San Diego Approves $115-Million Center : Mixed-Use Complex Will Occupy City Block in Downtown Redevelopment Area

Unanimous approval has been given by the San Diego City Council for the $115-million Emerald Shapery Center, a mixed-use office and hotel development that will occupy a city block in the downtown redevelopment area bounded by Broadway, C, State and Columbia streets.

Construction of the 375,000-square-foot complex is scheduled to begin next July as a joint venture of Shapery Enterprises, San Diego, and Emerald Hotels, a subsidiary of the Tokyu Group, a Japanese organization consisting of 315 companies generating annual revenues exceeding $17 billion.

Emerald Shapery Center is being developed under the direction of the Centre City Development Corp. and will include a 30-story office tower and a 28-story, 497-room hotel, designed by C. W. Kim Associates, San Diego.

The center will feature hexagonal, crystal-like shapes and will emerge as one of the tallest projects on the San Diego skyline upon its completion in July, 1988.

Near Civic Buildings

A 12-story glass atrium will be the focal point of the center, with shops, restaurants, meeting rooms, hotel ballrooms, a nightclub, health club and hotel lobby. Three subterranean parking levels will provide 550 spaces in addition to valet parking. The center will be located on one of the three blocks selected for major mixed-use projects in the redevelopment area. The County Courthouse, Federal Building and several residential projects are one block away. Nearby are Horton Plaza and Seaport Village.

The office tower will be serviced by eight high-speed elevators and the most advanced security systems will be available to its tenants, according to a spokesman for Grubb & Ellis Commercial Brokerage Services, the exclusive leasing agent. Each floor will have separate heating, air handling units and electrical service monitored by a computerized control system.

Office Space Changes

In addition to its own electrical generating equipment, the San Diego Gas & Electric Co. will fund the design and construction of a thermal energy storage air conditioning system with lower operating costs extended to the tenants.

Office space beginning on the fourth through 15th floors will consist of 18,810 rentable square feet, and will range from 16,350 to as low as 2,500 square feet as it reaches the penthouse suite levels.

A Grubb & Ellis spokesman observed that the diminishing sizes of the floors will create an aesthetic, as well as an economic advantage for many high-profit smaller tenants that would be willing to pay a premium for the prestige of a full floor identity but who do not need 18,800 square feet of space.

The hotel tower will consist of 312,122 square feet and guest rooms will occupy the fourth to 28th floors. It will be operated by Emerald Hotels, a Hawaii-based corporation that operates the Mauna Lani Bay Resort Hotel on Waikiki Beach and the newly completed Emerald of Anaheim, adjacent to Disneyland.