What Petco Park has led off for Downtown’s East Village, Lane Field may again do as center field in the Port of San Diego’s redevelopment plans for the North Embarcadero.

The first home of the minor league Padres today is a flat 900-vehicle parking lot just north of Broadway between Pacific Highway and North Harbor Drive. But its doubleheader future may include a long-term lease with the Port for a 750-room hotel and 1,000-space parking garage along with other retail, commercial and office uses that is soliciting national interest.

The port plan calls for a C Street corridor to divide the Lane Field site into parcels of 1.9 acres and 2.9 acres, along with a B Street extension through what now is a 3.35-acre Navy office building leasehold. The development scope also includes construction of a new Cruise Ship Terminal and commercial space on the B Street Pier across North Harbor Drive.

The Port of San Diego has sent a Statement of Interest and Qualifications to prospective developers who responded to the Port’s informal solicitation of interest in November.

“We got 28 letters back off the bat and we’re still continuing to receive responses,” says Karen J. Weymann, assistant director of real estate for the Port.

Now the Port is asking prospective developers to include a $50,000 deposit with their response to the Statement of Interest and Qualifications by March 15.

Armed with Port staff’s market and financial feasibility studies of what developers are willing to commit, the Port Commission will narrow the field of developers, conceivably by May, and issue a formal Request for Qualifications/Proposals, with another $50,000 deposit required.

Weymann says most of the developers expressed interest in the project plan. “The opportunities are all interlocked, but the projects will have to conform to existing entitlements,” Weymann says. “We don’t want to have to go back to the (state) Coastal Commission.”

— Terence J. Burke