A local eatery with deep roots in Barrio Logan recently sold at auction to the San Diego Community College District for $2.6 million. The site of Chuey’s Restaurant on Main Street will soon be the site for the new Cesar Chavez campus for the district’s continuing education program.
Frank De La Rosa, former owner of Chuey’s, said in a news release he was glad that the neighborhood will benefit from the programs that will be offered.
The $42 million campus will offer English as a second language, basic adult education, business information technology, parent education, older adult education and health courses.
Construction will begin in 2010.
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Tricky Road Ahead:
The volatility and uncertainty in the real estate market is likely to continue, according to the the Urban Land Institute San Diego/Tijuana Chapter.
The nonprofit, dedicated to best practices related to real estate development, hosted a conference titled “Real Estate Capital Markets: What’s the End Game” on Oct. 14, which featured numerous experts.
“The road ahead is going to be very volatile and very difficult,” said speaker Rajiv Patel, managing director of Spear Street Capital in San Francisco. “The reality is that we are in for a tricky road ahead.”
Speakers also included Don Ankeny, president and CEO of San Diego-based Westcore Properties and Sean Flannery, managing director of the San Francisco office of Real Estate Merchant Banking.
Richard Green, director of USC’s Lusk Center for Real Estate, served as the moderator.
Ankeny said that the current financial crisis should not be blamed entirely on Wall Street.
“Everyone likes to point to the Wall Street greed, but we need to look at our whole country,” he said. “We have lived in an over-leveraged environment. We are living in houses we can’t afford and taking vacations that we can’t afford.”
Flannery said it is hard to have any long-term confidence with the markets as they presently are, but added that California may offer positive opportunities.
“I still think there are more opportunities when there is volatility” Flannery said. “There is a silver lining. The capital is out there. Things are just going to have to be structured differently.”
The Urban Land Institute has 850 members locally.
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Dallas Development:
The Allen Group, a San Diego commercial developer, secured a $20 million bridge loan for the recapitalization of more than 1,000 acres at its master-planned logistics park near Dallas.
The Allen Group received a 36-month, adjustable-rate loan with American Bank of Texas with the assistance of Holliday Fenoglio Fowler, a provider of services to the real estate sector.
The Dallas Logistics Hub is a 6,000-acre multi-modal logistics park. It is planned for up to 60 million square feet of space for distribution, manufacturing, office and retail use.
The park is one of the largest inland ports with access to four major highways, Lancaster Airport , in the planning stages to facilitate air-cargo distribution , and Union Pacific’s intermodal terminal in the southern part of the city.
Send real estate, construction, design and urban planning news to Michelle Mowad at mmowad@sdbj.com. She may also be reached at 858- 277-6359, ext. 3109.
