Overlooking the Urban Scene

by Tim McClain

Gina Champion-Cain parlays a passion for urban renewal into the chair's sat on the Downtown San Diego Partnership

The power of real estate development struck Gina Champion-Cain at a young age, and now she is aiming to work its magic on revitalizing Downtown. "My dad was a real estate developer back in Michigan," she says. "He was very visionary for his time and location. While I was growing up he was negotiating to buy up old farm land, and bringing his buddies who were builders in to develop five tracts each. He really was doingsome of the first master-planned communities in Michigan."

photo/Alan Decker

From her father, Champion-Cain learned the thrill of development. But in her case it is working within the inner city fabric rather than on raw land. "I really want to generate value in the urban cores through destination projects," she says. "Adaptive reuse" is the key to her efforts, turning older, underperforming structures into places people want to go or live.

After graduating from the University of Michigan with a degree in philosophy and political science, Champion-Cain moved to San Diego. "I figured Southern California was the place to be, due to its close proximity to the Mexican border," she says. "I felt the Hispanic and Latin American cultures were becoming more a part of our profiles, our economies."

With an MBA from the University of San Diego, she set out to be a developer just as the local recession began in the late 1980s. Because of that bad timing, she instead became involved in the asset management side of the industry, helping the federal government and private lenders dispose of real estate saddled with bad loans.

She was on the team that repositioned La Jolla Village Square, turning the mall inside out." I worked with some incredible visionaries," she says. "They said, 'let's take this old tired mall and let's turn it into a community center that is value oriented.' The demographics of the La Jolla area is wealthy people who don't want to part with their bucks."

Next she went to work on the executive arm of Koll retail group in Newport Beach, doing property management and leasing. She moved over to Koll Asia Pacific as a senior vice president running the Japan group for development of mega-malls. "When the Asian market started to look soft, I exercised an option and decided to start my own business," she says.

The decision led to the 1997 formation of American National Investments, an urban real estate development firm. "Turning the bad stuff into good stuff," she says. "That really is my speciality."

Her biggest deal to date was the acquisition, with partners, of the former Woolworth store at C Street and Fifth Avenue Downtown, and repositioning it with a signed lease as a San Diego location for the House of Blues. The project later stalled because of problems with the nightclub operator. The mix has now been changed to include a boutique hotel and the music club, with an opening likely this year. Champion-Cain isa partner in the venture, with Hansen Enterprises serving as developer and Hiland Partnership as the general contractor.

She is bothered by, but understands, the project's delays. "I thought it would be open by now and we all would be singing the blues in a good way," she says.

In the meantime she is helping out with other projects, such as Watt Commercial Properties' 383 apartments in Little Italy and the reuse of on old bank midrise.

Champion-Cain and her husband, maquiladora owner Steve Cain, have been married for 11 years. The pair grew up together in Michigan, but didn't date until she moved here.

Her enthusiasm for Downtown San Diego can be traced to a friendship with Dennis Campbell, the late Centre City Development Corp. planner. "He just had such an enthusiasm for Downtown and bringing back the core," she says. "Four years ago the core was not very sexy. He was very supportive and very instrumental in me achieving the entitlement success I did for our project."

When she joined the Downtown Partnership's board in 1998, Champion-Cain found a strategic plan that was badly out of date. Encouraged by then-chairman Craig Irvingand then-president Lori Black, she led a subcommittee through an update that takes the Partnership through 2003.

Working on the effort, she says, "really showed me how far we have come and how much farther we, as community leaders, have to take Downtown, with the issues of affordable housing, transportation and bringing business into the region. We need to make the Downtown the amenity for the region. It can handle the density, it can handle the infrastructure, it can handle the transportation."

Champion-Cain will be voted on as chair on Jan. 8, taking the position officially during a Jan. 18 luncheon where Mayor Dick Murphy will swear in the Partnership's officers.                                                                                              
 - Tim McClain