City Asks $9 Million From NTC Redevelopers

By Alison St John / Reporter, KPBS Public Broadcasting

Published March 5, 2007 at 1:03 PM PST

This story was published more than 17 years ago.

San Diego City Attorney Mike Aguirre has accused one of San Diego's largest developers of artificially inflating costs to deny the city a share of their profits. He is asking Corky McMillin Companies

City Asks $9 Million From NTC Redevelopers

San Diego City Attorney Mike Aguirre has accused one of San Diego's largest developers of artificially inflating costs to deny the city a share of their profits. He is asking Corky McMillin Companies to give $9 million to the city from the Naval Training Center redevelopment project. KPBS reporter Alison St John has more.

Developers frequently argue the city will earn millions from redevelopment projects in tax increment dollars, but in practice it turns out local government does not always get the promised payback.

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Aguirre says his staff has uncovered a sweetheart deal between two Corky McMillin development companies, where one charged the other labor costs inflated by 250 percent. The inflated costs meant there wasn't enough profit at the end of the day to give the city's redevelopment agency anything.

Aguirre : McMillin is going to try and argue that it should be construed in a way that the city should get nothing and McMillin gets everything, but that's not the way it was presented to the council.

When the contract was entered seven years ago, negotiators calculated the city would earn more than $300 million in coming decades. Home sales on the property have been brisk, but so far, the city's earned nothing. Alison St John, KPBS News.

(Photo: City Attorney Michael Aguirre answers questions from the media outside Liberty Station on Monday, March 5. Alison St John/KPBS ).

Alison St John

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Alison St John currently serves as a general assignment reporter and occasionally co-hosts KPBS Midday Edition. She fell in love with KPBS Radio when she arrived in San Diego in 1985 and first heard NPR. She has been a voice on KPBS Radio since 1989, and has served as a news reporter for radio, TV and the web, as well as anchoring, hosting, producing and editing. Alison has reported on stories about North County and was based in the KPBS' North County Bureau. Alison covered the metro beat during the critical period of the San Diego City pension crisis, and the education beat while Alan Bersin was the controversial Superintendent of San Diego City School District. She covered health when the industry was converting to managed care and told welfare reform stories in the late 1990s when Clinton was “ending welfare as we know it.” She has covered land use issues extensively, looking at the challenges of meeting a growing population while preserving community character, and developing a better transportation system to meet environmental concerns. She has done many stories on the military in San Diego, and the series she edited on the challenges veterans face returning from active duty to civilian life won “Best of Show” from the San Diego Society of Professional Journalists. She occasionally hosts the KPBS Roundtable and KPBS Midday Edition. Alison has won awards from the San Diego Press Club, the Society of Professional Journalists, the Associated Press TV and Radio Association, and the California Golden Mike Awards. Alison was born in Tanzania, brought up in Scotland, and earned her degree in psychology and sociology from Durham University in England. Her postgraduate diploma is in student counseling. She worked in England, Nigeria, Switzerland, Belgium, India, and Japan before moving to the United States in 1981. She now lives in Oceanside and enjoys how her community is growing and changing.