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City council's secret high-rise deal
I read this article and others today at other publications and instead of the unsupported accusations made by the reporter of this article I read about a situation where lawyers have made it impossible for The City to purchase a building The City should own and a current East Coast landlord threatening to rape the City and then Jason Hughes helping facilitate a deal with Cisterra Development to solve these issues and save the City millions of dollars along with having the desired ownership for The City at the end of the lease. Instead of the unfounded implications that Jason Hughes and Steve Black (Cisterra's President) did something wrong behind closed doors with our politicians maybe we should be thanking our politicians and Jason and Steve, who have both contributed greatly to downtown over the years, for solving this City problem on such short notice. Cisterra Development developed the 1st Class A office building in the ballpark area (DiamondView Tower) when that neighborhood was still quite blighted at great risk of success and most recently is developing a new office tower for Sempra Energy after Sempra made public it was looking at non downtown options for its headquarters facility. Given the reporter's readiness to jump to conclusions I'll do the same - maybe Jason, being a loyal consultant to The City, saw the issue and put 2 and 2 together and thought maybe the creative financing Cisterra employed to make a new building downtown for Sempra pencil compared to suburban alternatives might work for the The City too and when approached Cisterra agreed to help. It seems City Council got it right in looking at what is best for The City with minimizing the risk to the City. The City has locked in a below market rent deal for 20 years that gives the City ownership at the end of the 20 years (below market rent with ownership at the end of the term - how can that be bad!!!) and options to buy sooner if they so choose. The City will now control the entire area of City Hall and not be subject to the demands and threats of East Coast owners. Why are we throwing stones at Cisterra, Jason Hughes, and our politicians for all this - simply because we can't believe that something so good can be real without a catch? I can't see a catch, just a bunch of downtown SD people doing a good thing for SD. My applause to our politicians, City staff, Jason Hughes, and Steve Black - thank you!!!— January 28, 2015 12:48 a.m.