Daily Business Report-Sept. 8, 2016
Rendering of the Carté Hotel & Suites San Diego
Groundbreaking Friday for Newest
Hotel High-Rise in Downtown San Diego
The newest high-rise hotel in Downtown San Diego — the 14-story Carté Hotel & Suites San Diego — will break ground at 1 p.m. on Friday at 401 W. Ash St. in Little Italy.
Latitude 33 Planning & Engineering, in association with Pierpoint Management LLC and Tucker Sadler Architects Inc., is overseeing site engineering efforts on the project.
The hotel will include 240 upscale guest rooms and suites along with a restaurant, wine shop, full-service upscale athletic club, outdoor pool with spa and meeting space. The 151,248-square-foot project includes about 3,900 square feet of street-level retail space and 127 parking spaces on two levels of subterranean parking. The hotel is set to feature a 2,000-square-foot plaza that fronts Ash St. and include 24-hour valet parking.
The hotel will have LEED Silver Certification upon completion. Construction is anticipated to take 18 months. The first hotel guest check-in could start in June 2018.
Previous Latitude 33 hospitality projects include the Fairmont Grand Del Mar and Rancho Bernardo Inn in San Diego, the Four Seasons Resort Aviara in Carlsbad, Temecula Creek Inn in Temecula and Redlands Mesa in Grand Junction, Colo.
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The $44.3 Million Mesa Commons
Dedication Sept. 14 at Mesa College
Dedication of the new Mesa Commons at San Diego Mesa College — the new student hub and gateway to the campus — will be held on Sept. 14 and will include a ceremony, tours of the facility and an open house.
The Commons houses two cafeterias, the campus bookstore, convenience store, coffee café, culinary arts management labs and classroom, student-run M Fusion Dining Café, faculty and student lounge spaces, conference rooms, as well as campus stockroom, mail and printing services.
The program is at 10 a.m. Open house and tours are from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m.
The 73,000-square-foot Mesa Commons was built at a cost of $44.3 million
from the $1.555 billion Propositions S and N construction bond program.
Mesa Commons is the first building on campus to house a group of cisterns that provide 100 percent of the site’s irrigation needs through reclaimed refrigeration condensate water and collected rain water.
An organic roof garden is also a first for the campus. Used by the Culinary Arts Management department and fed by reclaimed water, the garden will provide some of the produce used in the building’s student-run café. Multiple solar chimneys, radiant floor heating/cooling, and a substantial solar thermal array all make this building stand out for energy efficiency.
The project team included SGPA Architecture and Planning and the Miller Hull Partnership; Balfour Beatty Construction, design/builder; Latitude 33, civil engineer; and Stantec, electrical engineer.
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Gaming Industry Veteran
Janet Beronio to Retire
Janet Beronio, a veteran of the gaming industry who oversees Harrah’s Resort Southern
California as regional president and general manager, is to step down this month in retirement.
Beronio will be succeeded by Darrell Pilant, currently the vice president and assistant general manager of the Valley Center resort.
Beronio was named senior vice president and general manager in 2003, but her career with Caesars Entertainment dates back further. She began as associate general counsel for Harrah’s Entertainment, and later became vice president and general manager for Harrah’s Ak-Chin in Arizona, where she supervised the management of the company’s first Native American-owned gaming property and led the property through nine years of growth.
In 2003, Beronio took on her current role at Harrah’s Resort Southern California, where she managed the construction and grand opening of a $168 million expansion in 2004; a $160 million revamp in 2014; and, this year, spearheaded a $14 million renovation project that is
anticipated to be completed by summer 2017.
“Janet is a gifted manager, a good friend and a caring person who is highly respected by her team members and peers,” said Bo Mazzetti, chairman of the Rincon Band of Luiseño Indians. These qualities, along with her keen business sense, have made all the difference in Harrah’s Resort Southern California’s growth and success.
Pilant has been with Caesars Entertainment for 19 years. He began his career in 1997 as first mate at Harrah’s Casino and Hotel in North Kansas City and, over the next 10 years, held positions at seven different locations across the United States, eventually working his way to assistant general manager at Harrah’s Resort Southern California.
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Port of San Diego to Select Developer
For Harbor Island Property
By City News Service
The Port of San Diego Board of Commissioners is scheduled Thursday to select a developer for property on the east end of Harbor Island.
Port staff recommends a proposal by OliverMcMillan Inc., which built Village Hillcrest, the Uptown District in Hillcrest and the University City headquarters of Science Applications International Corp., among other projects. The other finalist out of six submissions is Sunroad Enterprises.
According to a staff report, OliverMcMillan’s proposal — at $782 million on the low end to $978 million on the high end — calls for up to 1,500 hotel rooms, a “boatel” of as many as 300 rooms, waterfront shops and a seaplane exhibit operated in partnership with the San Diego Air & Space Museum. The exhibit would celebrate a location where seaplanes were built and launched.
The 57-acre project would also include a new headquarters for the Port of San Diego and Harbor Police.
Sunroad’s $600 million proposal was similar, but would add a conference center and connections to a nearby marina it owns.
Some of the property was vacated earlier this year when a new rental car facility opened on the other side of adjacent Lindbergh Field. The current Harbor PD building and a staging area for taxis still occupies the land.
Selection of a developer by the commissioners would open an exclusive negotiating window of between nine months and one year for port staff and the company to iron out details and prepare environmental studies.
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San Diego Workforce Partnership Receives
$400,000 Grant to Assist Retail Workers
The San Diego Workforce Partnership was selected to receive a $400,000 grant from the Chicago Cook Workforce Partnership to increase the economic mobility of workers in retail and adjacent sectors in San Diego County.
Approximately 425 people in San Diego County will benefit from the grant, according to the announcement by the Walmart Foundation.
“With the retail industry supporting one in four American jobs, this grant presents tremendous potential to impact retail workers (starting out or established) to grow in their current and future positions,” said Peter Callstrom, Workforce Partnership CEO. “The goal of this grant is to create clear career paths for hundreds of retail workers, providing skills training and new approaches to accelerate career advancement.”
SDWP is one of 10 Workforce Development Boards selected across the country to collectively form and implement new models of career services specific to retail — models that will serve as best practices for the approximately 550 WDBs in the U.S. that already provide career services, such as career coaching, soft skills training, specialized skills training and referrals to other resources. The funding is part of a $10.9 million grant the Walmart Foundation made to The Partnership in March 2016.
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NASA Seeks Spacecraft Assembly
Concepts from University Students
ExecutiveGov
NASA has invited university student teams and their faculty advisers to design and analyze concepts that utilize modular space systems and robotic technology for in-space spacecraft assembly.
NASA’s Game Changing Development Program and the National Institute of Aerospace seek ideas for the development of tugs that are powered by solar electric propulsion and would work to transfer payloads to a lunar distant retrograde orbit from low Earth orbit, NASA said Tuesday.
The quest is part of the 2017 Breakthrough, Innovative and Game-changing Idea Challenge and interested participants are required to submit proposals by Nov. 30.
NASA said a panel of experts will select four finalist teams to submit technical papers on their concepts and prepare a presentation for the BIG Idea Forum in February, for which they will get a $6,000 stipend.
The space agency added it will offer the winning team paid internships with the GCD team at the Langley Research Center to develop and mature their concept.
A few concepts NASA wants participants to use in the challenge include approaches for packaging modules to minimize the loads of launch vehicles, modular solar arrays and ion engines as well as robotic assembly of the modules that constitute the SEP tug.
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Navy’s Most Advanced Warship
USS Zumwalt Heading for San Diego
The Navy’s newest and most technologically advanced surface ship, future USS Zumwalt, departed Bath Iron Works in Maine on Sept. 7, marking the beginning of a three-month journey to its new homeport in San Diego.
Crewed by 147 sailors, Zumwalt is the lead ship of a class of next-generation multi-mission destroyers designed to strengthen naval power. They are capable of performing critical maritime missions and enhance the Navy’s ability to provide deterrence, power projection and sea control.
Named for Adm. Elmo R. “Bud” Zumwalt Jr., former chief of naval operations from 1970 to 1974, the Zumwalt-class features a state-of-the-art electric propulsion system, a wave-piercing tumblehome hull, stealth design and the latest war fighting technology and weaponry available.
“As the DDG 1000 sails into open water, Zumwalt is once again on active service in the U.S. Navy,” said Capt. James A. Kirk, Zumwalt’s commanding officer.
DDG 1000 will be the first U.S. Navy combatant surface ship to utilize an integrated power system (IPS) to provide electric power for propulsion and ship services. The IPS generates approximately 78 megawatts of power, nearly what a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier generates, to meet the total ship electric power requirements and provide extra capacity to accommodate future weapons and computing systems.
The 147 sailors of Zumwalt have completed the training and certifications required of them in record time. “They have demonstrated superb technical expertise, teamwork, and toughness over the last three months,” said Kirk.
Zumwalt is much larger than today’s destroyers. At 610 feet long and 80.7 feet wide, Zumwalt is 100 feet longer and 13 feet wider, and its flight deck is 93 percent larger than an Arleigh Burke-class destroyer.
USS Zumwalt will be formally commissioned during Fleet Week Maryland in Baltimore, Oct. 15.
Following the commissioning ceremony Zumwalt will begin its transit to San Diego, making several port visits en route. Upon arrival in San Diego, she is scheduled to take part in a Post Delivery Availability and Mission Systems Activation and is expected to be integrated into the fleet in 2018 following test and evaluation.
