Will Horton Plaza's office complex foreshadow the city's homeless housing?

A prefab unit in every backyard

The Los Angeles real estate financiers currently remaking downtown’s failed Horton Plaza shopping mall into a high-tech office hub have put another building bullseye on San Diego, based on a new help-wanted advertisement making the rounds online.

Stockdale Capital Partners, headed by Steve Yari, is seeking a San Diego-based director of construction and development for a new firm currently dubbed Domo Modular. “This role includes hiring, training, developing, and managing others, including scheduling projects, initiatives, and team workloads,” says the job notice. Specifically, the new hire is expected to “interface with the modular factory to coordinate schedules, unit and building specifications, including all non-standard components.”

San Diego is not the only planned venue, judging from the advertisement. “Frequent regional travel (southwestern US) up to 30%, including occasional overnight travel,” is required. The venture, registered with the California Secretary of State’s office as OfHiive, LLC on January 4 by Stockton Chief Financial Officer Dennis Harris, changed its name to Domo Modular, LLC on April 9, records show. Depending on the extent of its development efforts here, the venture may face controversy. Last summer, Fixx Solutions, LLC withdrew a proposal to install hundreds of modular units for the homeless on land controlled by the Del Mar fair board after beachside neighbors raised a ruckus, per a Union-Tribune dispatch of August 12, 2020.

The idea is not without support in high places, and billions of dollars in state subsidies are on the horizon. A group calling itself Big City Mayors, including San Diego Democrat Todd Gloria, wants the state to spend $20 billion of its surplus for homeless housing, with a sizable chunk going to prefab units. “In Japan and in Great Britain, about 50% of new construction is prefab, which is so much better than it used to be,” San Diego County Democratic Supervisor Nora Vargas told the U-T in a pre-election interview last year. “So why don’t we have prefab be the default for accessory dwelling units? Why don’t we just drop those prefab homes in backyards across the County or in churches like they want to do? Seems to me the County sticks to the narrow when there are other solutions that other countries, other cities are using to great effect.”

Stockdale used well-connected downtown lobbying shops Southwest Strategies, San Diego Land Lawyers, and Allen Matkins Leck to convince then-mayor Kevin Faulconer to seal its deal to take over Horton Plaza, and the financial firm isn’t afraid to mix it up in the political arena with money. Steve Yari and his brother Shawn kicked in $4000 last year to the Scottsdale, Arizona city council bid of workout club owner Bill Crawford, per a July 2020 account by AZCentral. He failed to make the runoff. “This project is a dream come true for this part of downtown Scottsdale,” Crawford, a former critic, told the city council there before its 4-3 December 2020 vote to approve a mammoth Stockdale office and retail development.

Out of the lobby

AMR, the city of San Diego’s longtime paramedic provider that lost out last month to multinational Falck, USA, after a bitter battle that included a racially charged op-ed hit piece against Falck by New York politico Al Sharpton, didn’t go down without a lobbyist. “The Denmark-based company has been accused of inequitable service and unjust practices in the United States, and there is great concern that the move could undermine San Diego’s commitment to racial equality,” wrote Sharpton in a February 5 Union-Tribune commentary. Now Presidio Public Affairs Group, founded by onetime Kevin Faulconer insider Jason Roe, reports getting paid $10,000 by AMR during the first quarter of this year to lobby for “award of contract to AMR.”

Other Presidio clients included “dockless mobility” purveyor Lime, Inc. of San Francisco, which forked over $5000 for influence peddling regarding “favorable regulations which allow the company to operate within the City of San Diego.” In January of last year, Lime announced it was leaving San Diego and laying off staff here. “As part of our path to profitability, Lime has made the difficult decision to exit San Diego and focus our resources on markets that allow us to meet our ambitious goals for 2020.”

Added the company statement: “We appreciate the partnership we’ve enjoyed with San Diego and remain hopeful we can reintroduce Lime back into the community when the time is right.” ...Nora Vargas, who loaned her successful campaign for county supervisor $20,000 last year, has been paid back, per her end-of-year February 1 disclosure filing.

— Matt Potter (@sdmattpotter)

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