PIONEERS NEEDED FOR HOMES — DOWNTOWN

When Bill Sauls and his wife, Sharon, left La Mesa in late 1982 to move to downtown San Diego, the Horton Plaza shopping center was a construction site. The U.S. Grant Hotel was boarded up. The promise of a major convention center seemed all but forgotten.

Within the past year, the $140-million Horton Plaza center has become downtown’s success story, drawing thousands of visitors every day. The U.S. Grant, restored at a cost of $80 million, has emerged as one of San Diego’s most luxurious hotels. Ground has been broken on construction of a new waterfront convention center.

“I was concerned about moving downtown because it was so new and so different, and from a financial standpoint, it was a big commitment,” said Sauls, 33, an attorney. “We weren’t down here three months and suddenly fell in love with being downtown.”

The couple’s love affair with downtown, however, has not translated into a burgeoning residential population in San Diego’s center city.

Such a move was then — and still is — considered a pioneering effort, a risky proposition for both residents and developers thinking of investing in a still maturing downtown.

Despite the rapid pace of redevelopment in recent years, residential development remains the missing ingredient for making downtown more than just an eight-hour city that shuts its doors after the office workers go home and the stores close.

“Having residential downtown improves security; it makes people here on the off-hours; it creates vitality,” said Gerald Trimble, executive vice president of the Centre City Development Corp., the City Council’s redevelopment arm.

“Have you ever been to New York and walked on Wall Street on a Sunday? It’s a graveyard. We don’t want that in our downtown.”

Ironically, the city’s success in redevelopment downtown has made it that much tougher to make residential development financially feasible.

Redevelopment has forced the cost of downtown land upward. And housing is still considered a risky venture. Rents and sale prices cannot be pushed up high enough to justify the property and construction costs. As a result, public subsidies are considered necessary if housing is to be built downtown.

The 224-unit Marina Park where Sauls and his wife live and the neighboring 222-unit Park Row condominium development are among just a few residential projects that have been developed downtown in the past five years.

Built in the early 1980s, the two projects finally are close to selling out, but until Horton Plaza opened last August, sales were sluggish.

The Meridian, a 27-story luxury condominium tower that offers units for sale as high as $1.4 million, opened last year. Two apartment projects totaling 372 units are to begin construction this year.