Access to shops, restaurants, entertainment - and work - attract young professionals like Laura Shafer to rent Downtown.

Laura Shafer can look out the window of her fourth-floor apartment on Fourth Avenue and see and hear a slice of urban life she never encountered in Bakersfield, where she grew up.

The Horton Fourth Avenue Apartments loom straight up from the street, so Shafer, 26, sees a lot of pedestrians and hears a lot of traffic, much of it generated by the Horton Plaza shopping center next door. But the advantages of living and working Downtown, she says, far outweigh those discomforts and have kept her here for the past three years.

“I grew up in an area that is considered more country than city, so I always wanted to live in a downtown for the experience,” says Shafer. “I figured I could try anything for a year. Now that I’ve been here three years, I choose to stay. I love the easy access to restaurants, shopping and definitely baseball games.”

Shafer, who works as accounting manager for the San Diego office of Advanced Planning Services in Little Italy, is typical of a growing number of young professionals who have decided — by choice — to rent living quarters Downtown — apartments and condos.

“The condo market Downtown is a little unstable right now, so many people who would have been buyers a while ago are now renters,” says Jim Reynolds, senior vice president of OliverMcMillan, which has built more than 500 apartment units Downtown, including the 66-unit building where Shafer lives.

Lofts at 707

In December, OliverMcMillan completed construction of The Lofts at 677 Seventh Avenue, a 148-unit apartment building on G Street (between Seventh and Eighth avenues) that has a mix of studios and one- and two-bedroom lofts.

The company has two other apartment projects under construction. The Lofts at 707 Tenth Avenue (located on G Street between 10th and 11th avenues) will have 208 units when completed in February 2008. The Lofts at 655 Sixth Avenue (on the corner of Sixth Avenue and G Street) is to have 106 apartments. Completion is scheduled for September. The company also owns property on Market Street and two other parcels on G Street that have been penciled in for apartments but no plans have yet been developed for these.

Reynolds sees a high demand for Downtown apartments. “Our rental population includes young professionals, a lot of single and married people working in different professions like attorneys and accountants,” he says. “They’re establishing a career for themselves and many of them work Downtown.”

Build them and they will come, says Jim Reynolds of OliverMcMillan, which has brought more then 500 apartment units to Downtown. (photo/lambertphoto.com)

But those types of residents are just part of the mix. Reynolds says renters also include many restaurant workers who have jobs in Downtown restaurants and hotels, corporate executives from out of town who are sent to work here for six to nine months at a time, law students and “cool retired people who want to come and have some fun Downtown.”

“The market is very good; we rent about two units a day,” adds Reynolds. “People are renting and waiting. They are the buyers of the future.”

Brooke Barnett, 26, who rents a condominium on the eighth floor of Metrome, moved from Encinitas nine months ago. He was attracted by Petco Park and the vibrancy he witnessed in the neighborhood when he visited. “I moved in on opening day (of the Padres season) in April last year,” says Barnett, a mortgage broker. “I decided to rent first before I buy. I’ll definitely make a move by the end of the year.”

Three years ago, Jay Wampler and his wife, Amy Fouts-Wampler, pulled up stakes in Washington, D.C., and ventured west, looking to advance their careers. They rented a one-bedroom unit in the Horton Fourth Avenue Apartments, which they found by doing a search on the Internet. Jay, 39, is a financial consultant in La Jolla for The Pollakov Financial Group. Amy, 38, works in the grants office at The Salk Institute.

“We liked the urban style of living that we had in Washington and it seemed like Downtown San Diego was a good place to go,” says Jay. “We like to walk to the clubs, the restaurants and going to baseball games. It’s very convenient. And the rents are tolerable. We’re planning to purchase a home, maybe in another year, probably a Downtown condo.”

Brooke Barnett says he scored a home run when he moved Downtown to be close to ballpark action and surrounding neighborhood. (photo/lambertphoto.com)

Tisha McMurry, a broker at Vertical Village Realty and a Downtown homeowner, says the company averages about 20 inquiries a week from people interested in renting. Many want to try out Downtown living before they make any decision to purchase a home, says McMurry, who can tell them about her own experience. She moved from Mission Hills into a condominium in M2i she purchased a year ago. “I moved Downtown because of the lifestyle and convenience,” she says. “I seldom get on the freeway.”

McMurry describes most of the people she has found apartments for as young professionals, but a smaller number are empty nesters. At The Heritage, a 230-unit apartment complex on Eighth Avenue, property manager Rebecca Parker is renting to a lot of young professionals who also work Downtown. “That’s been the trend since we opened four years ago,” says Parker.

Downtown rentals can be pricey. At OliverMcMillan’s projects, which offer studios and one- and two-bedroom apartments, rents range from about $1,400 to $2,200 a month. The highest priced units are large two-bedroom suites that would be suitable, for example, for two single people who could share the rent. Reynolds says OliverMcMillan’s apartments are built to the same building standards as condominiums and command higher rents.

At The Heritage, one-bedroom apartments range from $1,525 a month to $1,875 a month, and two-bedroom units rent for between $2,030 per month to $2,325 per month. Despite the high rents, occupancy is about 90 percent, says Parker.

Broker Tisha McMurry doesn’t just sell Downtown - she lives it, in a condo.

Sebastian Mariscal, principal of Sebastian Mariscal Studio, boasts that apartments in his funky 24-unit Billboard Lofts on Ash Street rarely go vacant for more than two weeks. “They’re snatched up right away,” says Mariscal, who rents the one- and two-bedroom apartments for $1,200 a month to $2,000 a month. His renters are young singles and couples. “They want to live in an urban environment where they can walk the dog, shop, visit the park. That’s a huge benefit of living Downtown,” says Mariscal.

Rents at Entrada, the five-story, 172-unit apartment building on Island Avenue, average $1,400 for one-bedroom units, not including the 40 units that are restricted to low- and moderate-income individuals. Jim Rivard, principal and director of real estate for the developer, Spokane-based SRM Development, says occupancy is running about 95 percent.

SRM Development also built Market Street Village, 229 apartments over the Albertsons market at 14th and Market Street, which has studios and one- and two-bedroom units ranging from $1,200 a month to $2,000 a month.

Rivard says SRM Development just purchased from J Peter Block Cos. a 3,000-square-foot site at Second Avenue and Laurel Street for the construction of a six-story, 90-unit apartment building for seniors. The project is in conjunction with Merrill Gardens, which operates retirement communities. Construction is to start this year and rental rates haven’t been established, says Rivard.

While young professionals are taking a lot of Downtown apartments, there is a need for family rental housing, says Robert Ito, CEO of Ito Girard & Associates. Ito was with the nonprofit Occupational Training Services in the early 1990s when it developed the 52-unit Hacienda Townhomes on 17th Street for low-income families. The complex of two-bedroom and three-bedroom units has been fully occupied since it opened in 1994 and there is a waiting list.

Lillian Place, another affordable housing project Downtown, was built by Wakeland Housing and Development Corp. and the San Diego Interfaith Housing Foundation. The 74-unit project on J Street, between 14th and 15th avenues, offers one-, two- and three-bedroom apartments. The project, designed by Studio E Architects, is meant for families with children. It is named after Lillian Grant, a prominent African-American entrepreneur of the 1940s and 1950s.

“There are young professionals working in high-rise buildings and there are low-income workers working in hotels Downtown,” says Ito, whose company is almost finished with Palisade Gardens, a 32-unit condo development, in North Park. “You try to have a housing mix that is balanced. Our idea with Hacienda was to locate housing Downtown so the service workers wouldn’t have to drive so far to go to work. Forty percent of the families at Hacienda work in the restaurant and hotel industry Downtown.”

Jonathan Segal, a developer who has been building apartments in Downtown and Golden Hill since 1988 — among them The Union, K Lofts and Kettner Row — believes the rental market Downtown is solid. “But I am continually amazed at what the other people are renting their projects for,” he says. His rentals range from $800 a month for a studio to $3,500 for a large unit.

Today, Jonathan Segal Development Co. is managing 190 apartment units Downtown. The company recently sold four of its apartment projects — The Waterfront, Titan, Angove and Lusso — to condominium converters. “It was a timing thing. It didn’t make economic sense to hold onto them,” says Segal, adding that the company’s game plan has been to build and hold no more than 200 units.

Reynolds says the Downtown apartment market is such that OliverMcMillan plans to build between 600 and 700 more units over the next five years on property it owns.

Laura Shafer, only three years removed from attending Point Loma Nazarene University, says she has found Downtown apartment living a blessing. “Having no commute in the morning is wonderful,” she says. “All I have to do is leave about 10 minutes before I need to get to work and I arrive relaxed and not stressed because I had to fight traffic. And if I ever need to run home, I can be there and back easily.”