Robinson’s hood

Lobbyist and lawyer Paul Robinson has been appointed by Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger to the governing board of the San Diego County Regional Airport Authority, replacing another lawyer and lobbyist, John Davies, who quietly quit in March due to unspecified potential “conflict-of-interest concerns” related to his downtown law firm Allen Matkins. The well-wired Davies, who is spearheading the campaign for Proposition D, the strong-mayor measure favored by Mayor Jerry Sanders, is a close friend and confidant of ex-mayor and former governor Pete Wilson, whom he served in a variety of governmental positions. So did the 63-year-old Robinson, who was one of Wilson’s top city hall aides in the late 1970s. Robinson’s firm, Hecht Solberg Robinson Goldberg & Bagley, is registered at city hall to represent a host of high-powered special interests, including the San Diego State University Research Foundation, SeaWorld, Sunroad Enterprises, Vulcan Materials, Garden Communities, and Qualcomm.

According to the law firm’s most recent disclosure form, filed April 22 and covering the first three months of this year, Robinson negotiated the purchase of a “fee interest of Mariner’s Cove” on West Point Loma Boulevard from the City on behalf of AIMCO, the largest owner and operator of apartment houses in the country. Robinson also negotiated a lease at the City-owned Brown Field for Insurance Auto Auctions, Inc., and handled lease and purchase negotiations regarding City-owned land at 8110 Balboa Avenue on behalf of Samuel J. Kahn, son of the late development magnate Irvin Kahn, who became infamous for his Teamsters union ties in the 1960s. … Now that Customs chief Alan Bersin has taken his lumps for failing to file the proper disclosures of his domestic workers, another San Diegan is coming up to bat for the Obama administration. Architect Milford Wayne Donaldson, who specializes in historic preservation projects and currently is the State Historic Preservation Officer, has been named chairman of the president’s Advisory Council on Historic Preservation. Donaldson’s past projects have not all been controversy-free. He was a consultant to the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego’s modernist add-on to downtown’s Santa Fe Depot, which a few critics labeled a desecration.