A Complex Matter

San Diego’s front porch is a panorama lesser towns would gladly trade their best sports team for. Such a gorgeous vista would make any property overlooking it the most hotly contested in town, and such has been the case for the plot between Harbor and Pacific Highway, south of Broadway. Such a choice site would command staggering prices on the open market and host a jungle of high-rise luxury condos, if it did not belong to the United States Navy.

With its drab gray World War II-era offices, a supply depot, and decrepit parking lot, the 14.7-acre Navy Region Southwest HQ has inspired over a decade of tail-chasing debate over plans to build a new headquarters as part of a massive mixed-use complex. With retailers, museums, offices, and four five-star hotels on the drafting board, the proposed Navy Broadway Complex looks like the last space you’d want to land on in a game of Monopoly.

But no one is giving Doug Manchester, the developer chosen by the Navy, carte blanche to wall off America’s finest view. "It’s a complicated issue," says mayoral spokesman Fred Sainz. "The Mayor believes that the current project, as proposed, is way too bulky, and that it’s not in keeping with what we’d like our front porch to look like."

Under a 1992 agreement between the Navy and the city, the Navy must have its headquarters, which Manchester would build gratis, in return for a 99-year lease for the remainder. The plan must still win final approval from the Center City Development Corporation (CCDC), and faces a final round of public hearings. Agreement guidelines restrict the building density, and mandate green space and a pedestrian promenade connecting Broadway with Lane Field. Manchester, the Navy, the City and the general public have all struggled to balance security, economic feasibility, and the best use of San Diego’s precious resources, but not everyone is satisfied with what they’ve devised. "The city negotiated a bad deal in 1992," Sainz explains. "They didn’t know what 3.2 million square feet of buildings was going to look like."

The ambitious project has rallied its critics, among them Congresswoman Susan Davis, the federal representative for the downtown district. "The redevelopment of the Navy Broadway Complex has legacy implications," Davis said in a recent statement. "However, I am not convinced the current proposal meets those legacy implications. I am committed to working with the Navy, the City, and the public to have something San Diego can feel good about."

Manchester has amended the proposal of May of this year, which maxed out the building space at 3.2 million square feet, over which even some CCDC board members expressed doubt. The current plan scales the density back to 2.9 million. Plans for a second Navy office building and a waterfront museum were scrapped, and aboveground parking has been replaced with 3000 subterranean spaces. The eight blocks of buildings step down from 35 to ten stories from Pacific Highway to Harbor, and some 45 percent of the project will be open space. The Chamber of Commerce and the Port Tenants’ Association have endorsed the project, and hoteliers Westin and St. Regis have partnered with Manchester. Still, citizen’s groups hoping for a grand civic landmark on par with the Sydney Opera House or Chicago’s Millennium Park are pushing for further review of the plan, and former CCDC President Peter Q. Davis has voiced the hope that Manchester and the Navy will simply walk away.

"People like to demonize Doug Manchester," says Sainz, "but he’s been incredibly cooperative. He views this as a legacy project, so he’s inclined to build a flagship for the city and region.

"We would have this problem with any developer. A fairly large investment has to be made in building the Navy’s office building, and it has to be recouped by making those other buildings as large as they are. Clearly, there are attractive features, but the bulk of the buildings detracts from that."

The renderings of the new Navy Broadway Complex posit an attractive linchpin to the grand North Embarcadero Visionary Project, which will add 36 acres of waterfront parks and public gathering space from Broadway to Little Italy. The concentration of commerce and government at Navy Broadway will help drive the $250 million renovation of the waterfront to the north, which will boast many of the amenities Navy Broadway resistors would like to see, as well as a new cruise ship terminal at Lane Field, a low-risk mint when each ship pumps an estimated $350,000 into local business. "This project goes a long way toward implementing that," Manchester Group spokesman Perry Dealy explains. "Everyone’s kind of focused myopically on the Navy Broadway project, when our plan’s going to pay for a lot of the North Embarcadero plan."

Dealy cites a long list of compromises. "In response to concerns from the community, we reduced the density, and we relocated about 300,000 square feet off Harbor Drive and put it on Pacific Highway, which reduced some of the concern about the height of those buildings blocking the view of the Bay. We have 5.5 acres of public open space, including the 1.9-acre park." Though the waterfront museum has been axed, portions of two buildings at either end of the promenade are now dedicated to cultural or nautical-themed exhibits. Terraces with outdoor cafes, restaurants, and plazas will aim to attract local residents as well as tourists.

The Navy HQ itself seems to pose the fewest challenges, despite thorny issues of security and access in a post-9/11 environment. Captain Matt Brown, public affairs officer for the Navy Southern Group, notes that the generous setback from the street, while designed to thwart the kind of bombing that leveled the Murrah Building in Oklahoma City, also adds to the open space, with landscaping, fountains, and other amenities. Brown assures that the building will not be a fortress. "You do have to beef up the building significantly, but you don’t see that in terms of the design. It’s done through higher quality materials, precast concrete instead of stucco, and redundant systems throughout the building. It fits into the urban environment very well."

Critics have argued that the Navy’s security and the city’s scenery would be better served by relocating the Navy HQ away from the waterfront. A port-accessible, fenced-in site at 32nd Street was discussed, but Brown solidly refutes the idea. "This headquarters works with contractors and with the local community, so they need to be accessible to the public. We see the need for that day in and day out. The security concerns we have are the same that other federal agencies have."

Congress’ recent quadrennial defense review pointed to greater concentration of force in the Pacific, especially in San Diego. A new mine countermeasures force and a new littoral combat ship are coming to the Naval Station, and will place new demands on an already overtaxed Naval Station. "Our military facilities behind the fence line are getting more impacted," says Brown. "We don’t have the large amount of real estate that people on the surface would assume that we’ve got."

The Navy has given up the second office and minimized its onsite footprint, stressing the need to get approval as soon as possible. The project must then thread the perils of Congress in an election season, before it can begin to break ground.

Public grappling over the waterfront development occurs against the backdrop of an imminent deadline: if no lease is signed by year’s end, the Base Realignment & Closure (BRAC) process takes over. Opponents of Manchester’s plan hope to run out the clock and force the Navy to relinquish the land to the city or another federal agency, but because of 2005 revisions to BRAC policy, Brown says this strategy is gravely flawed. "It’s a very dangerous open question," says Sainz, "what BRAC will bring the city of San Diego."

If the Navy Broadway Complex went back to BRAC, the Southwest Group would still need a new HQ, but the remaining land would go to any federal agency that claimed it within 30 days.

The city and CCDC would lose any say over what ends up there, be it a Homeland Security installation, a new jail, or a crop of skyscrapers. After that period, the land would go to the highest bidder, with the onus on the Navy to get fair market value. "It doesn’t go to the local municipality," Dealy adds, "the way the Naval Training Center did."

As part of the governing body charged with signing off on the project, CCDC vice-president Fred Maas is neck-deep in weighing the balance of concerns over the complex. "There are the very simple quantitative determinations that have been outlined in the development agreement, and then there’s the esoteric, qualitative ones, and therein lies the rub." A newly appointed board member, Teddy Cruz, brings much-needed architectural and academic expertise to appraising the project’s merits.

While he’s cagey about committing to a verdict on the final plan before the last round of meetings on September 27, Maas is optimistic that an amended plan will be approved before the deadline. "Any time you try to shoehorn a project of this magnitude in a very short timeframe, issues are going to be raised. It’s not a Manchester question or a CCDC question, or a redevelopment question. The question before us is, does it meet the spirit and content of the agreement between the City Council and the Navy?"

"What we’ve got going on right now is really unprecedented," Brown points out, "where the city is actively engaged in helping to steer a federal redevelopment project. It’s a good deal for all of us."
— Cody Goodlfellow, photography by Vincent Knakal