The Downtown San Diego Partnership board has stepped squarely into the debate over the long overdue 500-foot curved bridge across Harbor Drive connecting the Convention Center and new Hilton with Petco Park. Praised as icon art that would complete the Park-To-Bay link, the bridge is in limbo because its cost has doubled to $25 million. The City Council has asked for a cheaper version. Now the Partnership board has weighed in supporting the project as designed, saying a redesign jeopardizes approved federal funding and would delay the project at least two years. The bridge also meets federal requirements to keep pedestrians away from trolleys and trains and would allow the reopening of Eighth Avenue to Harbor.
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The median price of a resale condo Downtown was $579,000 for the 30-day period ended Nov. 21, up $3,000 from last month but down 2.11 percent ($12,500) from $591,500 during the same period in 2006, reports Realtor Lew Breeze of sdcondo.com. The number of condos pending sale during the past 30 days was 35, compared to 38 from the same period last year. The number of condos closing sale during the 30 days prior to Nov. 21 was 42, compared to 27 from the same period last year.
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Marveling at the nighttime view of Downtown from a corner table at Island Prime, one of a group of six businessmen turned to his table mate and said he would reciprocate during their next meeting in Tucson. “There’s a great Outback just across the street from the hotel,” he said.
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   The three new Kyoto Prize laureates, awarded through the Inamori Foundation by Kazuo Inamori, founder of Kyocera, for lifetime achievement in philosophy, science, technology and the arts are (from left) Japanese chemist Hiroo Inokuchi, Caltech geophysicist Hiroo Kanamori and German choreographer Pina Bausch. Each laureate receives a cash gift of 50 million yen ($430,000). They will attend the seventh annual Kyoto Laureate Symposium March 12-14 at SDSU, UCSD and USD. San Diego business leaders Malin Burnham, Rod Lanthorne and Robert Horsman attended the ceremony in Kyoto, Japan.
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Smarting from earlier losses before county planners, backers of legislation that would allow wine tasting businesses to operate off of private roads are now saying damages caused by the October fires create an economic incentive and necessity to reverse that choice. County supervisors may get to the matter this month. The small wineries, and the unhappy owners of the roads in question, are primarily in Ramona (which the Ramona Valley Vineyard Association says more than 20 wineries call home), Valley Center and Julian.
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San Diego will get another microbrewery in spring 2008 when HB Beer Co. opens the San Diego Beer Company at the Colonel Fletcher Building at Sixth Avenue and Broadway Downtown. The microbrewery and restaurant will occupy the entire 6,822-square-foot ground floor and mezzanine under a 10-year lease with Champion Real Estate Group valued at more than $3.1 million. Champion renovated the building for $16 million. The upper three floors are being marketed as luxury office loft condominiums.
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Michel Malecot, president of The French Gourmet in Pacific Beach, has been named Caterer of the Year by the local chapter of the National Association of Catering Executives. NACE says The French Gourmet, founded in 1979, “is known throughout Southern California as one of the most successful caterers in the region and has produced catered events for some of San Diego’s finest corporations and citizens.”
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The State Of The News Media report on journalism.org ranks locally produced HispanicVista.com among the country’s Top 10 most visited Hispanic news Web sites. It also notes that HispanicVista is unique among those on the list. “Not all the top 10 sites, for instance, are delivered in Spanish. HispanicVista.com, No. 9, is a site that features commentary from and about Hispanics, but is written in English.” HispanicVista.com is run by Patrick Osio, who has been writing The Connection column for San Diego Metropolitan since 1997.
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Advanced Reservation Systems Inc. and What’s Here! are preparing to launch a new Web site that will put a range of information online for Southern California hotel personnel to better serve their guests. The site will contain information on tourism news, attraction tickets, car rentals, airlines, restaurant reservations and interactive chat rooms. Kevin Kearns, publisher of What’s Here!, says the Web site will enable hotel personnel to meet all of their guests’ needs. The site, to be designed by Appeal Media, is expected to be launched in mid-December at hotelrecommends.com. “We combined our tourism and industry magazines and exclusive events for hotel personnel with the electronic reservations and attraction ticketing technology of ARES in order to fully service a hotel’s needs,” says Kearns. “We’ve collaborated on a co-branded Web site which will be one of the most valuable tools for guest services staff.”
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HP is preparing to install an $8 million, 1-megawatt solar panel at its San Diego campus under a deal with SunPower Corp. The project will include 5,000 solar panels atop five of the seven buildings. The company expects to save about $750,000 in energy costs during the next 15 years from the system, financed and owned by a third-party financier. The solar program extends to HP employees who can receive a rebate of up to $2,000 from SunPower if they use its network to buy a home system. In addition, HP will match the SunPower rebate of up to $2,000 per installation.
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 The Bureau of Indian Affairs has stationed one of its firefighting helicopters at the Sycuan Tribal Fire Department. It will be available at Sycuan for a 30-day, non-consecutive period to augment the firefighting capabilities of the region. The added period is funded by the Sycuan Band of the Kumeyaay Nation. The helicopter will be staffed and managed by the Sycuan Golden Eagles Flycrew, a specially trained 20-person unit of the Sycuan Fire Department Air and Wildland Division, managed by Division Chief Ray Ruiz, Sr.
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San Diego was named one of eight “Crown Communities” in the nation by Penton’s American City & County magazine. San Diego was cited for its regional public safety communications project, which is connecting agencies at all government levels in the region with a secure digital network for first responders, senior officials and emergency operations/dispatch centers. “Much of the nation’s infrastructure demands attention, and our winners rose to that challenge,” says Bill Wolpin, editorial director and associate publisher of the magazine. “One of the country’s best-kept secrets is the leadership that lives in our cities and counties, and we are pleased that we can showcase some of the best projects that result from their actions.”
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Handsome, good natured and a heck of a cook, Executive Chef Jeff Leidy, whose culinary talents are enjoyed and appreciated by hundreds of thousands of visitors annually at the San Diego Convention Center, won first place in Ocean Spray’s national competition for his “Cranberry Mojito” recipe. (If the chance presents itself to attend a chef’s table meal hosted by Chef Jeff, go and be amazed.) Leidy is donating the $25,000 prize to Becky’s House, a charity with which he is quite familiar as the main chef for the YWCA’s In The Company of Women and TWIN luncheons at the center, as well as San Diego Metropolitan’s 40 Under 40 lunch that benefits the YWCA and its Becky’s House. “We plan to make his Cranberry Mojito the signature drink at the San Diego Convention Center,” says Carol Wallace, the meeting hall’s president and CEO.
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