Some 30 years ago, Downtown dining in San Diego meant the Grant Grill, Le Fontainbleau and Lubach’s. That’s all there was, unless you were a member of the sainted Cuyamaca Club. Even 20 years ago, the pickin’s were mighty slim. Dobson’s had just opened, and so had Kansas City Barbecue. Salvatore’s a new level in fine Italian dining, opened in 1987. But that was just about it.

Then about a decade ago, the Gaslamp Quarter began to light up, with Fio’s, Croce’s and Dick’s Last Resort leading the way. Since then, more than 40 perfectly decent, sometimes even very good, restaurants have blanketed the historic district, as well as Little Italy, the Marina District and East Village. It is an amazing broad range of dining spots, in all price ranges and fitting a variety of taste buds. Even a great waffle shop at 222 Island Ave.

But this article is not meant to be a litany of restaurants. It is to better explain why Downtown San Diego has arrived. For the first time, the national credit tenants have noticed, starting with the beef houses, Ruth’s Chris and then Morton’s and soon Fleming’s, and then Hard Rock Café, TGI Fridays, Buca di Beppo and, of course, Starbucks. The world’s largest purveyor of boutique coffees has expanded from one to eight Downtown cafes within the past three years, and more are on the way.

Downtown boasts more than 2.5 million square feet of retail space, with roughly one third in Horton Plaza, one third in Gaslamp Quarter and the balance in Little Italy and elsewhere in the urban core. All totaled, it equals almost two Fashion Valleys.

Perhaps the strongest indication of the success of retailing Downtown is the rapid rise in lease rates. Ten years ago, space rarely leased for more than $1.50 per square foot and often as low as $1. Retail maven Bill Shrader of Burnham Real Estate Services now reports rents for quality space Downtown ballooning to the $3 to $4 a square foot level, right up there with La Jolla and UTC. The occupancy rate is greater than 95 percent.

The amazing thing about the restaurant successes is that virtually all of their business is at the dinner hour. Many are not even open for lunch. Because our white-collar employment Downtown is relatively meager and conventioneers tend to dine where they convene, lunch business is hard to come by. Yet the dinner business is so vibrant year-round that the dining establishments prosper. As the number of folks living Downtown is not quite in the same league as Manhattan, most of that dining business results from visitors/conventioneers and suburban folks on their big night out.

In the retail business, sales volume per square foot in strong neighborhoods and centers is usually in the $300 to $400 per square foot range annually. In the Gaslamp and Seaport Village, sales rise as high as $700 to $800 per square foot. That is a monumental number. The accompanying table notes the typical retail sales prices per square foot in Downtown San Diego.

Until a very few years ago, retailing, other than food-related, was cloistered in Horton Plaza. That, too, is gradually changing as the influx of new residents finds itself in the market for furniture, lighting fixtures, boutique clothing, artwork and kitchenware, not to mention hair care/beauty salons, cleaners and the myriad of other goods and services that suburbanites take for granted. The trend of national credit retailers opening on Fifth Avenue started in the mid 1990s, when Z Gallerie took the bold step of moving out of Horton Plaza to the street. Lucky Jeans, Urban Outfitters and, most recently, Borders Books & Music soon followed.

A few months ago our firm, MarketPoint Realty Advisors, completed an inventory of the Gaslamp and found that 35 percent of the spaces were occupied by food-related stores, 11 percent by bars, 10 percent by clothing stores with the balance a mélange of different types of retailers.

More than three dozen residential projects are in Downtown’s development pipeline, bringing with them more than 10,000 units. About 7,000 of those are condominiums and 3,000 rentals. They blanket Marina District, Little Italy, Cortez Hill and East Village. And most will be built and occupied by 2006.

The occupants of the condominium projects typically have incomes well above $75,000 annually — San Diego County’s average household income is barely $50,000 — while those moving into the market-rate rental projects earn more than $50,000. We estimate that the total annual spending power for general merchandise, apparel, furnishings and food from the new Downtown residents will be on the order of $400 million.

Those new residential projects will not only provide strong demand for retail and related services, but many of the projects have retail space on the ground floor. And that’s good because unlike most other big city downtowns, San Diego’s Centre City has pitifully few retail zones that have been established over the decades. Other than Little Italy, we have to start from scratch.

Overall, the 92101 retail sector is about to blossom with a new wave of demand and supply. Gradually, over the next few years, those living Downtown will no longer have to leave to do their shopping.

“It is wonderful to see the neighborhoods being created Downtown,” says Shrader. “As these neighborhoods are developing, so are the needs for goods and services one would typically see in a suburban supermarket and drug store anchored center. The Marina District retail space will be an urban version of a suburban center with the phenomenally successful Ralphs supermarket surrounded by tenants such as Starbucks, Pat & Oscar’s, Wells Fargo Bank, Postal Annex+ and a dry cleaner, just to name a few. We will continue to see other pockets similar to this developed in the Little Italy and East Village/Ballpark neighborhoods. It is this neighborhood feel, along with world class restaurants and trend-setting retailers that will enable Downtown to truly become a vibrant, 24/7/365 urban destination.”

In the past, the retail mantra was always “the only place Main Street works is in Disneyland.” Then again, maybe our Downtown is becoming Disneyland South. All we need is an Electrical Parade and Snow White.

Alan N. Nevin is director of economic research with MarketPoint Realty Advisors — www.marketpointra.com — a consultancy providing real estate and demographic statistics, feasibility studies and litigation support to the California land use industry and legal professions.