San Diego Magazine / September 1995 / Valley Fever

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Valley Fever

(page 1 of 2)

(SECOND OF TWO PARTS)

A storm is gathering in Mission Valley. Maybe the biggest ever. And from his calm-in-the-eye viewpoint, Peter Bride says it's about time. Bride, manager of the Hazard Center on Friars Road, welcomes the tsunami of new construction, new ideas and new competitors swelling up on all sides of the valley competition some might expect to threaten his complex.

To the east, there's Rio Vista West, 95 acres of stores, parks and homes that may change the way we think about Mission Valley. To the northeast, Wal-Mart is staking its claim to a piece of the turf. To the west, Fashion Valley is breaking ground on a $140-million expansion. And to the south, Mission Valley Center is adding a 20-screen theater, the largest of its kind. Anywhere.

To all of that, add a stadium expansion, a trolley extension, 98 units of new Mission Gate townhomes along the San Diego River, plus lots of people who already get a kick out of the valley, and it seems Mission Valley is bursting. Not just with brick and mortar, but with a new perspective on how San Diego's favorite shopping region could turn into a model of the 21st-century urban lifestyle.

It's not just hype. The valley is changing. What used to be one huge park-and-shop is now, well, still one huge park-and-shop. But visitors to the valley can see new projects under construction that may turn Mission Valley into a neighborhood, complete with places to live, work and play. Just like a real neighborhood.

It won't happen overnight. But at least one San Diego company, CalMat Properties, is betting $200 million that it will happen sooner rather than later. Actor Marlon Brando bet later. Earlier this year he sold his Mission Valley office building near Bully's restaurant for $800,000, just about what he paid for it 10 years ago.

Unlike Brando, Bride is embracing the new Mission Valley. "We're not threatened by the expansion of Fashion Valley and other places," Bride says. "Because if Fashion Valley doesn't stay the highest-grossing shopping center in San Diego, that could hurt us. If the shoppers don't come down here, they will go somewhere else. Our niche is entertainment, specialized shopping, office space and a hotel."

In other words, Bride's fiefdom is a microcosm of the old valley. Nice stuff. You just have to drive a ways to get there. The proponents of the new valley may not be targeting Bride and his Hazard Center specifically, but their emphasis on village living could make Bride's valley a historical curiosity.

Hazard Center is the logical conclusion of the development in Mission Valley that started more than 40 years ago. The Hazard family bought land in Mission Valley, lobbied the state to run freeways through the riverbed, won the contracts to build them and then, ultimately, joined the parade to build retail on land once reserved for truck farms.

Today, the Hazard Center reigns as the last of the classic Mission Valley shopping centers. That is, if city planners and Don Cerone have their way.

Cerone is the real estate executive charged with turning CalMat's sand-and-gravel-mining operation on Friars Road (west of Stadium Way) into Rio Vista West, a $200 million development of homes, stores, parks and offices. For years, CalMat mined the riverbed for the raw materials that turned canyons into subdivisions. Now it's CalMat's turn to use those raw materials. And Rio Vista West is a pretty good swing of the bat.

Planners say Rio Vista West is San Diego's first "transit-oriented development" (TOD). Transit-oriented development is more than just the latest bureaucratic jargon to justify a new shopping mall. TOD reverses the traditional planning practice of building houses first, then figuring out where the roads will go. With TOD, streets come first, then houses.

In Rio Vista West, this means the homes are closer together, streets are narrower, stores are closer, and everything is centered around a village square, with a park, a trolley stop and a bus station. San Diego City Councilmember Valerie Stallings says the results will be more "pedestrian-friendly, commuter-friendly."

"It's a throwback to the urban village," says Tom Rooney, a Mission Valley construction executive (who was once mistaken for Brando at the Rusty Pelican restaurant). "Rio Vista West is going to be a place where people wander through their neighborhood for something other than a parking place."

Maybe they'll be strolling to the trolley the raison d'etre of Rio Vista West. Along with the river, of course. "This whole complex is being built around that trolley," Cerone says. "That's one reason city approvals were easier to get, and why we expect this center to be popular in the marketplace. Rio Vista West is a village, not an island. And when people need to leave here to go to the stadium or downtown, we expect the trolley to be very popular." To supplement the trolley, Rio Vista West will have a transit center where buses from all over the county are expected to stop.

You can see the beginnings of Rio Vista West on Friars Road. The palm trees are already in place. The cinder block-and-plywood skeletons will soon be fleshed out into 325,000 square feet of shopping, with such major stores as Ross Dress for Less, Sport Mart and Kmart—"the nicest Kmart in the country," Cerone maintains. "We made them upgrade their design."

How to upgrade a Kmart? Build it in the style of San Diego's most honored architect, Irving Gill. (For all you nonstudents of architecture, think of arches, arcades, trellises, cubic forms, courtyards and stucco. Think of Balboa Park.)

Soon after the retail space is complete, Cerone will begin work on 900 townhouses, 165,000 square feet of offices and a 2-acre park. All scheduled for completion in seven to 10 years. All in the style of Gill. "This is not just the first TOD in the valley, it's the first south of Los Angeles," Cerone says. It might be the first in the country that is not a Disney resort or retirement community.

Putting it all together is San Francisco architect Peter Calthorpe. "Rio Vista West will serve as an ideal demonstration project to show how planning concepts can be transformed into reality," he says. "Parents will be able to send their children to the corner for ice cream or a loaf of bread without fear of their having to cross major thoroughfares in order to get there."

Nice thought, except that there are no children, to speak of, living in Mission Valley. At least not enough for a school. Mission Valley is for singles and couples. Not kids. Not now, anyway.

Cerone's vision of (at least a part of) Mission Valley for kids and pedestrians has its share of nonbelievers—including many of the people who planned and built today's Mission Valley. "People are going to stay in their cars until after we run out of gasoline," says one San Diego land-use planner with more than 20 years of experience in the valley. "Even then, they'll probably switch to natural gas before they get out of their cars."

That vision is further clouded by the demise of a similar project just a few blocks away: the River Walk development that was supposed to be built on what today is the Stardust golf course. Another nearby, more conventional commercial project, Park in the Valley, is in default for millions of dollars of improvements it cannot afford, the city says.

River Walk once was touted as the jewel of the valley. Even before out-of-town architects talked about urban villages and pedestrian-friendly environments, former San Diego City Councilman Ed Struiksma said this project could make us "dream a little."