Community’s Retail Village Is Set to Open in August
Two local investment corporations, one a for-profit and the other a nonprofit, are looking back into the urban core of the city to revitalize low-income neighborhoods , easing the affordable housing crunch for many low-income families while refurbishing entire communities through residential and commercial projects.
These neighborhoods, punished by the flight to the suburbs that began decades ago, deterioration and a lack of capital, probably aren’t the jewel in most real estate investors’ eyes.
But Robert Turner and William Jones see a sparkling future in these diverse communities, such as City Heights and Barrio Logan.
Turner is director of the San Diego chapter of Local Initiatives Support Corp., or LISC, a nonprofit organization that corrals grants, loans and philanthropic donations and funnels them to nonprofit community groups and developers.
Jones is president and CEO of CityLink Investment Corp. and author of a $140 million master plan for the revitalization of the urban community of City Heights.
The project, a marriage of private and public investment, is a comprehensive development that includes a San Diego police substation, gymnasium, library, community college, park, child-care facility, theater, swimming pool, the Rosa Parks Elementary School and a retail center.
In 1994, Jones proposed the “urban village” to city officials, and the two parties became partners in the redevelopment.
CityLink, Jones’ company, is managing the only private piece of the plan, the retail center.
Known as the City Heights Retail Village, it is a $17.3 million, 109,000-square-foot center in the heart of the urban village. CityLink manages a $3.6 million joint investment in the shopping center.
“I believe that San Diego has an immense amount of opportunity to create a vibrant city with strong and healthy neighborhoods throughout the city,” Jones said, “if it reinvests in its urban areas and strives to make economic opportunity for the entire city.”
Personally, Jones, 45, had the clout to get it done. Jones served as a city councilman in the 1980s when he was in his 20s, and then left San Diego to pursue his MBA from Harvard University.
After receiving his degree from Harvard Business School in 1989, he worked as an investment manager for Prudential Realty Group. He sits on a number of boards, including Sempra Energy, and acts as chairman to a number of groups, including the Federal Reserve Bank of San Fransisco’s Los Angeles branch.
He returned home to start CityLink and its first project, the City Heights Urban Village.
“What we inherited was a neighborhood that had very willing residents but that was lacking public and private investment,” he said. “We think the private sector has a role to play in partnership with the government to spark the kind of investment that is necessary to serve as a catalyst for further economic investment.”
Jones added the project wouldn’t have been possible without the unique partnership between the residents, private companies and government.
Turner also understands the importance of such alliances.
Like Jones, he believes public policy failed urban areas and had a heavy hand in the decline of the communities. But he also knows government cannot be relied upon to cure all a neighborhood’s ills.
“It starts with the people,” he said. “They have the most stake in this.”
In less than a decade in San Diego, LISC has doled out $96 million in loans and grants to neighborhood projects , helping to create more than 4,000 units of affordable housing and more than 220,000 square feet of commercial space in low-income areas.
They get a large chunk of their funds from banks such as Wells Fargo and Bank of America, and large corporations.
LISC’s most recent action was a $100,000 loan to the Metropolitan Area Advisory Committee in Logan Heights. The money will go to predevelopment costs for a project that will combine affordable housing and commercial businesses in the Barrio Logan neighborhood, where he said there has been no new development for 40 years.
Twenty-five to 30 percent of LISC funding goes to training citizens, so the people of the communities not only have affordable housing and retail around them, but they have the skills to elevate themselves.
The Retail Initiative, an LISC affiliate, is responsible for providing a $3.5 million equity investment in the City Heights Retail Village, which will hold Denny’s, McDonald’s, Papa John’s pizza and Washington Mutual Bank as some of its tenants when it opens in mid-July. Albertsons, the anchor tenant at 67,000 square feet, is set to open in mid-August.
“When we support neighborhoods, it’s lasting and meaningful,” Turner said. “It makes for a real change in people’s lives.”
The deadline for the next real estate column is Thursday, May 3. Contact Donohue at adonohue@sdbj.com, or by fax at (858) 571-3628.
