Bay Area firm wants to build condo towers

By Jonathan Heller
San Diego Union-Tribune
April 3, 2003

In downtown San Diego, some old buildings never die. They just get redeveloped. Or, in one case, reincarnated.

The ReinCarnation Project at 10th Avenue and J Street has housed a dairy operation, artists' spaces, residential lofts and offices. Now the 75-year-old building might be transformed into three condominium towers, with one sprouting 19 stories from the center of the existing two-story structure.

Owner and architect Wayne Buss, who oversaw the first transformation of the former Carnation Dairy building in the 1990s and coined the name ReinCarnation Project, wants to sell.

A Bay Area developer wants to tear down everything but the exterior walls and build the three towers. The 19-story tower would rise from the center of the building, replacing the penthouse structure with the "Eyes of Picasso" mural on it.

Two towers of nine and 10 stories would be built on the parcel outside the walls of the existing building, which is across 10th Avenue from the Padres' new ballpark.

The 240 condos would sell at market rates, starting at more than $400,000. The project might retain a popular art gallery and performance art space on the ground floor, as well as add new retail, said Richard Garcia, acquisitions manager for Levin Menzies & Associates of Walnut Creek, which wants to build the towers.

Buss did not return telephone calls seeking comment.

He struggled to buy the building in the mid-1990s and get his ReinCarnation Project off the ground. As a child, he toured the dairy on school field trips. As an architect, he rented space in the building after the dairy operation ended in the 1970s.

Now, Levin Menzies is getting ready to submit plans for a condominium project that would reflect the industrial character of the neighborhood, Garcia said.

The firm would not be able to preserve the "Eyes of Picasso" mural but is talking with the artist about possibly recreating it elsewhere on the property or in the neighborhood, Garcia said.

The artist, Mario Torero, said losing the mural would be a blow to the local artists' community. The building housed an artists' cooperative that played an active role in public art and other civic matters in the 1980s and 1990s.

"If we erase the 'Eyes of Picasso,' it's as though we haven't existed, like we don't have a history," Torero said.

He first painted the colorful mural with haunting eyes crying blue tears in 1977 on the Knights of Pythias building at Third Avenue and E Street. That building was torn down to make way for Horton Plaza in the mid-1980s, and in 1990 he decided to recreate the mural on the Carnation building, which Buss was trying to buy from Union Bank.

Bank officials, who had not authorized the mural, painted over it. Torero painted it again in 1991, and again the bank removed it.

The third time he painted the mural there, the bank gave in. Buss was close to buying the property by then.

"We thought the bank was getting the message we were a very determined community arts group," Torero said.

The Centre City Development Corp.'s board of directors will consider Levin Menzies' proposal over the next two months. Groundbreaking could happen as early as next January, said Brad Richter, principal planner for the corporation, the city's downtown redevelopment agency.

Community leaders held many civic meetings at the ReinCarnation building in the 1990s as the East Village took on its current identity. Some people view it as the birthplace of the East Village.