Might Chargers eye property occupied by opera studio?

San Diego Opera — in an internal struggle over dissolving — owns a set-making studio at 3064 Commercial Street. This studio has built more than 50 new productions for San Diego Opera through the years and has produced sets for other opera and theater-arts organizations.

"My estimate is that it is worth five million bucks," says H. Eugene Myers, an attorney and real estate buyer who owns property in the area. "In the next couple of years the opera could possibly pick up a pretty sizeable chunk of change."

Myers owns property on Commercial Street from 28th to 32nd streets. On Saturday, April 12, he met with other real estate owners in that same area of Commercial Street. Myers had invited the other owners to come. Initially, he was concerned that the city would seize Commercial Street property from 28th to 32nd by eminent domain, knocking down the values.

At the meeting, he was told seizure was not likely, and he feels that Civic San Diego probably does not have the funds to go the eminent-domain route because of potential lawsuits and the like. However, he feels the parcels in that area could be converted to high-density residential and mixed uses — thus raising property values "at the stroke of a pen."

He invited Karen Cohn, chairwoman of the opera, to the meeting, but nobody from the organization showed up. Myers notes that when John Moores got a $300 million subsidy to build Petco Park, he was permitted to buy surrounding property at an extremely low price. (Some have estimated he raked in $700 million to $1 billion just in reselling that property to developers.) Myers says his own Commercial Street property enjoyed an increase of 50 to 60 percent because of Petco and the surrounding development, even though it was a long way away.

Myers believes the Spanos group does not want to develop the area around Qualcomm Stadium because of the plume under it and other reasons. Spanos might prefer to have a combined stadium and convention center but could settle for something else. Possibly, he would get property not too distant from Commercial Street and might try to put senior and affordable housing in the Commercial Street area as part of the stadiium package. Myers raised this possibility at the Saturday meeting, pointing out that since the trolley "would be the purveyor of people to the stadium," the idea is not out of the question. "There could be a bump in the value" of that Commercial Street property.

I reminded him that Mark Fabiani, PR representative for the Chargers, has suddenly shown up as PR for the opera on a pro bono basis. Could the opera's property on Commercial Street be a reason Fabiani is giving free time to the opera?

"It seems like a long shot," says Myers, who admits he was puzzled when Fabiani showed up at the opera. "There is a possibillity you could connect the two [the studio and Fabiani]."