The Naval Training Center (NTC) Promenade at Liberty Station “” the massive Point Loma project long-touted as San Diego’s flagship site for arts, culture and technology “” has occasionally fallen victim to its own ambition. Funding and logistics problems have dogged completion of the six so-called Phase I buildings for several months. The area farmer’s market has already folded “” well before the bulk of NTC’s commerce goes online.
Alan Ziter, NTC Foundation executive director, explained that the market simply hung out its shingle before adequate residential and foot traffic took hold. The half-dozen Phase I facilities, he added, are a different matter. A federal funding package acquired last summer has played a major role in accelerated construction, with all six buildings now expected to be completed by the end of the year.
Of the nearly $22 million needed for the buildings’ completion, some $12.6 million will come from the federal New Markets Tax Credits (NMTC) plan, established in 2000 to allow corporations and individuals to take tax credits as part of neighborhood revitalization subsidy packages. Public and private donations will make up the remainder of the shortfall. The six buildings affected are the Corky McMillin Companies Event Center, the NTC Command Center, Dance Place San Diego, Music Place San Diego and two buildings scheduled to become homes to several nonprofit organizations.
The City of San Diego’s Planning and Community Investment Department, which manages the NTC Redevelopment Project, secured nearly $6 million in federal Housing and Urban Development loans, to be repaid with NTC redevelopment tax revenues.
The NTC Foundation is renovating 26 historic buildings on 28 acres of the former San Diego Naval Training Center, once home to 20,000 Navy recruits a year following its inception in 1916. The center was decommissioned in 1993 and closed four years later.
Ziter, who headed the San Diego Performing Arts League for 18 years before assuming his current position in 2003, noted that the latest construction delays haven’t deterred the NTC community from taking shape. Sales of homes ringing the promenade, he said, have been taking place for two years “” and in any event, he added, the farmer’s market wouldn’t be that difficult to resurrect.
“When you look at [downtown Point Loma], where’s the center? Where’s the focus?” Ziter said. “NTC is going to be a one-stop shop for community and culture.”
Dance Place San Diego, Ziter said, is a case in point. Its resident companies include four of the city’s major dance groups ” San Diego Ballet, Malashock Dance, San Diego Dance Theater and Lower Left Performance Collective “” and the 24,000-square-foot building will serve as San Diego’s first wholesale dance training facility.
John Malashock, Malashock Dance founder, has spearheaded the bulk of the progress at the facility.
In a Union-Tribune article dated Aug. 7, 2005, Malashock said, “I thought, ‘It isn’t just my company that needs a home “¦ Dance needs a home in San Diego. Dance tends to be invisible here. But if enough groups get together under the same roof, maybe you can create a hub.'”
In a March 2005 issue of the La Jolla Village News, Malashock cited plans that called for Dance Place’s opening in February of this year. Dance Place thus would have been the first of the NTC cultural facilities to unlock its doors “” but funding delays have cut the schedule well short
Since then, the San Diego dance community has shown major signs that it’s coming into its own. George Balanchine’s coveted works are now routinely commissioned to the City Ballet of San Diego, and increasingly, troupes specializing in several genres stop here as part of their tour itineraries.
NTC, Ziter said, seeks a role in that evolution “” and he reported that its corresponding efforts at Dance Place are taking shape none too soon. The floors, he said, are being installed this week.