of Dain & Li. The firm's principals, Tony Dain and Kam Li, become partners at Procopio, Cory. The pair will move from their offices in Emerald Plaza to Procopio, Cory's offices in the Union Bank Building. Their group will become part of the business and technology team headed by partner Mike Kinkelaar.

***

    Preliminary testing is complete by Innercool Therapies of a new technology that employs selective hypothermia, or mold cooling, for treatment of conditions such as stroke, traumatic brain injury and heart attack. The technology uses a catheter to induce selective cooling of organs or the core body through the bloodstream. Animal studies show the system can cool brain tissue by 5 degrees within 30 to 60 minutes. Traditional methods of using cooling blankets on anesthetized patients take three to six hours to achieve the same results, Innercool says. Doctors John D. Dobak and Juan Lasheras developed the technology. Lasheras is chairman of UCSD's medical engineering department; Dobak founded CryoGen, a medical device manufacturer.

***

    Schools Superintendent Alan Bersin will discuss "Thinking Outside the Box: Bringing Quality Education Reform To Our Children," at a Nov. 16 luncheon. The meeting, sponsored by the League of Women Voters, San Diego Urban League and Mission Federal Credit Union, begins at 11:30 a.m. at the Mission Valley Marriott Hotel. Admission is $25. Call (619) 542-8401 for reservations.

    On the subject of Thanksgiving traditions, publicist Rick Griffin and about 30 other Church of Christ members will mark their 25th year of playing touch football at 9 a.m. on Thanksgiving at Mount Miguel High School's football field.
    Griffin is among a half-dozen who played in their first "Turkey Bowl" game in 1974. "Now our kids are playing and speeding past us like showoffs," says Griffin. "The main reason we play is to work up an appetite for the afternoon meal. Every year, we hobble to our cars with a few more aches... in places we forgot we had."

***

    After studying the scenarios and getting the lay of the land, San Diego’s two appraisal institute chapters have decided to combine. The new group goes by the name of one of the old groups, the San Diego Chapter of the Appraisal Institute. Its membership now includes those who belonged to the San Diego North Chapter.

***

    In the latest bit of golf course reservation creativity, William and Heidi Niehart have formed Par-T Golf Day Tours Inc., a company dedicated to offering groups one-day tour packages to Southern California and Baja golf courses. The deal includes transportation, tee times, registration, contest setup, continental breakfast, box lunch, post-golf beverages in the clubhouse, snack and video highlights. Click on www.par-tgolf.com for more.

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    Kristen Victor, owner of Kristen Victor Design, is singled out for her kitchen designs in the latest issue of Design Concepts, the magazine of Pier 1 Imports.