Daily Business Report-Feb. 6, 2018
Amtrak Pacific Surfliner crosses the bridge over the San Diego River. (Photo: SANDAG)
First New Track in Double-Tracking
Project Over San Diego River is Completed
Double-Tracking allows trains traveling in opposite directions
to pass each other without slowing down or stopping
A new bridge over the San Diego River opened to rail traffic on Monday. The first train over the bridge was the 4 a.m. Amtrak Pacific Surfliner, heading north from Santa Fe Depot.
The 900-foot bridge is part of the San Diego River Double Track Project that will increase the passenger and freight rail capacity and improve service for commuters. The old rail bridge, in use for decades, will be demolished to make way for a parallel bridge that will complete the double-tracking over the San Diego River. Double tracking allows trains traveling in opposite directions to pass each other without slowing down or stopping.
The San Diego River Bridge is a critical component of the double-tracking effort, as it is the only single-track segment south of Balboa Avenue. Once the parallel bridge is constructed and operational, the result will be a continuous seven-mile double track segment from Garnet Avenue/Balboa Avenue to the Santa Fe Depot.
The overall project budget is $93.9 million, which includes right-of-way costs, design, environmental planning, construction management, permitting, signal installation, and construction. The SDRDT Project began in 2016. Construction is anticipated to be complete in 2019.
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San Diego Regional Chamber of Commerce
to Hold Party to Celebrate its 147th Year
The San Diego Regional Chamber of Commerce celebrates its 147th year anniversary tonight with awards to local leaders and a talk by acclaimed filmmaker Brett Culp, co-founder of The Rising Heroes Project.
The event will celebrate the chamber’s partners and members and the accomplishments achieved over the past year. The chamber will also share its priorities for 2018 which includes a focus on leadership.
The event will be held from 5 to 7:30 p.m. at the Marriott Marquis & Marina Grand Ballroom on West Harbor Drive in Downtown San Diego.
Culp, whose film “Legends of the Knight” raised more than $100,000 for charity, will deliver keynote remarks on the potential each of us has for leadership that can make a meaningful, lasting impact. County Supervisor Kristin Gaspar will share an update from county government and recognize the chamber’s 2018 board of directors’
Susan Salka, CEO, president and director of AMN Healthcare, will be presented the “Moving San Diego Forward” award by the chamber. Herb Johnson, former president and CEO of the San Diego Rescue Mission, will receive the “Herb Klein Spirit of San Diego” award.
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Hobby Lobby to Anchor Oceanside’s
College Plaza Shopping Center
Hobby Lobby will serve as a new anchor at the College Plaza shopping Center in Oceanside. The arts and crafts specialty retailer completed a lease for 58,646 square feet in the North County center and will backfill a significant anchor-tenant vacancy previously occupied by Dick’s Sporting Goods. College Plaza is owned by 95 College Plaza LTD, which was represented in the transaction by Bruce Schiff and Andrew Peterson with Cushman & Wakefield.
With more than 800 stores, Hobby Lobby is the largest privately owned arts-and-crafts retailer in the world with approximately 32,000 employees and operating in 47 states.
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New Restaurant Concept to Anchor
Pacific Gate By Bosa’s Retail Space
Bosa Development announced that its Pacific Gate by Bosa’s ground floor retail space will be anchored by Puffer Malarkey Restaurants’ newest restaurant concept, Animae. Spearheaded by Christopher Puffer, Brian Malarkey and co-chef and partner Shane McIntyre, the company is known for its successful concepts, including Herb & Wood, Herb & Eatery, Green Acre, and Farmer & The Seahorse. Animae will be a contemporary Asian American restaurant that blends cuisines from Japan to Southeast Asia with the cosmopolitan design and architecture of Hong Kong. It is scheduled to open at the end of the year, taking up more than 15,000 square feet of the ground floor retail space.
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Financing Arranged for San Elijo Hills
Town Center Phase I in San Marcos
Construction financing of $7.46 million has been arranged for the San Elijo Hills Town Center Phase I, which is part of the San Elijo Hills master-planned community in San Marcos. HFF worked on behalf of the developer, Ambient Communities, to place the 18-month construction loan with a commercial bank.
San Elijo Hills Town Center Phase I consists of four single-story buildings comprising multi-tenant retail suites ranging from 1,080 to 6,400 square feet. In the summer of 2018, Ambient Communities will welcome its first tenants to the San Elijo Hills Town Center: Cycle Bar, Lourdes Mexican Restaurant, Downtown Academy Tutoring, Everbowl and San Elijo Pediatric Dentistry. As leasing progresses, more tenants will be announced.
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UC San Diego Health Selected
as Accountable Care Organization
UC San Diego Health has been selected by Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services as one of 561 Accountable Care Organizations (ACOs), ensuring as many as 10.5 million Medicare beneficiaries across the United States have access to high-quality, coordinated care.
UC San Diego Health is participating in the Medicare Shared Savings Program. The Shared Savings Program was established by Section 3022 of the Affordable Care Act. Shared Savings Program ACOs are groups of doctors and other health care providers who voluntarily work together with Medicare to provide high quality services to Medicare fee-for-service beneficiaries.
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Personnel Announcements
Patrick Mühlen-Schulte Takes San Diego Opera Post
San Diego Opera has appointed Patrick Mühlen-Schulte to the position of chief development officer, the company’s principal fundraiser, responsible and accountable for achieving the annual and long-term goals for contributed income. Mühlen-Schulte and his staff of five will provide impetus and support to the fundraising efforts of the board of directors, the board chair, and the general director.
Mühlen-Schulte was most recently employed with Los Angeles Opera as associate director of development, individual giving.
Mühlen-Schulte worked as an arts administrator and consultant to major performing arts companies and venues in the U.S. and Australia. He led development programs with the Houston Grand Opera and LA Opera. Notably, he worked with Opera Australia to produce the highly successful Handa Opera on Sydney Harbour, and achieved significant capital investment in the Sydney Opera House.
Prior to joining the US opera sector, he worked in New York as a corporate business development manager and external affairs executive with Marsh & McLennan, a global financial services and consulting firm. He has an extensive background as a senior policy adviser and chief of staff in the Australian government sector, leading teams in the finance, trade and cultural portfolios.
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Aubree Green and Leah Strickland Elected
Partners at Solomon Ward Seidenwurm & Smith
Aubree Green and Leah Strickland have been elected partners of law firm Solomon Ward Seidenwurm & Smith LLP.
Strickland is a member of the firm’s litigation practice group. Her practice focuses on business litigation, employment litigation and intellectual property disputes. She has extensive experience defending against claims under the state and federal Fair Debt Collection Practices Act. Strickland is currently a member of the San Diego County Bar Association’s Legal Ethics Committee and Appellate Practice Section. She received her J.D. from William & Mary School of Law, where she was a recipient of the merit-based Graduate Research Fellowship, served as a member of the Law Review, was admitted into the William & Mary Chapter of Order of the Coif, and earned CALI Awards in Philosophy of the Law and Patent Law. She received her B.A., with high honors, from the University of Texas at Austin, where she was admitted into the Phi Betta Kappa Society.
Green, who will join the partnership on July 1, is a member of the firm’s business and
corporate and real estate practice groups. She has extensive experience in all aspects of commercial real estate transactions, involving casinos, hotels, industrial, retail, office, multi-family and single-family residential and other commercial properties. She also represents clients in land use and other regulatory matters relating to real estate development. Green received her J.D. from the University of San Diego School of Law, where she was a member of the San Diego Law Review and her B.A. from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. She is licensed to practice law in California and Nevada.
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Reduced Energy from the Sun
Might Occur by Mid-Century
Now Scientists Know by How Much
The Sun might emit less radiation by mid-century, giving planet Earth a chance to warm a bit more slowly but not halt the trend of human-induced climate change.
The cooldown would be the result of what scientists call a grand minimum, a periodic event during which the Sun’s magnetism diminishes, sunspots form infrequently, and less ultraviolet radiation makes it to the surface of the planet. Scientists believe that the event is triggered at irregular intervals by random fluctuations related to the Sun’s magnetic field.
Scientists have used reconstructions based on geological and historical data to attribute a cold period in Europe in the mid-17th Century to such an event, named the “Maunder Minimum.” Temperatures were low enough to freeze the Thames River on a regular basis and freeze the Baltic Sea to such an extent that a Swedish army was able to invade Denmark in 1658 on foot by marching across the sea ice.
A team of scientists led by research physicist Dan Lubin at Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California San Diego have created for the first time an estimate of how much dimmer the Sun should be when the next minimum takes place.
There is a well-known 11-year cycle in which the Sun’s ultraviolet radiation peaks and declines as a result of sunspot activity. During a grand minimum, Lubin estimates that ultraviolet radiation diminishes an additional seven percent beyond the lowest point of that cycle. His team’s study, “Ultraviolet Flux Decrease Under a Grand Minimum from IUE Short-wavelength Observation of Solar Analogs,” appears in the publication Astrophysical Journal Letters and was funded by the state of California.
“Now we have a benchmark from which we can perform better climate model simulations,” Lubin said. “We can therefore have a better idea of how changes in solar UV radiation affect climate change.”
