Email
Print
Feed
Nancy Graham |
Tweet |
(page 1 of 2)
NANCY GRAHAM, new president and chief operating officer of the Centre City Development Corporation, brings impressive credentials to the job. As top executive of San Diego’s redevelopment agency, she knows firsthand the headaches and rewards of downtown redevelopment. From 1991 to 1999, she was mayor of West Palm Beach, Florida, a once-stagnant neighbor of upscale Palm Beach. On her watch, the city made a dramatic comeback, with the revitalization of infrastructure, drastically reduced commercial vacancy rates and a surge in new downtown housing. In the process, West Palm Beach won the U.S. Conference of Mayors’ City Livability Award. A land-use attorney and private developer herself, Graham is the mother of two grown children and grandmother of four.TOM BLAIR: Well, we’ve done our best to make you feel at home—weatherwise, at least. Did you get the feeling this summer that you’d moved across country from South Florida to South Florida?
NANCY GRAHAM: Yes. I went to a function the other night, and people said to me, “You know, we have never had this kind of weather before. We think you brought us South Florida.”
TB: As a child in the 1950s, you lived in San Diego for a few years. Are you surprised by all the growth, or do you wonder what took so long?
NG: Not surprised in the sense that this is the same phenomenon that’s been happening in a lot of U.S. cities in recent years. I did think, “What took so long in San Diego?” because San Diego has so many things going for it, including the weather and the water and all those things that seem to make cities successful even in the worst of times. But San Diego caught up fast.
TB: When you took over as mayor of West Palm Beach, you faced the awesome task of trying to revitalize a working-class community that was mostly industrial, with a derelict downtown and a housing market that was severely depressed. San Diego’s urban core is considerably healthier. What do you see as downtown’s next challenge?
NG: Obviously, the residential market is slowing a bit, and I think that’s okay. It was clear you couldn’t sustain that pace. The good is, it will allow us to catch up on some things that really need to be done—the quality-of-life things that are going to keep this town the kind of place people want to move to. That means focusing on public space—the parks, making sure the streets get improved, and areas where sidewalks and trees need attention. It’s our goal to create a downtown park system that everyone would love to see. Some large parks, some smaller, some very intimate spaces throughout downtown. And maybe a swimming pool, some ballparks and other parks-and-recreation sort of stuff. And we’re working on North Embarcadero Park. When that’s finished, it’ll have 35 acres of public park space—bayfront.
TB: In recent years, CCDC has been successful in promoting residential development, but there’s been little in the way of major new business development. What are plans, now, to make downtown more of a live/work neighborhood?
NG: Number one, companies are going to look at quality of life. Then they’re going to look at housing and how easy it is for their employees to get to work. We have to focus on health and human services, arts and culture. On education. Is there a good opportunity for kids to go to school? We have some meetings set up with the school superintendent, and we’re focusing on several areas that are important in that regard.
TB: Although the market has softened some, the price of downtown housing has skyrocketed since 2000. Is there such a thing as affordable housing in the city’s center?
NG: We do have affordable housing. It’s affordable in the classic sense of federal and state guidelines. And the good news is that we have a lot more we’re about to bring on line. The challenge is to be sure we also have workforce housing—housing that teachers and police and fire personnel and the office secretary can afford —that falls in the middle. Of course, like everybody else we’re going to be controlled by the market to a certain extent. But we’re certainly not ignoring it.
TB: In the immediate future, will San Diego’s economic crisis have a negative impact on CCDC’s ability to move forward with redevelopment ventures?
NG: I don’t think so. The only thing it might impact, slightly, is the timing. For example, we have a substantial amount of money going into a library. We also fund, construct and equip fire stations downtown and then basically turn them over to the city. We do act as the city’s infrastructure arm downtown. The only thing we don’t do is water and sewer. But we do traffic, sidewalks, road improvement, landscaping. We’re working on police storefronts. We may be prepared faster than the city is, but the good news is we’re not on hold on any of our other infrastructure. We have a very substantial budget that we’re going to use to make major neighborhood improvements in places like Little Italy and the Ballpark District. On things like sidewalks, streetlights; things that are on hold in many other areas. We have the budget, so we’re able to go forward throughout downtown.
Do you like what you read? Subscribe to San Diego Magazine »
