Cisterra Working On Downtown Mixed-Use Project And Office Campus In The Suburbs
Locally based Cisterra Development, a developer of all types of real estate projects, has two new developments in the pipeline, a mixed-use project in Downtown’s East Village called 7th & Market and The Preserve at Torrey Highlands, a 450k SF Class-A office project off Highway 56 in Carmel Valley. Cisterra principal Jason Wood is among the local developers presenting at our Annual San Diego Construction & Development Forum on July 28.
We caught up with Jason (snapped here with fiancé Ruth Jean on opening day at the Del Mar races), who tells us 7th & Market entitlements will be finalized within the next few weeks.
The nearly $400M 7th & Market development (below) will create a landmark, 39-story tower along Market Street that combines a mix of residential, retail, hotel and public parking uses, then steps down to a 15-story office tower along Island Avenue. It is bringing Downtown San Diego its first five-star Ritz-Carlton hotel, which will include 153 rooms and 59 Ritz-Carlton-branded condominium residences and a 40k SF Whole Foods Market.
It also provides 125 market-rate apartments and 34 affordable units; 150k SF of Class-A office space; 6k SF of public open space, including a public plaza with a public art space at the corner of 8th and Island avenues; 2,225 public parking spaces; and 665 subterranean parking stalls for residents and hotel guests. The residential and office components are in separate towers that will connect on the first level of the hotel and then the condos are above the hotel. (The ground-level Whole Foods is shown below.)
Jason says Cisterra is finalizing entitlements and then acquisition of the 55k SF site from the city. The site, bounded by Market Street and 7th, 8th and Island avenues, occupies a full city block. It also includes The Clermont Hotel, built in 1887 as the Occidental Hotel and now a single-room occupancy residence, where Cisterra plans to invest about $1M in renovations and will continue to operate.
Pictured is a vision for 7th & Market's pool deck.
Designed by locally based Carrier Johnson + CULTUR3, the project is design to integrate seamlessly into the city’s urban fabric and enhance the pedestrian and residential experiences. Commitments by a world-class hotel operator, gourmet grocer and interested office users are testament to this vertically integrated project’s appeal to discriminating tenants, Jason says.
The project’s contemporary design was influenced by the buildings surrounding the site and a desire to maximize views into Petco Park and the surrounding area, with three south-facing balconies that allow residents and visitors to peer into the ballpark and beyond to San Diego Bay, Coronado and Point Loma.
With environmental review and zoning changes being finalized, Jason tells us entitlements for The Preserve at Torrey Highlands should be approved within eight to 10 months, with groundbreaking expected in late 2017. The office complex aims to accommodate the life sciences, biotech and communications R&D firms that dominate the mid-San Diego office-tech submarket.
The project site is surrounded on three sides by the Del Mar Mesa Preserve, a 900-acre recreation and nature preserve, providing views along with the amenities for Cisterra’s office tenants. The 11-acre project site, which Cisterra acquired last year from the Catholic Diocese of SD, requires an amendment to the general and community plans that would change the zoning to allow construction of an office campus with buildings of four to six stories, plus a parking structure. The current zoning allows for a church, but also other uses, like self-storage facilities.
Hear more from Jason and other local developers at our Annual San Diego Construction & Development Forum on July 28, beginning at 7:30am with breakfast and networking at the Westin San Diego, 400 West Broadway in Downtown.
