What began with Petco Park is starting to come full circle in East Village.
The last frontier of downtown San Diego is fast evolving into a "destination" community -- one that's feeling urban growing pains, and continuing political and economic conflicts over future development.
If you "follow the money," it's reaching skyward in the form of highrise condo towers, and pointing toward projects like a sports and convention facility, plus a major hotel.
But a leading developer vows to keep things "scalable," by way of smart growth that's people-friendly.
"We've made a huge investment downtown," says Steve Peace, senior advisor for JMI Inc., the outfit behind Petco Park and current developer of Ballpark Village, a $250 million "mixed-use" complex across the street that'll encompass several hundred apartments.
"We're building more apartment and condo capacity over the next few years than probably anybody else in East Village,” Peace told NBC 7 in an interview Thursday. “So the last thing we want to do is diminish the quality of life."
Just to the south of Ballpark Village, a project that’s been under way since last April, is a vacant parcel that also could be turned over to residential construction -- or a 1,600 room convention hotel that would align with a "campus-style” expansion space for the San Diego Convention Center.
Whether or not that might include a new stadium for the Chargers next door would depend on a tricky series of political schemes and calculations.
Some downtown civic activists says those would be steps in the wrong direction.
"If you put a convention center and stadium over there, first of all they're not on the public tax rolls,” says Wayne Raffesberger, an attorney steeped in redevelopment and urban growth issues.
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“They're not generating anything for the region -- unlike a higher and better use of an educational complex, a satellite campus of, say, UCSD or San Diego State or them combined,” Raffesberger explained.
“Or a high-tech office park. Those are the kind of creative new uses that'll generate jobs for the region."
Next week the City Council is expected to approve measures that would preserve options for developing a convention hotel or a mixed use residential complex near Ballpark Village.
