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Port Approvals Will Finally Get Ball Rolling at Lane Field

Developers are moving forward with a $130 million, 400-room hotel project on the former site of the Lane Field minor league ballpark in downtown San Diego, after nearly a decade of planning and discussion.

LPP Lane Field LLC, a group that includes locally based Lankford & Associates Inc., recently received final port district approvals for the development, which will include a dual-hotel building housing a 253-room Springhill Suites by Marriott and a 147-room Residence Inn by Marriott.

The project also calls for retail support elements, parking and public plazas. The two hotels will share common elevators and other elements, but will have separate lobbies.

“With the port’s approval we have reached a significant milestone and look forward to commencing the project in the very near future,” President and CEO Robert Lankford said in an email.

Plans call for hotel construction to begin this year and conclude by early 2016. Developers will also build an adjacent setback park and plaza that is expected to be completed in early 2015, in conjunction with a larger renovation of the North Embarcadero waterfront area being carried out by the Port of San Diego.

New Ballgame for Site With History

The approved hotel is on the northern portion of a 5.5-acre site off Pacific Highway at West Broadway. The site is currently a parking lot but once housed Lane Field, where the minor league incarnation of the San Diego Padres of the Pacific Coast League played from 1936 to 1957.

The team was an early forerunner to Major League Baseball’s Padres, founded in 1969. Before it was a minor league ballpark, the downtown site served for about a decade as a U.S. Navy athletic field.

The development team’s equity partner is AIG Global Real Estate, and developers have received port approval to obtain a construction loan of up to $83 million from US Bank, according to a port district staff report.

The project marks the first phase of what is planned as a long-term, two-phase redevelopment of the former ballpark site. Developers have obtained an option to develop the southern portion of the property with another 400-room hotel, with details still to be finalized.

The overall ballpark site is bounded by U.S. Navy engineering command facilities to the north, Pacific Highway to the east, West Broadway to the south and North Harbor Drive to the west.

Hotel Projects Picking Up

New hotel projects are now moving forward in downtown San Diego and adjacent neighborhoods, although they are limited-service rather than luxury properties, following several years in which developers encountered financing and other obstacles to construction.

The Port of San Diego also recently approved plans for a four-story, 175-room hotel proposed by San Diego-

based Sunroad Enterprises at Harbor Island. That $30 million project, with hotel branding to be finalized, calls for demolishing an existing locker building and a parking lot near Sunroad’s

existing marina building off Harbor Island Drive.

Currently under construction by T2 Development of Newport Beach is a dual-branded, 364-room downtown hotel being built on the former Fat City restaurant site off Pacific Highway.

Another long-discussed hotel and office project, at the Navy Broadway Complex near the Lane Field site, has been proposed by Manchester Financial Group, led by local developer and U-T San Diego owner Douglas Manchester. That development has been delayed for several years by legal, environmental, financing and related challenges.

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