Walmart's All-Out War Against San Diego City Hall; Bridgepoint Leases New Space

Lobbyist and ex-Tribune reporter Al Ziegaus and his Southwest Strategies have gone to bat for Walmart in the company’s all-out war against San Diego city hall. According to recent filings, Ziegaus and sidekick Clint Carney were paid $3000 in the third quarter of this year to lobby city council members Todd Gloria and Sherri Lightner as well as Humberto Peraza, a staffer for Ben Hueso. The disclosure says that on July 29, Southwest staffers A. Christopher Wahl and Janine Pairis raised $2700 for Hueso’s brother Felipe’s ultimately failed city council bid.

Bridgepoint Education, the controversial online-learning outfit based here, has just leased 193,000 square feet of office space in a new eight-story building to be built at Aaron Feldman’s Sunroad Centrum office park in Kearny Mesa near Montgomery Field. According to a filing with the federal Securities and Exchange Commission, the initial term of the lease, occupancy to begin by January 31, 2013, is 12 years, with two 5-year renewal options. According to the disclosure document, “[T]he monthly base rent over the initial term of the Lease increases from $604,000 to $823,000 during the twelfth year.”

Bridgepoint already leases 248,000 square feet in Sunroad’s 11-story building in the Centrum project, the filing says. That’s the structure that had to be cut down to legal height after a long struggle between then–city attorney Mike Aguirre and Sunroad over its potential danger to planes landing at Montgomery Field.