The Tidelands Archive

Southwest Marine Inc., San Diego’s second largest shipyard behind NASSCO, has a new parent company with this month’s final acquisition of U.S. Marine Repair by United Defense Industries for $316 million. The new owner previously had a small presence in San Diego and plans to retain current management. Southwest Marine employs 1,300 at its San Diego shipyard.

“If there’s a (staff) reduction, it will have nothing to do with the acquisition,” says Jackie Kreisler, p.r. director for Southwest Marine. “The Navy is our biggest customer in San Diego, representing 95 percent of our work.” The company is hopeful of supplemental funding for more Navy ship repair, modernization, overhaul and conversion services, says Kreisler, who also chairs the p.r. committee for the Port of San Diego Ship Repair Association.

Five other shipyards and related businesses nationwide also were acquired by Norfolk, Va.-based United Defense in the deal.

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Walls without windows were the mark of the San Diego Unified Port District’s headquarters on Pacific Highway even before the district originated in 1963. The seven-story building with basement and penthouse was built to withstand attack in the midst of World War II as the San Diego headquarters of Consolidated Aircraft Co. (which later became Convair). The plain, cast-in-place concrete structure came to be known as The Rock.

A few years ago windows were added. Now, The Rock has become something of a jewel following a $147,000 polishing and painting by Southwest Coatings and a couple of years of design by port employees. “It was a loose committee that changed over time — some artistic, some in engineering, some in maintenance,” says Troy Ann Leech, who works in the aviation division. “We looked at a lot of different styles, from silhouette graphics to trompe l’oeil.”

Several alternatives were proposed. The winning paint scheme by Clint Kisner in architectural and mapping services proposed four colors: white, light gray, dark gray and green. “We tried to enhance the architecture of the building,” says Jim Trefren, an associate engineer. “There are some faux shadows painted on that lend a little relief to the building.”

“It desperately needed a paint job; it hadn’t been painted in 20 years,” says Rita Vandergaw, senior director of marketing and communications. As it turns out, Southwest Coatings was the same company to have last painted The Rock beige in the late ’70s, Trefren says, but the contract was less than $20,000 then.

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Plenty of windows will let the sun shine in on a two-story, 45,243-square-foot building under construction at 1400 Tidelands Ave. in National City for the port’s general services department, which for 40 years has been in San Diego at 825 E. Harbor Drive. The $8.4 million project is set to be completed by next May. The contractor is C.S. Wylie Construction.

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MJE Marketing Services has received the American Marketing Association’s AMY award for its Bay Days advertising campaign for the port of San Diego last year. This year, the firm has rolled out the port’s “Big Bay” campaign. “Bay Days set the foundation,” says President Marlee J Ehrenfeld (who eschews a period after her middle initial, but whose three initials give the firm its name). “It was a fabulous way to test the market’s interest in coming down to see the bay’s attractions.”

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National City’s Knight & Carver YachtCenter, which employs 125 in building and repairing large luxury yachts and sportfishing vessels, is building a 72-foot, 149-passenger excursion catamaran for Vallarta Adventures in Mexico. This is Knight & Carver’s first major commercial vessel project since Sept. 11. Completion is expected later this year.

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Royal Caribbean International’s Grandeur of the Seas is the only cruise ship scheduled to arrive at the B Street Pier Cruise Ship Terminal until September. The 2,446-passenger ship is in port for its weekly series of round-trip cruises to the Mexican Riviera on Sundays in July and August.

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In port in June for biennial joint exercises with the U.S. Navy and other nations were four frigates, with 800 officers and crew, of the Japanese Maritime Self Defense Force. The entire Japanese fleet numbers 37 vessels, of which five have been in the Indian Ocean in support of U.S. operations, says Mike Inoue of the Japan Society of San Diego and Tijuana. The first Japanese naval vessel visited San Diego 115 years ago — before the U.S. Navy even had a presence here, Inoue says.

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Naval Air Station North Island’s new fourth carrier wharf has the Stennis undergoing maintenance following its six and a half month deployment. Of the two other San Diego-based carriers, the Nimitz is in and out of port on sea trials and the Constellation is slated to visit Seattle later this month. Conversely, the Everett, Wash.-based Lincoln is expected here briefly in late July, to begin a deployment that could include three San Diego-based Navy squadrons.

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The Battle to Save the Midway, the community relations campaign spearheaded by matthews/mark for the San Diego Aircraft Carrier Museum, won the Public Relations Society of America’s Silver Anvil award for excellence. For Scott McGaugh, the campaign’s main marketing man, the Midway has fittingly been a turning point in his career; he has left the agency to write a book chronicling the Midway’s service through the decades. Museum skippers Alan Uke and John Hawkins hope to have the World War II era flattop here from Bremerton, Wash., by Independence Day next year.

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Independence Day this year will be an even bigger bang than last year on San Diego Bay. “We’ve got about 4,000 fireworks, and we’ve added a third barge (for launching),” says H.P. “Sandy” Purdon, the Shelter Cove Marina owner who returns to run North San Diego Bay’s second year of fireworks for the Fourth, easily visible from Harbor Island, Shelter Island and the North Embarcadero. More 9 p.m. waterfront pyrotechnics will go off from Chula Vista Harbor, Glorietta Bay, Navy Pier, La Jolla Cove, Sea World, Mission Bay Yacht Club, Ocean Beach Pier and Oceanside Pier.