OCEANSIDE – In August of 2005, eight developers submitted plans to build downtown Oceanside's second public-parking garage, and three were chosen as front-runners.
Councilman Jack Feller's inquiring mind wanted to know why the project appears to have stopped dead right there.
Jane McVey, city economic development and redevelopment director, had an answer at a recent council meeting: To build the garage now would mean it would have to include hotel rooms.
“That does not make a bit of sense,” McVey said recently.
But that's the way the state Coastal Commission apparently wants it.
The garage is proposed for city-owned property on the northwest corner of Cleveland Street and Pier View Way.
City officials had in mind a multistory building with two levels of parking and perhaps three or four levels of retail, offices or condominiums to complement several large projects being built nearby.
The city's Local Coastal Plan – which had to receive state Coastal Commission approval – includes a master plan for a nine-block area downtown bounded by Seagaze and Civic Center drives, Cleveland and Pacific streets.
To meet the commission's requirements to serve beach-going visitors, the plan requires 240 hotel rooms.
If the garage – on one-ninth of that constricted area – were to be built before any other development containing a hotel, McVey said, it would have to include one-ninth of the required hotel rooms. In this case, that's 26 rooms.
In addition to hotel rooms, the plan calls for restaurants, shops and parking to serve beach visitors.
City officials want all that, too.
It's just that they don't necessarily want hotel rooms in the parking garage.
Before the garage can be built, McVey said, hotel rooms probably need to be under construction or at least a site graded for a hotel.
“We would like to see some dirt moved,” McVey said.
A proposed project by San Diego developer S.D. Malkin to include 289 hotel rooms – a sufficient number to take care of the entire Coastal Plan requirement – is on track to break ground in 2008.
At that point, the city may request new proposals for the garage.
The three front-runners chosen previously, McVey said, were CityMark, already proposing a multistory development on five adjacent blocks; Douglas Wilson Companies; and Paladin Properties.
McVey said she never looked at the price tags for the proposals and would not necessarily compare them because each contained an entirely different concept. Any delay, though, would probably require recalculating the price tag because of the rising cost of construction materials.
A three-level, 450-space public-parking garage, the first in downtown, opened last April at a cost of $11 million.
Lola Sherman: (760) 476-8241; lola.sherman@uniontrib.com
