Ballpark Building Restart Brightens Industry’s Outlook
BY MANDY JACKSON
Staff Writer
In about a year, workers will begin installing seats at the San Diego Padres’ new Downtown ballpark.
The following year, fans likely will be seated in them for the first time when the stadium opens in April 2004, in time for Opening Day.
“We can see it in our mind’s eye even today,” said Alan Petrasek, project executive for San Diego Ballpark Builders, a joint venture made up of San Diego-based construction companies Douglas E. Barnhart Inc. and Nielsen Dillingham Builders Inc., as well as Clark Construction Group Inc. of Bethesda, Md., the group’s managing partner.
The city announced Feb. 15 it had sold $169 million worth of bonds, jump-starting construction at the $450 million ballpark. Construction was suspended in October 2000 and remained stalled until Feb. 19 because of various lawsuits filed against the city.
“We’re working on notifying our subcontractors that suspension is over. Equipment is arriving to move dirt,” Petrasek said.
Within three or four months, up to 350 people will be working on the site daily. By the 10th or 12th month, about 500 people will be on site. That’s when trades such as drywallers, painters and seat installers will be needed.
The Ballpark Builders have maintained working relationships with 17 of the 18 subcontractors it was working with. Eventually, 35 to 40 subcontractors will work on the project.
Billy Sheldon, vice president at Ampam Commercial Sherwood Mechanical in Poway, said the company was not working at the ballpark, but was working on plumbing and site utilities at the Omni San Diego Hotel being developed next to the ballpark by JMI Realty, the commercial real estate company owned by Padres owner John Moores.
For the local construction community, Sheldon said the fact that ballpark construction is resuming is “huge.”
“The ballpark is just one big piece of the puzzle down there,” he said.
Sheldon expects the ballpark will create more interest in redeveloping the East Village neighborhood and more construction jobs for local companies.
Otherwise, this year might have been a tough one for many.
“In our construction circles, the economy is in a recession, but the ballpark is going to spur more jobs,” Sheldon said.
The city’s sale of its bonds is like an antacid for the indigestion caused by the 16 lawsuits that delayed ballpark construction, said Peter Hall, president and chief operating officer of the Centre City Redevelopment Corp., the city’s planning and development agency for Downtown.
“Everybody was just suffering through the pain and agony of all that stuff,” Hall said. “Our development requires momentum. People were worried about the catalyst not being there.”
Now that construction has restarted, attention can shift from the ballpark and focus on other redevelopment activity planned in the East Village, he said. More than $1 billion worth of new development is expected to occur in the neighborhood over the next three to five years.
JMI Realty is the master developer for the ballpark district. The company is responsible for $500 million worth of hotel, office, retail and residential development surrounding the ballpark.
Projects include the 32-story Omni Hotel; a 200-room Suites Hotel; Campus at the Park, an office project; East Village Square, an office/residential mix; and Island Village, a four-block rental and for-sale residential project.
JMI President and CEO John Kratzer said construction on the Omni Hotel could restart in May. JMI is getting the paperwork in order, updating its loan documents and getting its construction team back together.
Kratzer said the next project to get under way will most likely be East Village Square. Construction will probably begin in the fourth quarter of 2002 or first quarter of 2003. Arrowhead General Insurance Agency has already signed a 10-year lease for 75,400 square feet.
Construction on the Suites Hotel will probably begin in the first quarter of 2003.
“I think that time is your enemy in a project like this,” Kratzer said. The ballpark and ancillary development had grown stale in the eyes of banks and lenders, he said.
“Now what we need to do is take the ballpark momentum and engage with those people again,” he said.
