Reprinted from the Daily Transcript

IKEA, Lowe's Home Improvements And Costco To Anchor Fenton Marketplace

For four decades, San Diegans have flocked to metropolitan Mission Valley to shop.

By the summer of the year 2000, the city's central retail hub will be completed by Fenton Marketplace, a unique 47-acre home and retail center that Sudberry Properties Inc. will develop on the former site of H.G. Fenton Companies' sand and gravel-mining operations immediately west of Qualcomm Stadium.

Unlike the nearby regional malls Fashion Valley and Mission Valley Center -- the majority of whose retailers focus on apparel, soft goods and electronics -- Fenton Marketplace will bring to San Diego IKEA, the Sweden-based multinational retailer of affordable and trendy home/office furnishings and accessories, as well as Southern California's first Lowe's Home Improvement Warehouse. Costco will be the center's third major anchor.

Because the Fenton Marketplace IKEA will be the retailer's only outlet south of its central Orange County store in Tustin, the center is expected to attract consumers from throughout San Diego County, said Thomas W. Sudberry Jr., principal of Sudberry Properties Inc.

The retail center's location in Mission Valley is an important one -- it is the only remaining undeveloped property in the river valley, presently zoned for commercial development, that can accommodate an anchored retail project.

In design and retail mix, the $60 million Fenton Marketplace will be unlike any retail center in Mission Valley. Indeed, the center's concept and urban plan transforms typical large warehouse retailers into anchors of a stylish urban retail village that will be a visual as well as service asset to Mission City, the 215-acre, transit-oriented, master-planned community.

Unanimously approved by the San Diego City Council in 1998, H.G. Fenton Companies' Mission City is just west of Qualcomm Stadium on either side of Friars Road. In addition to Fenton Marketplace, the master plan contemplates the eventual development of 2,400 to 3,000 apartments and condominium units, one-half of which already are under way, a business park with offices, a new branch library, a new San Diego Trolley stop and a bridge linking the stadium with Camino del Rio North.

The majority of the residential development will be on 133 acres north of Friars Road. Residents will be able to walk to the retail, business and transit components on Mission City's 82 southern acres via a pedestrian passage under Friars Road. The trolley stop will be adjacent to Fenton Marketplace, residential parcels and the two-acre site that the Fenton Cos. is donating to the city for a branch library with a community room.

With approximately 560,000 square feet of built space to accommodate the three major anchors and a village-like retail and food court component, Fenton Marketplace will become the county's 11th largest retail center. The IKEA store will be approximately 210,000 square feet, the Lowe's some 141,200 square feet and the Costco about 147,000 square feet. In addition, there will be approximately 61,500 square feet of space for the village retail/food components.

Sudberry sees the home and retail center as a fitting tribute to the Fenton family, which has been a part of San Diego County's fabric since 1880. But it is the sensitivity of its urban plan and design by San Diego-based Fehlman LaBarre Architects that will make it far from typical, Sudberry said.

"The Fentons are determined that the retail component of Mission City be an architectural asset to the master-planned community, that it be of the quality that residents across the street will find appealing," he said. "The typical design for large warehouse retailers is very utilitarian, but we feel that Fenton Marketplace will set a significant new standard for planning and design of an urban retail center."

Working closely with Sudberry, community groups and Flocke & Avoyer Commercial Real Estate, the exclusive marketing agent for Fenton Marketplace, Fehlman LaBarre, developed forward-looking design guidelines for the retail center and the remainder of Mission City. The prominent San Diego-headquartered architecture and planning firm also developed Fenton Marketplace's site plan and the architecture for the urban retail/food court component of the project. In addition, Fehlman LaBarre is responsible for the design documents for the IKEA, Lowe's and Costco structures, which the anchors will design independently and build.