Ex-biker, would-be Trappist, soldier of fortune, San Diego powerlifter comes down with AIDS Is that you?’ the burly black social worker asked me. pointing to a 13-digit code handwritten on a page in a huge …
August 5, 2023
C. Arnholt Smith was the biggest player in the old boys’ network that ran San Diego between the 1930s and the early 1970s. The financier and industrialist rose from working-class roots in North Park to control the U.S. National Bank, with almost $1 billion in deposits, and the $200 million Westgate California corporate conglomerate that included National Steel and Shipbuilding, the Yellow Cab Company in major cities in California, an airline, a tuna fleet, canneries, ranches, the Kona Kai Club on Shelter Island, the San Diego Padres, and vast real estate holdings. He built one of the first modem skyscrapers downtown, and his Westgate Plaza hotel was recognized in the 1960s as one of the finest hostelries in the world.
Confidante of presidents, governors, mayors, and district attorneys, Smith held political influence unmatchable today. The San Diego Union once declared him “Mr. San Diego of the Century.” But in the early 1970s, Smith’s empire collapsed. He eventually spent a year in jail on grand theft and tax evasion charges, and his holdings were liquidated in a fire sale frenzy.
Smith collaborated on four feature stories (including two cover stories about himself) for the Reader before his death in June, 1996.
Articles by C. Arnholt Smith (RIP)
Getting AIDS – one of 3401 cases diagnosed in San Diego
Had his hand in: Padres, Westgate Hotel, Westgate Tuna, Yellow Cab, Kona Kai, Fashion Valley
When Dick Nixon Came to Town San Diego entrepreneur Arnholt Smith, one of Nixon’s earliest supporters, remembered a melancholy evening in the early ’60s when Nixon was holding a meeting and asked him to get …
February 28, 2021
Best Reader stories from 1992
Notes from Underground San Diego's Free Press (later renamed the Street Journal) was defunct by the end of 1970; the San Diego Door came and went with the Nixon Presidency, 1968 to August 1974.The O.B. …
December 29, 2019
What do you do when you lose at Del Mar? If your name is Smith or Alessio, you build your own racetrack.
John Alessio came up with the idea that we ought to build a new track and really create the basic necessities for a real fine operation that would be run in addition to Del Mar.
July 23, 1992
Joe Brennan, San Diego's let's-get-it-done harbormaster
He gave us a very favorable lease, a good thing for the San Diego Harbor. He was helping to create a good tenant, which National Steel became. He did the same with Convair, Solar, and Rohr.
May 7, 1992
C. Arnholt Smith, part two
Kroc got on the phone and in a very high-pitched voice he said, “Mommy, I bought us a baseball team today.” There was a long silence, but I imagine what she said to him.
March 26, 1992
C. Arnholt Smith, in his own words – part 1
I don’t know why we expanded like this. I guess I’m a damn fool and like to work and create things. We had to have jobs, industry. San Diego wasn’t like Pittsburgh and Pittsburgh Steel.
March 19, 1992