ConVis bestowed on Mayor Sanders its highest honor, the ConVisionary Award, during its show-like annual meeting at Symphony Hall. Sanders, wincing at his photo so large on the big, big screen, promised San Diego “will continue to lead the nation in tourism, as long as we get rid of that picture.” But the industry’s fondness of Sanders was not misplaced. When hotelier Terry Brown (Town & Country) accepted the Chairman’s award, he said Sanders was the key to passage of the Tourism Marketing District expected to create $30 million for promotion of the $7.7 billion local industry that is losing some steam. “I can guarantee you without Jerry Sanders this would not have happened,” Brown said.
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ConVis’ 2008 Client of the Year — Hotel Sales award went to MCRD and a scholarship fund, seeded with $10,000 and set to grow with proceeds from an annual golf tournament, established in the name of the late Tom Fat.
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When retired Hotel-Motel Association exec Rose Marie Starns received a ConVis Hall of Fame award (it was accepted by her daughter, HMA executive director Namara Mercer), presenter Bill Evans confided to the 700 people present it was not Rose Marie’s first honor. In 1989, Mike Gotch, the former councilman and assemblyman, had Mission Bay sewage pump No. 17 named after her. “The plaque is still there,” Evans says.
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   A giant joystick will be exhibited beginning Feb. 4 in the gallery at Calit2, located on the first floor of Atkinson Hall on the UCSD campus. The interactive artwork and play sculpture is a working, large-scale game interface by artist Mary Flanagan. The exhibit is called ‘An 8-bit Moment in Gameplay: [Giant Joystick],’ which refers to the low-resolution graphics used in video game consoles introduced in the 1970s. The gallery will have its formal opening in the spring, but the exhibit will be open to the public every weekday from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. through March 17. More is at calit2.net.
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The median price of a resale condo Downtown was $557,000 for the 30-day period ended Jan. 20, down $22,500 from last month and down $10,000 from the same period in January 2007 ($567,125), reports Realtor Lew Breeze of sdcondo.com. The number of condos pending sale during the past 30 days was 32, compared to 24 in the same period last year. The number of condos closing sale during the 30 days prior to Jan. 20 was 24, compared to 34 a year earlier.
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 It was a Donna Alm appreciation fest as the newly retired CCDC communications v.p. was celebrated with the CCDC Directors Award, proclamations and prose before the start of the agency’s last meeting. Here she’s thanked by Councilman Kevin Faulconer. Janice Weinrick, the city’s vice president of real estate, offered the oldest insight, telling how she, Alm, Pam Hamilton and the late Kay Carter became friends decades ago as volunteers for Soroptimist International of La Mesa, doing good things for their community, never knowing the quartet would later play key roles in the redevelopment of Downtown San Diego. More than anyone from the Pete Wilson administration, Alm maintained a 30-year focus and pressure on reviving the inner city, which had been abandoned by most businesses and was declining fast when Alm was recruited by Gerald Trimble to wrestle with the press. ‘There was no reporter too cynical for her to set straight,’ says one old editor. A former La Mesa councilwoman, she and her recuperating husband Bob have 24 grandchildren.
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“The body isn’t even cold yet,” said Erik Judson as Donna Jones, his successor as chair of the Downtown San Diego Partnership, walked to the podium to deliver her first speech. Judson was joking about Jones’ bio on the Website of her employer, the law firm Sheppard Mullin, already including the board position of the influential 325-member organization. Jones laughed, then smoothly started a recitation of 17 years working Downtown, first in the Imperial Bank (now Merrill Lynch) Building and now 501 West Broadway (Koll Center). Her goals include revitalizing the C Street trolley corridor, a permanent site for the winter homeless shelter and better promotion of Downtown as a destination for business. “Without business attraction our Downtown will stagnate,” she says. Jones is placing a large chunk of that responsibility on her predecessor. Judson and developer Rob Lankford are charged with finding private sector funding for a marketing program that will extol Downtown’s commercial opportunities to businesses and brokers in Southern California.
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Malcolm Davies, a former principal of Sand & Sea Equity Group, has launched Davies Development & Investments Inc. to provide developer, investor and capital services for real estate projects. “After 10 years of experience in different sectors of the real estate industry, I decided it was time to launch my own company,” says Davies, who just announced plans to break ground in March for The Nolen, a 13-story office condo project on a 5,000-square-foot lot next to Hotel Solamar Downtown. The bottom floor of the building will house retail shops and the top 12 floors are for sale to office users. Far East National Bank is financing the $16 million project. Davies expects to seek a LEED rating for the building set to open in the first half of 2009.
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It was Victor Diaz who found the clear frequency at 104.9 FM and the location for a transmitter and antenna on a mountain near Tecate, and he got the ball rolling before dying in 2004. But his Chula Vista widow Martha Barba de Diaz and XLNC1’s chief executive Lisette Atala-Doocy deserve the credit for persevering through Washington and Mexico City bureaucracies year after year. Finally, the more powerful frequency for the XLNC1 Classical Music Radio can be heard from every corner of San Diego County. Not that listeners in Australia ever cared. San Diego/Baja’s nonprofit classical music station is still heard worldwide at xlnc1.org. The Metropolitan’s Daily Business Report is broadcast there at 7 a.m. and 5 p.m., Monday through Friday.
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 A certified gemologist appraiser and g.m. at George Carter Jessop, Phyllis Weeks-Daniel doesn’t spend all her time grading diamonds. She is one of this year’s finalists in the Pillsbury Bake-Off set for April 13-15 in Dallas. The top prize of $1 million would buy some impressive gems. An online voting challenge - bakeoff.com - carries a $5,000 prize and Weeks-Daniel is looking for some local support for her “Blue Cheese and Red Onion Jam Crescent Thumbprints.” If she can turn an original gem of a recipe into the stuff that buys more gems, it will be a feat and a treat.
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Preparing to raise $14 million to $17.5 million, Chairman Enrique Schon and organizers of Vibra Bank in Chula Vista figure out what they have in common with Bob Hope and James Garner. Click here for more
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More than 100 HR professionals sat quietly, perhaps in stunned silence, as the San Diego Employers Association’s guest experts Joe Beachboard, Rich Paul and Lonny Zilberman walked them through the 27th Annual Employment Law Update. Just one example is the Alameda County case of Boswell V. FedEx, in which the plaintiff won a $3 million verdict for suffering an unsolicited kiss from a supervisor. “Everybody’s got a Cadillac anti-harassment policy, but if you don’t enforce it, it’s almost worse than not having it,” says Zilberman, a partner with Wilson Petty Kosmo & Turner. Click here for more
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Point Loma Nazarene University v.p. Joe Watkins figured Bank of America is saving the school $400,000 a year with superior financing. So no wonder PLNU hosted the bank’s chief market strategist Joseph Quinlan at the 2008 Economic Forecast Breakfast atop the Fermanian Business Center. With an Easterner’s perspective, Quinlan claimed, “I’m not worried about the housing mess, although I know I’m here in ground zero. Housing is very distressing; you can call it a depression.”
Overall, Quinlan doesn’t think the country is in a recession, although he warns “we’re going to talk ourselves right into it.” He fears Ben Bernanke “is panicking a little bit. I wish today the Fed would do nothing. I wish he would say, ‘Go to hell.’ Instead, the Fed dropped its benchmark rate another half-point that day.
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Frank Mercardante says he wasn’t ready to retire, among his reasons for succeeding Jim Kelley as CEO of Discovery Bank in San Marcos. But the former CEO of Southwest Community Bank and its successor Placer Sierra Bank never really was retired in between bank jobs. Mercardante, 60, sits on about six different boards, and has been helping the Catholic Diocese figure out its finances.
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McMillin Homes has tapped Guy Asaro, a 27-year veteran of the home building industry, as its new president. Asaro was senior v.p. of land acquisition and planning for sister company McMillin Land Development and previously worked for The Baldwin Co. and Pacific Bay Homes. He’ll oversee the home building in San Diego, Riverside and Imperial counties, the Central Valley and Bakersfield and San Antonio, Texas. Asaro’s promotion is part of a restructuring. “We needed a leader of Guy’s caliber,” says Mark McMillin, president and CEO of parent company The Corky McMillin Cos. Ken Baumgartner remains president of McMillin Land Development. Gordon MacKenzie is executive v.p. overseeing McMillin Commercial.
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San Diego Opera continues its five-opera season with its premiere of Donizetti’s “Maria Stuarda” (“Mary, Queen of Scots”) — 173 years after its premiere at la Scala. The tour de force opera, pitting soprano Mary v. mezzo Elizabeth I, runs for four performances at the Civic Theatre (7 p.m. Feb. 16 and 19, 8 p.m. Feb. 22 and 2 p.m. Feb. 24). For tickets, call (619) 533-7000 or visit sdopera.com.
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