Tax and media intrigue envelope massive Mission Valley hotel deal

An era dating back to the 1950s quietly ended last summer when C. Terry Brown, the hotel mogul currently embroiled in the tax case brought by lawyer Cory Briggs, cut a deal to dilute his family's ownership in Mission Valley's sprawling Town & Country Hotel.

As previously reported here, Brown — son of San Diego hotel pioneer Charlie Brown and a one-time associate of Richard Nixon's friend and fallen financier C. Arnholdt Smith — is the chairman of the city's Tourism Marketing District, currently fighting a lawsuit by Briggs to overturn a room tax that fuels Terry Brown's mighty power and influence.

Brown, a longtime pillar of the local GOP establishment, controls the tax district's board — of which he is chairman — with the backing of three other wealthy and powerful hotel titans, including the Bahia's Bill Evans and Half Moon Inn owner Richard Bartell.

In addition, Republican real estate mega-millionaire Douglas Manchester, who owns the Grand del Mar resort in the northern part of the city, is represented on the board by Grand del Mar executive Tom Voss.

U-T San Diego, also owned by Manchester, has repeatedly reported on the Briggs battle against the tourism marketing board without disclosing the U-T publisher's role in the case.

Public word of Brown's plans to sell a piece of the Town and Country, immediately adjacent to Manchester's U-T at the interchange of State Highway 163 and Interstate 8, dates back to October 2013, when we first reported here that the Lowe Enterprises Real Estate group of Los Angeles had hired downtown super lobbyist Paul Robinson, a stalwart of the GOP Lincoln Club, to conduct "Due Diligence for Purchase of Town & Country property located at 500 Hotel Circle North."

The outcome sought was listed as "Redevelopment of Town & Country property of Atlas Specific Plan."

Insiders say Brown and Lowe are looking to scrape the T&C site and turn it into hundreds of residential units as well as a new mega-hotel and visitor complex.

Manchester also wants to redevelop his neighboring U-T site, which could create massive traffic headaches in the heart of the valley.

Today's word from Ken Doctor that Manchester may sell the U-T to the L.A. Times–owning Tribune Company "exclusive of the real estate" indicates that the land under the newspaper’s printing plant could become the site of even more residential and/or commercial units.

San Diego GOP mayor Kevin Faulconer, elected with major money from both Manchester and Brown, is expected to readily green light both of the huge projects.

Town & Country, LLC, sold the hotel to Hotel Circle Property, LLC, last June 3, a deed recorded with the county shows. An accompanying trust deed on the property says Hotel Circle signed a $62.2 million note to finance the deal.

Without identifying Brown's role in the transaction or discussing the newspaper's adjacent project, Manchester's U-T reported February 10 that the parties to the transaction had avoided a reassessment of the property's value, and thereby higher taxes, by maintaining that it hadn't changed ownership.

"The assessor’s office researched the matter over the last several months and concluded that there was indeed an ownership change in the property, which would in turn trigger a reassessment,” according to the report.

“A supplemental tax bill will likely be sent out in the next couple of months once an appraisal of the 40-acre resort is completed, said Jeff Olson, a division chief in the assessor’s office. The property’s current valuation is more than $55 million, he said."

“We did not receive enough information [from the owners] to overcome the presumption that this is a change of ownership,” Olson was quoted by the U-T as saying.

Added the paper: "Representatives of Atlas Hotels could not be reached for comment."

Atlas is owned by Brown.