City takes action to address growing concerns about downtown core
In 1975 San Diego established a downtown redevelopment agency, the Centre City Development Corporation (CCDC), in response to concerns about the declining quality of inner city life. Like many American cities, downtown San Diego had been abandoned by many of its residents, who had fled to suburbia. Through the 1980s the CCDC began to transform the city’s core with the revival of downtown neighbourhoods and construction of the San Diego Convention Center. Meanwhile, as the decade drew to a close, the Padres Major League Baseball team was in need of a new home, but civic politics were such that a large public investment in a sports arena was a non-starter. It would take revolutionary thinking to bring a new ballpark to downtown San Diego. Innovative approach to the new ballpark allowed city to recoup it's investment
In 1998 San Diego citizens voted in favour of “Proposition C,” a proposal that called for an innovative approach to public funding for a new baseball park that included a guarantee of $450 million in new real estate development. PETCO Park opened in 2004 at a cost of $411 million, with the City paying $169 million and the CCDC contributing $132 million. Taxes from the new development projects that would accompany the arena would be enough to recoup the City’s investment in the ballpark and supporting infrastructure, and the Padres owner guaranteed he would fulfill the development promise or pay to service the public debt out of his own pocket. Public investment generated $3.5 billion in private sector development
By 2006 investment in real estate developments in the area by the club owner and other private investors totaled $3.5 billion or more than 10 times the initial public investment. These projects included a convention centre, thousands of housing units and retail and entertainment developments, creating a vibrant downtown core for San Diego and more than enough tax revenue to repay the public investment. Private development continues, with a new large-scale supermarket in the works. An estimated 90,000 people are projected to live in the downtown core by 2020. |
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