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Thursday, Mar 28, 2024
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City OKs Buffer Zone for Solar Turbines Area

The San Diego City Council has approved a downtown buffer zone prohibiting residential development in a nine-block area near the industrial facilities of Solar Turbines Inc.

The zoning change was approved earlier by Civic San Diego, the city’s downtown project oversight agency, following a proposal submitted to the agency by San Diego-based Solar Turbines. It stems from a high-profile dispute that arose in 2012 when a developer proposed an apartment project near the company’s facilities off Pacific Highway.

That development, on the former site of the Fat City restaurant and the earlier Top’s nightclub, has since been converted to a hotel project, which is being built by another developer and which the city has approved.

The new zoning prohibits residential and other “sensitive” land uses in an area encompassing roughly 12 acres of privately owned developable land on the northwestern edge of Little Italy. The buffer zone includes eight blocks located east of Pacific Highway, south of Laurel Street, west of Kettner Boulevard and north of Hawthorn Street.

It also takes in the block bounded by Pacific Highway, Hawthorn Street, California Street and Grape Street, according to a Civic San Diego staff report.

Solar Turbines, a global supplier of gas turbine power systems, occupies a 27-acre site at 2200 Pacific Highway, where it has operated for 87 years. The company is a division of Caterpillar Inc.

Leaders of Solar Turbines sought the zoning change to head off future environmental-related disputes that could potentially impact its local operations. City officials said the buffer zone will help minimize incompatible land uses in the neighborhood, while protecting existing core industries.

The new zoning prohibits projects that would bring permanent new residents to the buffer zone, but allows for other types of commercial uses like the current Fat City project, underway at 2137 Pacific Highway near Hawthorn Street.

T2 Development of Newport Beach is building a 364-room, dual-branded hotel project with 2,500 square feet of retail and restaurant space, meeting rooms and related amenities, set for completion in 2015. It is the former site of the Fat City and China Camp restaurants, which originally housed Top’s nightclub in the 1940s and more recently a Denny’s restaurant.

An earlier developer proposed a mixed-use, 232-unit loft apartment project that was opposed by Solar Turbines and the agency that preceded Civic San Diego.

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