Smart Start Downtown

Smart Corner places 301 studio, one- and two-bedroom residential units adjacent to 93,000 sq. ft. of office space and 25,000 sq. ft. of ground-floor retail. Two buildings sit atop a subterranean parking garage and straddle the San Diego Trolley's College Station.

By David Silva

Consider the words of Douglas H. Austin, the man whose architecture firm designed the $120-million Smart Corner project in downtown San Diego: "We're kind of crazy to be pioneering so much with this project, but we believe in downtown.

The trolley tracks for College Station, which presently direct trolley cars around Smart Corner, will be realigned 45 degrees in September to pass directly through the $120-million development (rendering courtesy of Austin Veum Robbins Partners).

Austin is founding partner, chairman and CEO of San Diego-based Austin Veum Robbins Partners. The project his firm designed, Smart Corner, broke ground in October 2004 and is on target for completion in summer 2007.

The project's 19-story condominium tower and five-story office building straddles the northern edge of San Diego's historic East Village and core districts-in other words, directly in the midst of the city's bustling downtown.

The project puts the "smart" in smart growth by placing 301 studio, one- and two-bedroom residential units adjacent to 93,000 sq. ft. of office space and 25,000 sq. ft. of ground-floor retail on a 1.41-acre block bordered by C Street, Broadway, 11th Avenue and Park Boulevard.

The two buildings sit atop a 630-space, below-grade parking garage and straddle the San Diego Trolley's College Station. The trolley tracks, which presently direct trolley cars around Smart Corner, will be realigned 45 degrees in September to pass directly through the development.

What may set Smart Corner apart from other urban mixed-use developments is the pricing for its condominium units in a city in which the median home price has approached about $600,000.

"Smart Corner has become a symbol of what we can do from a public-private standpoint and from a smart-growth standpoint, placing jobs and housing next to public housing-these three units on the same block," said Jason Luker, a spokesperson with Centre City Development Corp., San Diego's redevelopment agency and the property owner. "From a housing standpoint, one of the most innovative things about the project is that studios start at $180,000. They're small, but they have a lot of innovative uses for living space."

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What's more, 25 of Smart Corner's 301 units are priced below $200,000. Te studios are, indeed, small: some floor plans offer a total area of 450 sq. ft.

"When it comes to the question of how do you make housing more affordable, I think the private sector has to start thinking outside the box," said Austin, an investor in Smart Corner. "We can't keep coming with housing subsidies.

"As a key developer, I came up with the concept of 'morphable' space. People can't afford to keep three or four rooms empty anymore. There are some things we can do make the space work a little harder."

Austin's firm, and Smart Corner general contractor Hensel Phelps Construction of Irvine, are working with prospective condominium buyers to customize units. For example, a client who initially wants to cordon off a bedroom with a wall might change his or her mind when shown a virtual reality computer image that shows that the absence of the wall would allow for both an airier feel and the ability to easily convert the space into other uses by moving furniture around.

Clients are even provided counseling on what types of furniture to buy.

"A lot of the furniture we suggest comes from IKEA and typically has wheels, so we can move them around and accommodate different functions," Austin said. "For example, we have several configurations of beds. Some come out of the walls like a Murphy bed. Others open out of the couch. But basically, all allow for the room to be open to the various possible functions.

The largest units are 1,585 sq. ft. Individual floor plans vary: Some units feature bedrooms with dens and kitchen islands while the studios' sleeping area and kitchen are separated only by carpeted and wood flooring. All have balconies, though some are more expansive than others.

But the customization features of the Smart Corner units allows tenants to convert space to best suit their needs, Austin said. A floor plan featuring a bedroom and den, for example, can easily be converted into a room worthy of being called a master bedroom.

The largest units in Smart Corner are 1,585 sq. ft. Individual floor plans vary: some units feature bedrooms with dens and kitchen islands while the studios' sleeping area and kitchen are separated only by carpeted and wood flooring. All units have balconies (rendering courtesy of Austin Veum Robbins. Partners).

More than 50 percent of the units have already been sold, Austin said.

The office building's anchor tenant will be the San Diego Housing Commission, which has pre-purchased the space.

In order to accommodate the commission's move-in time line of October, Smart Corner's design-build team relied on steel for the building's frame. But the primary materials for both the office and residential buildings are glass and glass-reinforced concrete both to further "open" the residential units and reduce costs.

Glass, concrete and metal is used in the reconstruction of the trolley station. A combination of air space and laminated glass are employed to reduce noise, while the trolley tracks are isolated from the track bed in order to reduce vibration. Some of the concrete in the station is exposed to give the facility more of a raw, urban feel.

The College Station-so-called because of its proximity to San Diego City College-is a major component of the city's $30 million Park-to-Bay Link. That project, under construction along Park Avenue between C and K streets, will create a landscaped pedestrian promenade designed to improve public transit between PETCO Park and the northern and eastern portions of downtown.

When the College Station is completed, Smart Corner residents will be connected to virtually every major transit hub in the city and beyond.

"The trolleys link about a quarter-mile away to the Santa Fe depot, which gets to you to the airport," Centre City's Luker said. "You can hop onto Amtrak from there, or hop on a trolley down to Tijuana if you want to."

Coordinating construction with the not-inconsiderable needs of multiple governmental and transportation agencies has proven the project's greatest hurdle, said John Goodman, project manager for Hensel Phelps.

"Approximately six months before the completion of the residential tower, the Housing Commission is going to occupy the office building," he added. "That's one challenge: just having a temporary certificate of occupancy on half the project while the other half is still under construction.

"Then, at the end of September, the trolley tracks will be changed from going around the project to going right through it. For two weeks, the condo tower will be completely cut off. Coordinating with all these different agencies and accommodating their different needs is very difficult."

Goodman also cited a shortage in experienced personnel as another obstacle his firm has had to clear.

"San Diego is in a boom right now," he said. "If you look over the city landscape, you'll see dozens of construction cranes. So there's a scarcity of qualified personnel-design teams, contractors, subcontractors and so on. It's just a strain on the industry." [David: Are they still on schedule for completion despite the shortage of skilled labor?]

Then there's the increase in materials costs.

The problem with the increase in materials costs was a really difficult one, given that we're locked into a contract with the Centre City Development Corp., where we absorb all the costs and it shares in the upside of any price increases that may occur," Austin said. "We anticipated inflation and other modest increases, but when we had price increases that went up 30 or 40 percent, we couldn't anticipate that.

"To overcome that, we worked with the CCDC to make the floor plate of the building a little bigger. Building on a confined floor plate can be very expensive, while adding square footage to the size of the floor plate is fairly inexpensive. We added a few more units, but not many."