DOWNTOWN REDEVELOPMENT LEADER ADMIRED FOR TENACITY
Jerry Trimble, who arrived in San Diego in 1977 to take charge of downtown's faltering redevelopment, got the Horton Plaza retail center back on track, introduced the first new housing in decades and helped revitalize the Gaslamp Quarter — all while ruffling feathers and puncturing egos at City Hall, in the community and among developers.
He died Feb. 7 at age 87 of complications from Alzheimer's.
“The guy was a Type A who went at 100 mph,” said Dean Dunphy.
Dunphy served on the original board of the Centre City Development Corp. (CCDC, now known as Civic San Diego) that hired Trimble away from the Pasadena redevelopment agency.
“He was always the last guy to get on the plane because he was making the best use of all of his time.”
Soon after Trimble arrived in town, he said in an interview, “Redevelopment has a lot of potential and possibilities in San Diego,” but it would take time to accomplish. His starting salary was $50,000 — it rose to $105,322, reportedly the highest in the city at the time.
By the time he left in 1988, his work at the quasi-governmental agency, which answered to the City Council, produced some $550 million in new development with nearly $2 billion on the drawing boards.
Looking back, virtually all his admirers and critics said downtown would not have achieved so much without him.
“He was the most getthings-done person I've ever met,” said architect Frank Wolden.
Wolden worked with Trimble on fashioning Ernest W. Hahn's Horton Plaza shopping center into a one-of-a-kind downtown attraction that opened to rave reviews in 1985
after 13 years of redesigns, financing rejiggers and critics who doubted the project.
“Without Jerry, Horton Plaza may not have happened,” said John Gilchrist, the Hahn Co. president at the time.
Added preservation architect Wayne Donaldson who was active in the Gaslamp Quarter, “Jerry was a force to reckon with — and he was very smart.”
Mike Madigan, a chief aide to then-Mayor Pete Wilson who welcomed Trimble to town and backed him up when council members raised objections, called Trimble a “bulldog” — “a difficult guy to negotiate with and very forceful.”
Kit Goldman, whose nearby Horton Grand Theatre received financial backing from Hahn, even mounted a lunchtime comedy show, “Redevelopment or Bust,” featuring a character identified as “Gary Tremble.”
Developer and financing expert Dan Pearson recalled an on-the-street shouting match. Pearson accused Trimble of reneging on a deal to help replace the Lyceum Theatre on F Street, which had been razed to make way for the Horton Plaza garage
“He stormed away, walked about 50 feet, and then came back and said, ‘You're right, I'm wrong, I'll do something about it,' and he did.” A new Lyceum Theatre opened in 1986 underground at the project.
But inside the CCDC offices at the Spreckels Theatre Builidng, Trimble's successor, Pamela Hamilton said Trimble oversaw a collegial staff, gladly shared his expertise and “just liked hard-working people and didn't care what gender you were.”
Gerald M. Trimble was born July 16, 1935, in Wichita, Kan., to Delos Dweese and Thelma Woodford Trimble. They moved the family to Maywood, Calif., in 1944, where their son helped out at their dry-cleaning business and ran track on the high school team.
He joined the Army Reserve while attending USC, majored in psychology and went on to earn a real estate certificate at UCLA.
After a couple of years teaching elementary school classes, Trimble worked for the Los Angeles redevelopment agency as a relocation specialist and then headed up Pasadena's counterpart in 1970. He oversaw the early planning for Hahn's Plaza Pasadena, which served as a model for Horton. The Trimbles moved to La Jolla in 1977.
Longtime San Diegans remember the pre-Horton mall days, when it was unsafe to venture south of Broadway, filled as it was with peep shows, seedy bars, drug dealing and prostitution that together reportedly cost the city $25 million in security and upkeep beyond
property tax income it generated. Properties sold for $50 per square foot, a tenth of today's prices, by one reckoning.
The area's decline had begun after World War II when residents moved to the suburbs, department stores moved to Mission Valley and sailors on liberty congregated along the waterfront and up Fifth Avenue. Numerous false starts prompted downtown leaders to lobby for a special agency that would focus on 322 acres of the prime but blighted historic downtown core.
But as Trimble warned, it would not be clear sailing. Recessions, Proposition 13 property tax reform and competing political agendas upset timelines.
With heavy subsidies to pioneer developers, a skeptical but compliant council and compromises with preservationists, successes began piling up. In Trimble's time, they included the Park Row and Marina Park condos in the Marina district, the San Diego Trolley line on Park Boulevard and C Street, Seaport Village on the downtown waterfront and office towers on B Street and Broadway.
With Wilson gone to the U.S. Senate in 1983 and Horton Plaza and other projects buttoned up, Trimble departed in early 1988 to oversee USC's newly established real estate development arm.
“I think we've accomplished a great deal,” he said after his announcement. “Downtown San Diego is booming.”
In 1992 he joined Keyser Marston Associates in San Diego. Local consultant work included the Southeastern Economic Development Corp. and its redevelopment of the abandoned state Route 252 extension, City Heights Village, County Operations Center in Kearny Mesa and conversion of the Naval Training Center into Liberty Station.
In 2013, he retired to spend a few years in private consulting.
“He was a good listener and came out of every meeting with a new data point or piece of knowledge,” said Paul Marra, a Keyser Marston principal partner.
In those final years, Gary London, another real estate consultant who had represented clients seeking CCDC approvals, found
himself on opposite sides of Trimble, with London representing a North County city and Trimble representing a developer.
“I learned from Trimble how to negotiate hard, be prepared and leverage our position, which I did in our discussions, but in reverse,” London said. “We were so tough on our side that the developer almost walked out.”
Perhaps one of the ironies of Trimble's life is that his son Michael became the executive director of the Gaslamp Quarter Association in 2016, the very same group that for a time refused to come under Trimble's thumb because property owners feared CCDC's powers of eminent domain.
But Michael Trimble said his father was proud that he carried on his interest in real estate matters.
Jerry Trimble was all business at the office, but he led a varied and equally energetic life outside. He would run 6 miles and swim an hour a day, took up surfing and then kayaking and loved snow skiing in France.
He and his wife, Maxine, played folk songs on guitars together, danced in the kitchen and accumulated a huge collection of CDs and attended San Diego Symphony concerts. He read spy novels and histories, delved into varied cuisines at local restaurants (while savoring Maxine's Jewish cooking) and favored independent films.
Michael Trimble recalls acting as a human antenna when the pre-cable family TV acted up during the Oscars. And when USC faced UCLA at football games, Maxine, who attended UCLA, tolerated Jerry's USC enthusiasm. He was “snappy dresser,” a doting grandfather and happy dog owner of two Akitas, Kuma and Jobi. Maxine died last year.
Trimble is survived by his sister, Marilyn Trimble of Santa Cruz; sons Michael and Jason, both of San Diego; and one grandson, Brandon.
A memorial service is scheduled for 2 p.m. Sunday at Temple Beth Israel, 9001 Towne Centre Drive, just east of Westfield UTC. The family suggests donations in his memory to the Helen Woodward Animal Center in Rancho Santa Fe.