Tom Fudge: San Diego City Hall. If that expression makes you think of a quaint stone building with a turrets and a clock tower, then...you've never actually SEEN San Diego City Hall. In reality, it's a tall downtown office building next to a towering parking garage. To say it's not much to look at is being, if anything, generous. But aesthetics are not the only problem with the place. It's getting worn out. Deferred maintenance on City Hall is estimated to exceed $10 million. Perhaps the biggest problem with the place is that it's not big enough. The City of San Diego has to lease out many thousands of square feet of office space downtown to house its entire staff. The annual cost of that exceeds $13 million.
This is why the Centre City Development Corporation is looking at ways to building a new city hall, which some people prefer to call the City Administration building. In fact, two developers have been chosen to provide proposals of what to build and how to build it.
Public discussions about the redevelopment of the Civic Center Complex are planned for tonight, March 13, at 6:30 p.m. at Qualcomm Stadium, and on Saturday, March 15, at 10 a.m. at the Malcolm X Library on Market Street.
Guests
- Jeff Graham, vice president of redevelopment for the Centre City Development Corporation
- Michael Stepner, local architect with Stepner Design Group who is the former city architect for San Diego.
