Despite some uncertainty about the economy, life is not coming to a standstill in downtown San Diego. Nancy Graham should know. As president and chief operating officer of the city's downtown redevelopment agency, the Centre City Development Corp., Graham can list numerous development projects going on in San Diego that will help keep the regional economy going for quite some time.
"We have not seen a slowdown in our workload," Graham said. "Developers are still going through the pipeline to get their approvals and entitlements. We did anticipate a slight slowdown in 2007, but we didn't see it."
Due to recent declines in the number of condominiums and houses sold, some downtown developers are converting their projects from condos to rental apartments, which are easier to get financing for than condos for sale.
"We will not see the pace of building we saw for so many years here, but everybody knows that wasn't realistic economically," Graham said. "We are going back to a more realistic economy. We have a good 12-month inventory of projects downtown.
"Obviously, the economy will be slower in 2008, but we have some strong developers in our city, so we're fortunate for that. We also have other markets interested in working here, such as office buildings and affordable housing," she added.
Graham says downtown hotels should also experience a fairly strong occupancy rate in 2008. The occupancy rate for hotels in San Diego during the first 10 months of 2007 was 75 percent, according to the most recent data available from Tennessee-based Smith Travel Research.
"Another great thing that's happening downtown is we're starting our parks development and the North Embarcadero Visionary Plan," she said. "We are actively buying land right now for parks."
Source: sdbj.com