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Monday, Mar 18, 2024
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ROCKIN’ AND ROLLIN’

SUDBERRY PROPERTIES

Chairman: Tom Sudberry.

President: Colton Sudberry.

Financial information: Not disclosed.

No. of local employees: About 30.

Year founded: 1979.

Headquarters: Sorrento Valley.

Company description: Developer and manager of retail and mixed-use properties.

Key factors for success: Company’s projects span wide geographic area, with recent emphasis on development and reuse of infill properties in established communities.

The Mission Valley site where a quarry was first mined 75 years ago to feed a growing city’s demand for new roads and buildings is now busy with construction of houses and apartments at Civita, representing a final frontier of sorts for large San Diego housing projects.

After nearly a dozen years of planning, revisions and recalibrations, sales and leasing recently got started at Sudberry Properties’ mixed-use development, where the locally based company and its guest builders will be investing an estimated $2.5 billion in the next decade, said Sudberry company officials.

The multi-phase, 230-acre development will eventually have 4,780 residential units in various configurations, served by a host of retail and other commercial service offerings. Throughout the property, walk-friendly open-space areas will invite social interaction through civic, recreational and other amenities emphasizing environmental sustainability, according to Sudberry officials.

Developers are also in talks with operators on a proposed on-site charter school.

Live, Work, Shop, Play

“The idea is that you could live here, work here, shop here, play here and send your children to school here — that’s the vision of what we’re trying to accomplish with this,” said Chairman Tom Sudberry, whose San Diego company began envisioning the project around 1999, then started acquiring property in 2002.

Thanks to the company’s relatively conservative development approach and a sound balance sheet, Sudberry said the project has been able to weather a series of macro-economic events, including two recessions, which squelched demand for new housing. “It really helps to own the land free and clear without the debt service issues,” he said.

Sudberry Senior Vice President Marco Sessa said it took about seven years to gather all the necessary entitlements before construction started last year.

The crucial part of moving the project forward was assuaging concerns of city planners and residents in the already congested neighborhood of Mission Valley, near Interstate 805 and Mission Center Road.

Sudberry estimates that the company has invested $50 million in mitigation measures, including studies, road reconfigurations and signals, to ensure traffic entering and leaving the development does not clog major thoroughfares. Civita itself, where 130 of the 230 acres will see actual construction, has been designed to minimize vehicle traffic and encourage use of the nearby trolley line.

“Having gone through the dozens of meetings we’ve had in the community, we think that’s made this a better project overall,” Sudberry said.

A Model Project

Kelly Broughton, development services director for the City of San Diego, estimates that Sudberry Properties and its representatives attended 20 to 30 community planning meetings over the years, absorbing feedback and conducting several complex technical studies before the project was ultimately approved.

While Civita is among the last residential properties of its size in central San Diego to be master-planned, it will likely serve as a model for other high-density infill projects. For instance, he said there are other quarries nearing the end of their production, in locations such as Grantville and Mira Mesa, which could be developed on a smaller scale for mixed-use projects.

“This is going to be the case for developments in the future,” Broughton said. “The developers will want to keep the mitigation expenses low by making these work in high-density settings.”

Sudberry officials said Civita’s name is derived from the Latin roots for “civic” and “vitality.” In the past month, developers began showing and leasing the first phase of a planned 306 apartments at Circa 37, named for the year 1937, when the land began life as a quarry under its prior owner.

Also, the development’s first guest builder, Shea Homes, has begun selling townhome-style houses in two styles — priced from the low $400,000s to the low $500,000s — including one model built in a community courtyard setting.

Paul Barnes, president of Shea Homes’ San Diego division, said the builder has seen brisk traffic in its sales office since its December opening. As of Jan. 24, it had sold eight homes at its development known as Origen, where Shea will build 200 homes in the next two years.

“This reflects a realization that we’re going to have to see a more compact approach to these developments, and make good use of what’s available as our population grows,” Barnes said of Civita’s planning. “I would think that this is the way people will want to do these projects in other parts of the San Diego area and in other cities.”

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