Daily Business Report-Nov. 6, 2013
Rendering of the Golden Hill Row Home Project
27 Row Homes Planned for Golden Hill
Presidio Residential Capital has provided $8.2 million to build the first phase of the Golden Hill Row Home Project, a group of 27 detached row homes to be built in Golden Hill. Twenty of the 27 units will be built during the first phase. Pre-sales will begin in spring 2014, and the first phase of construction should be complete in September 2014. The community should be fully built by March 2015.
“This is the highest quality project approved by the Golden Hill Community Planning Committee with unanimous consent,” said Presidio Principal Don Faye. Designed by H2A Architects, Golden Hill won the 2010 PCBC Golden Nugget Award for The Best on the Boards Multi-Family Project.
The homes will get more than 50 percent of their electricity from solar energy, and homeowners will have the option of purchasing additional photovoltaic panels that would allow them to go completely solar, saving them from $40 to $200 per month, according to Faye. He said on-demand water heaters, which use 30 percent less energy than conventional water heaters, will save homeowners about $100 per month.
The project is located between 28th and 29th streets and B and C streets.
Wermers Breaks Ground on Kensington Commons Apartments
Wermers has broken ground on Kensington Commons Apartments, reportedly the largest multi-story mixed use project to start construction in the Kensington area in decades. The residential units will be constructed over a parking garage and street level retail spaces. Vice President Rich Wood is leading the Wermers team on the project with Ken Maskevich as project manager, Josh Wermers as superintendent and Jamie Mims as site administrator.
Vista Apartments Sell for $4.23 Million
VISTA — Park Vista Apartments, a 31-unit apartment building at 700 Alta Vista Drive in Vista, has been sold for $4,230,000 to William and Katherine Loveland. The sellers were Laurence and Carlo Lusvardi. complex was originally built in 1964. It has nine one-bedroom, one bath units and 22 two-bedroom/one-bath units. Marcus & Millichap’s San Diego office listed the property.
NASSCO Lays Keel for 3rd Mobile Landing Platform Ship
NASSCO hosted a keel laying ceremony Tuesday for the USNS Lewis B. Puller, the third ship in the Mobile Landing Platform (MLP) class. The ship is named for Lewis B. Puller, the most decorated U.S. Marine in history and the only one to be awarded five Navy Crosses.
MLP-3 is the first ship of the class to be configured as an Afloat Forward Staging Base. Delivery is scheduled for the second quarter of 2015. The ship has accommodations for 250 personnel and a large helicopter flight deck.
Cal State San Marcos to Get New Veterans Center
SAN MARCOS — Cal State San Marcos will stage a Friday ceremony to celebrate the groundbreaking of its new Veterans Center. The stand-alone “smart house” is being donated to the university by students at the Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken, N.J. and will be located on the vacant lot adjacent to Science Hall 1 and Markstein Hall. The ceremony is at 11 a.m. at the university, 333 S. Twin Oaks Valley Road.
Southwest Strategies Adds Senior Account Executive
Oscar Urteaga has been hired as a senior account executive at Southwest Strategies, a San Diego public affairs and public relations agency. Urteaga has five years of experience working in political and legislative affairs. Previously, he was a legislative assistant to Congressman Howard McKeon. In the 113th Congress, he spearheaded the introduction of two pieces of legislation: H.R. 1997, known as the Communities Achieving Sustainability Act (CASA), and H.R. 1998, the Big Cats and Public Safety Protection Act. Urteaga completed his undergraduate work at San Diego State University, earning a degree in public administration.
City and County Proclaim ‘Duane Roth Day’
The San Diego City Council and San Diego County have proclaimed Nov. 19 to be Duane Roth Day. The day is meant to coincide with National Entrepreneurs’ Day which is being pushed through on the federal level with a bill recently introduced by Congressman Scott Peters. It will be a day to remember Roth’s dedication to developing San Diego’s entrepreneurship community. Roth died Aug. 3 from injuries suffered in a bicycle accident. He founded Alliance Pharmaceutical in 1988 and was CEO of San Diego Connect, which brought together leaders from the region’s high tech and biotech industries.
Roth was on the board of the state agency responsible for stem cell research and had been set to become chairman of the Sanford-Burnham Research Institute’s board of directors. He also was a member of the executive board of Lead San Diego, a leadership training organization. Earlier in his career, he was a senior executive at Johnson & Johnson and Wyeth.
— City News Service
Council to Consider Zero Waste Initiative
A plan to reduce the amount of waste that goes into landfills in San Diego, and eventually stop it altogether, will be presented to the City Council’s Natural Resources and Culture Committee today, City News Service reports. City staff proposes the zero waste initiative because the Miramar Landfill is running out of space, and because the state is requiring that 75 percent of waste be diverted from landfills by 2020. The diversion rate in San Diego in 2012 was 68 percent — almost unchanged over three years, according to city documents.
The plan would also have the city divert all waste from landfills by 2040 through conservation, recycling and composting. In California, 15 cities and several large corporations have zero waste policies, according to a staff report.
The report proposes a multi-pronged approach, including expanding recycling of yard waste, developing infrastructure to divert food waste, developing regulations to support the initiative and changing funding resources for recycling programs.
The city’s Environmental Services Department said the Miramar Landfill is slated to close in 2022, though increased diversion could keep the facility operating longer. Council members will be asked to approve the objectives of the initiative. City staff would develop the plan in detail and bring it back to the committee next spring.
Castlerock Housing Development Under Fire
Three environmental groups intend to sue to stop the construction of a proposed 430-home development near Santee, KPBS reports. The Castlerock Project is under fire because of concerns over the housing tract’s impact on the region.Pardee Homes got approval for the project from San Diego officials back in September, but that approval didn’t sit well with the Center for Biological Diversity, the California Chaparral Institute and the group Preserve Wild Santee. The organizations are taking the city to court hoping to have the project changed.
John Buse works for the Center for Biological Diversity. He said the current project doesn’t do enough to protect natural habitat and endangered species and he is concerned that the homes will be built in a high fire hazard zone. Buse would like to see the project changed into something that is more in line with the habitat already in place. “A project that both considers the environmental and public safety risks more comprehensively; one that just does a better job of incorporating all those concerns, and we think that’s possible,” Buse said.
An official with Pardee Homes had no comment on the suit.
San Diego State Receives $8.5 Million Grant for Heart Research
The National Institutes of Health has awarded a Program Project Grant totaling more than $8.5 million over five-years to San Diego State University to better understand how the heart heals and ways stem cells can help the heart repair itself. “Regenerative medicine using stem cells has changed the way researchers and clinicians are thinking about and trying to treat heart failure,” said Mark Sussman, a professor of biology at SDSU.
“We now know that the damaged heart attempts to repair itself following injury, but the ability to heal is limited by many factors. Our research program centers on understanding and clearing away these limitations to restore cardiac function and quality of life to patients suffering from the devastating effects of heart failure, which is the No. 1 cause of hospitalization for the elderly.”
As the grant’s lead principal investigator, Sussman, who is the chief research scientist of the SDSU Integrated Regenerative Research Institute, will work primarily on understanding how to modify stem cells and the heart to increase regenerative potential.
The research team will use cells that have been isolated from heart failure patients — the very people who would benefit directly from advances in this critical research.
The goal of the program is to develop new therapeutic strategies using stem cell-based treatment to regenerate the heart.
Piazza D’Oro in Oceanside Sells for $81 Million
OCEANSIDE — Piazza D’Oro, a 221-unit luxury mixed-use development in Oceanside, has been sold for $81 million to TruAmerica Multifamily, a Los Angeles-based real estate investment firm. The property includes 42 buildings on 14.4 acres. Two- and three-bedroom townhomes are featured. About 17,000 square feet of leasable on-site office space was included in the sale, with additional retail space previously sold to a private investor. The seller of the property was an affiliate of The ConAm Group.
“Because it was originally intended as condominiums for sale, Piazza D’Oro is the premier multi-housing project along the SR-78 corridor,” said Kevin Mulhern of CBRE. “On a per-unit basis, the sale price is the highest ever paid for rental homes in North San Diego County.”
Originally entitled as for-sale housing, the property was sold during construction to The ConAm Group, which completed the project in 2010.
