Mercado on the move – Two developers have big ideas–will something finally get built? – San Diego

Tony Salazar, a principal partner of the McCormack Baron Salazar development team, seemed a little nervous facing down the crowd of Barrio Loganistas at Perkins Elementary School on Jan. 8. His job was to sell the community on why his firm should be selected to develop a long-delayed project—known as the Mercado—on a vacant 6.8-acre strip of land along Cesar Chavez Parkway.

The project has become exactly the sort of blight it was intended to eliminate 15 years ago, when it was conceived. The people in the audience had been here before. They remember Sam Marasco and others making pitches. They remember having their neighborhood designated a redevelopment zone. And they feel keenly the frustration of losing 15 of their 40 years of additional property-tax revenue—known in redevelopment lingo as “tax increment”—as the brown dirt in the shadow of the Coronado Bridge on-ramp has grown a dense crop of weeds. They know they’ve been stiffed by the city for years, even as they watched Downtown, just a mile away, grow into a forest of hotels and condos. They’ve been promised by their newish City Council representative, Ben Hueso, that this time will be different, that he’ll make sure the Mercado becomes a reality.”*

*From: www.sdcitybeat.com
Traducido: usando Google o Altavista/Babel Fish

Leave a Reply