Excuse me, but TOT taxes are not for TOURISM... They are way to help pay for city services... Please read and learn. It should be an easy tax to get the citizens to support and remember tourists do impact city services. Just count how many fire trucks and ambulances go to the Manchester Grand Hyatt each month....


Transient Occupancy Tax:

Description: The Transient Occupancy Tax is a general tax imposed on occupants for the privilege of occupying room(s) in a hotel, motel, or inn.

Use of the revenues is unrestricted.

However, some cities budget a portion of the revenues for tourism and business development
purposes.

Authority: The authority to levy this tax is promulgated from the State Government Revenue and Taxation Code, more specifically, sections 7280 and 7281.

Overview: Cities may impose the transient occupancy tax on persons staying 30 days or less in a room(s) in a hotel, motel, inn, tourist home, non-membership campground or other lodging facility. Cities may also levy a tax on the privilege of renting a mobile home located outside a
mobile home park, unless such occupancy is for more than 30 days or unless the tenant is an employee of the owner.

According to the most recent survey available from the League of California Cities, transient occupancy tax rates ranged from 4 to 12 percent.

Nearly two-thirds (65.7 percent) of cities reported using their tax revenue as a general revenue for general fund purposes.

Currently, more than eighty (80) percent of cities in the state collect a transient occupancy tax.

Benefits of considering an increase in the Transient Occupancy Tax include placement of a larger portion of the tax burden to provide city services on transient visitors to the community. Residents benefit from this spreading of the costs of services over a larger tax base, including those visiting
the community, thereby lowering the cost of services to residents.

I'm not arguing what it can be used for, or the definition of TOT. If you re-read the article, you'll find this quote:

That tax was originally established in the 1960s to fund tourism marketing, but City Hall has siphoned more and more of it for its general fund needs through the years

I agree that it should not be used strictly for tourism marketting, as these tourists use our services while they are here, and should pay for those services, but, funding the "general fund" has gotten so vague, the money has little impact on improving those services since those funds have to pay for areas that tourists don't use (like the suburbs).

2nd, we don't even pay for our own services (trash, etc..) if you live in a single family home.

My only point is that San Diegan's don't vote for new taxes. Right now the majority of San Diegans are cheap and conservative. TOT taxes are the easiest on the citiizen's pocket book... they don't pay them. Tourists do (and to some extent hotel operators ---) While we can try to squeeze more money out of the City... The simple fact is that there is not enough revenue to fund capital projects in the City. We will need more revenue. I don't think you will find anyone to disagree that the City is a fiscal and leadership mess, but it is also a infrastructure mess. One day we will have good leadership that will get the city in a place to invest and build again. I just find it sad that the Hotels are grabbing some funds that could be used for these efforts. By doing this 'marketing assessment' they will put the TOT inline with other markets and those funds will not be available to fund needed infrastructure. It is a cute end-around for the hotels.

TR Produce
 

can anyone give an update as to what is planning on going in there? I am very curious, is it some kind of secret? Perhaps anyone who can't say anything could at least say when something is supposed to go in?? :)

Someone here said a market, I just hope not Bristol Farms. That place is close to extortion, making Whole Foods seem like bargain basement!

Would it require a city vote if trash services were charged to home owners? Even if, that may pass since anyone who lives in a condo, already pays for trash and would vote for SFH owners to pay for it as well.

If I remember correctly, there was an ordinance passed in the early 1900s prohibiting the City of San Diego from charging residents for trash collection. I don't remember the reason why. That ordinance will have to be repealed first before a fee can be assessed.

Since the "early 1900s" prohibition and segregation were repealed and the 19th ammendment giving women the right to vote was passed - so i'm sure SD could take the bold move of repealing a trash collection fee ordinance -

STRONG INTEREST SHOWN FROM MAJOR DEVELOPMENT TEAMS FOR CIVIC CENTER COMPLEX REDEVELOPMENT
SAN DIEGO, CA — The Centre City Development Corporation (CCDC), working on behalf of the City of San Diego, today received eight Statements of Qualifications from prospective development teams interested in exploring a possible redevelopment of San Diego’s Civic Center Complex. A complete list of teams is included at the end of this release.

Teams from throughout the United States and Canada submitted. A diverse selection committee will convene by the end of October to review the proposals and short-list the teams to two to three finalists by the end of November.

“We are very pleased with the strong interest and response to this development opportunity,” said CCDC President Nancy Graham. “This demonstrates a vote of confidence in the San Diego real estate market. The selection committee’s next step will be to identify the two or three strongest development teams and then CCDC will begin the extensive public outreach process.”

The finalists will participate in a series of public meetings to be held throughout the city to share their prior development experiences and listen to public feedback, questions and ideas. Final proposals from all firms are currently scheduled to be due in mid-2008. Each finalist will be expected to incorporate ideas and suggestions gained from these public meetings into submitted plans.

Currently, San Diego’s City Administration Building accommodates only 600 employees, and the City has had to lease privately owned space for more than 15 years. City offices are now located within eight downtown buildings (four leased), representing more than one half million square feet of leased space.

Collectively, more than 3,000 employees work in these properties, which comprise annual leasing costs of $13.5 million. Deferred maintenance on the City Administration Building alone is estimated to exceed well above $10 million. Because most of the leases will come due in 2013 and 2014 and rates are projected to increase significantly, this RFQ is seen as a proactive approach to evaluate possible costs savings through redeveloping the site.

The RFQ process will include a thorough financial evaluation to ensure that a project would move forward only if it could clearly demonstrate a significant reduction in operational and capital costs to the City. Similar public/private partnership projects include the new city hall in Austin, Texas, and state-of-the-art courthouse facilities in New York City.

Goals of the RFQ include:
• Revitalizing the city’s civic core
• Catalyzing private sector development in the Civic Center area
• Providing more accessible public spaces
• Providing smart growth transit-oriented development
• Opening B Street, closed to pedestrian and vehicular traffic for 40 years
• Replacing aging infrastructure
• Constructing a more publicly accessible City Hall
• Increasing tax increment revenues generated to the City
• Utilizing sustainable development techniques.

Nice.

I would love to see the grid restored as much as possible.

STRONG INTEREST SHOWN FROM MAJOR DEVELOPMENT TEAMS FOR CIVIC CENTER COMPLEX REDEVELOPMENT

SAN DIEGO, CA — The Centre City Development Corporation (CCDC), working on behalf of the City of San Diego, today received eight Statements of Qualifications from prospective development teams interested in exploring a possible redevelopment of San Diego’s Civic Center Complex. A complete list of teams is included at the end of this release.




You missed an important part of the story, the actual applicants. It will be interesting to see if any of these groups can put together multi-billion dollar financing.

Sonnenblick-Del Rio Development, Inc., Los Angeles, CA

Gerding Edlen Development, Portland, OR

Kosene & Kosene Residential, Indianapolis, IN

Hines, Houston, TX

Thomas Properties Group, Inc., Los Angeles, CA

Douglas Wilson Companies, San Diego, CA

Lankford & Associates, Inc., San Diego, CA

Plenary Group, Vancouver, BC

Thanks for the additional information.

So I saw a new crane pop up on the north side of Market, which project is this?

16th & Market. Affordable housing...

Found an interesting piece on Wikipedia. I think this may be Lane Field, but I'm not too sure.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embarcadero_Circle

Well, since we're into a lull, listing interesting links may now be in vogue..., and we sometimes discuss politics here.... Here's a San Diego political blog I just landed on...

San Diego Politico

Firestorm 2007 has officially started.

:no:

early prediction; arson

How bad is the smoke in your part of town?

At 3pm... smokish haze just krept over Banker's Hill and appears spreading southward to downtown. No ash... just the orange glow of sunshine.

It's not that bad now. Must have been a semi-slim trail of less dense smoke that passed over. It's mostly blue skies over Banker's Hill now. I suspect the same for Mission Valley and Qualcomm, although that location is probably 5 miles closer to the Santa Ysabel fire.

This is horrible.

Thomas Jefferson Law School
 

We just received a "Public Notice" that the Thomas Jefferson School of Law is planning to build an 8 story building on the south side of Island Avenue, between 11th & Park Blvd. Great news for the community, and it looks like the VOA site will actually be cleared soon.

That is interesting. I was with the guys at Barratt Homes a few months ago and they had basically pulled the plug on the condo portion (above the Thomas Jefferson Schoool). I wonder if Barratt is selling the site to TJ or another commercial developer?

The public notice says that it is a "commercial building" housing classrooms, offices, a library, cafe, and bookstore. It will also have 178 bellow grade parking spaces (gotta keep Gary Smith, the parking police officer happy!)

The news is almost 11 hours old as of 9:15am Monday morning, but, here's a burn area map as drawn up be the San Diego County GIS folks. of the Harris Fire near Tecate. T

his is a screen capture I grabbed from a ST Tribune link and uploaded to my photobucket account.

http://i109.photobucket.com/albums/n...HarrisFire.jpg

And the Witch Fire near/in Ramona as of Sunday Night at 10pm.

http://i109.photobucket.com/albums/n...0WitchFire.jpg

Do you have a link to these maps?

^^^ Actually, the site I pulled them from was so slow, probably from being busy, that I did screen captures to save and upload and whatnot to provide here.

I uploaded a more recent image to the California forum and Wildfires thread.

Here's the view down Island, after the Thomas Jefferson Law School is built...[IMG]http://i178.photobucket.com/albums/w.../tjslarial.jpg[/IMG]

Me gusta. :yes:

Ooh...si si, me gusta MUCHO. I really like this tower, and it definitely adds some nice density to that area...yes, me likey!

That picture made me realize how skinny and compact those Fahrenheit units must be.

it reminds me of the new tower built on 3rd Street in Chula Vista. Any info on when it'll start construction?

^^^^ Yes, that looks nice.

That's acutually where we live, and the North Side units (orange side) are 2 stories, each floor plate roughly 20x30 (1200 SF). You'd think they feel small, but high ceilings do wonders.

As I was watching the news earlier, somebody stated San Diego as being a "suburb of Los Angeles". Oh boy did I want to smack them upside the head so hard. :)

I have never actually even heard anything remotely close to the above statement. Have you guys ever heard that?

Echelon
 

I believe this is the property where the 8-story "Echelon" condos were suppose to go.
I definitely like this project better...it's much taller, gives the area more offices, classrooms which diversifies the area and makes it much more mixed-use.
The architecture isn't that bad...it's okay...unique kind of. Definitely reminds me of that newer Chula Vista office building on 3rd Avenue like someone said earlier.
But the most important thing is it the density & height it adds to the area.

I just wish that they could build lots more actual TOWERS instead of all these dull mid-rises in the East Village, especially that particular part of East Village.


That's why we have the new 7th & Market tower at 470 feet:D
I just wish there were more, clearer pictures, b/c I think it got approved by the CCDC and it looks like it's one of those projects that's not affected by the housing slump right now.

BOARD RECEIVES PRELIMINARY DESIGN PRESENTATION FOR THE SEVENTH & MARKET MIXED-USE PROJECT (East Village)
The Board received a preliminary design presentation and provided staff and developer direction for the Related California Urban Housing, LLC’s and CityLink Investment Corporation’s mixed-use project, Seventh & Market. The current design includes a 42-story building with a 637-space public parking garage, 330 residential units (20 percent of which will be affordable), 19,500 square feet of retail space, a 183-room hotel, and 8,600 square feet of cultural use space.

(10/18/07)

The 7th & Market proposal is curently evolving, one good thing though, the African American History Cultural space is set to be a non token space. The planners say that it will be on par with San Francisco's MoAD (see below)

http://i178.photobucket.com/albums/w..._nc4moad_b.jpg

As for the towers, I think they will come with time, but, I'll pass on towers just to have towers. If we are going to have towers in our 'hood, I want them top notch design.

I've heard of the SD to LA region described as a megatropolis. Does that count?

No. Megatropolis is a good thing.

Think of Poway as a suburb of San Diego.

They were saying San Diego was a suburb of Los Angeles.

Megalopolis is another word that could be used to describe. The example of a Megalopolis would be the region which stretches from Washington, DC through Philadelphia, New York, Boston, and ending in southern New Hampshire. If I remember back to my Geography class in college, the San Diego, Orange County, LA/Ventura County area does not count because it is geographically "seperated" by Camp Pendleton.

sorry!

Fires and Cost of Construction
 

Does anyone have any oppinion on the effect of the fires on the cost of construction and future development projects. With the residential market slowing down the cost of construction was going down and getting other commercial projects off the ground. Now that 1600 homes have to be built with urgency it seems that construction cost will shoot up. Even if its different types of projects the manual labor is still the same, or is it what costs a lot the specialty guys and equipment for high density? Any thoughts?

On a countywide scale, I don't think there's a sense of urgency to rebuild as there's adequate housing supply right now to house those affected.

If there's a sense of urgency... it would just be from those displaced. And, I think their rebuilding efforts will be spread out across 1-3 years depending on each of their motivations and financial ability. So, I think this event will have a nominal affect on the local building trade and the price to rebuild. Of course, contractors could take advantage of the situation and try and gouge consumers... taking into consideration that insurance agencies will likely cary the cost of a lot of rebuilding.

Only an idiot (not hard to find them in the news media) would ever say such a thing.

Actually there is quite a bit of rural land between Wilmington, DE and Baltimore.....at least as much as camp Pendleton.

This is VERY nice!!!!!!!!!!!!! I am glad to see the African American space will actually be a large, nicely designed space instead of a pathetic "token" space. It is really important to celebrate the diversity of downtown and I really like that design - the big glass windows with the mosaic in the background will show very nicely from the street level. I am also happy to hear it will be on the same scale as SFs MoAD. I am tired of SD always being looked at as bland and small compared to SF and LA when in fact we do have alot of diversity and we are a large city in our own right.

Any renderings of the whole tower available? I am really excited to see this project get off the ground. It will be a fabulous addition in betweek Alta and the Mark, and if Cosmo Square can go up behind it we will start to see an East Village skyline taking shape ;)