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From: <char.ayers@att.net>
Date: Thu, 10 Apr 2008 05:17:08 +0000
To: Charlene Ayers <char.ayers@att.net>
Subject: VoiceOfSD-Davis: Port Fights Ballot Proposal (10th Ave Terminal--Richard and Nancy Chase)
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When parted partners still work well together
Port Fights Ballot Proposal
The Unified Port of San Diego has hired outside legal counsel to fight a ballot initiative being pursued by a group of developers that aims to redevelop <http://www.voiceofsandiego.org/articles/2008/02/01/opinion/slop/406tenth020108.txt> the 10th Avenue Marine Terminal.
The developers, Richard and Nancy Chase and Frank Gallagher, are pursuing a project that would attempt to meld traditional maritime uses with civic or commercial uses at the 10th Avenue Marine Terminal in San Diego. They propose building atop the cargo terminal there and are pursuing a November ballot initiative that would ask voters whether they wanted to amend the port's master plan to pave the way for the project -- effectively usurping the Port Commission's authority.
The trio has turned to a ballot initiative as a way to get past the competing visions <http://www.voiceofsandiego.org/articles/2007/02/10/government/798waterfront020907.txt> that have long been offered for San Diego's bay front -- whether it should be a tourist attraction or home for marine-based industry.
The Port Commission, which retained Allen Matkins LLP, voted 6-0 yesterday to have the attorneys analyze the ballot initiative "as it relates to state issues and federal Homeland Security concerns at the Tenth Avenue Marine Terminal. In addition, the outside legal counsel will be asked to do an analysis of legal issues relating to the Coastal Development Act and the Public Trust Doctrine, which outlines uses that are permitted on state tidelands," the port said in a news release.
The contract with Allen Matkins doesn't cap legal expenses nor does it spell out a timeframe for duration of legal work. Attorney Michael Shonafelt will handle the case, port spokesman John Gilmore said, billing an hourly rate of $470.
The port has invited the developers to speak at its May 6 meeting. The legal analysis will be presented then, too.
The Port Tenants Association and the Working Waterfront Group <http://www.sdpta.com/workingwaterfront.php> , a coalition of port-related business, government and labor groups, also announced this week their opposition to the initiative.
-- ROB DAVIS <http://www.voiceofsandiego.org/author_lookup/?byline=rob_davis>
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Nancy and Richard Chase
June 28, 2004
A marriage, we're often told during wedding toasts, is like a business partnership.
That may be true, but I'd submit a codicil to the nuptial simile.
The commitment to multimillion-dollar business ventures can prove more durable than mere wedding vows.
At least such is the case with Nancy and Richard Chase, the husband-and-wife team that for the past 10 years has guided the controversial Gregory Canyon landfill through a Byzantine gantlet of fierce resistance.
Standing shoulder to shoulder, the Chases are gearing up to defeat a November initiative, bankrolled by the casino-rich Pala band of Mission Indians, that would, if successful, scuttle North County's only active landfill project.
There is, however, a large smear on the glossy portrait of a Fairbanks Ranch power couple.
You see, the Chases are married in name only.
Though not yet legally divorced, they've been separated for four years.
Despite that emotional divide, their mutual commitment to the Gregory Canyon landfill ˆ and, it should be noted, their two teenage children, upon whom they both dote ˆ keeps them in constant contact.
"My friends are pretty amazed," Nancy said, sounding pretty amazed herself.
In the mid-'80s, Richard was often called the "Trash King," and not purely in jest. The urbane Connecticut Yankee, educated at Yale and Harvard, was the prime mover of a proposed trash-to-energy plant in San Marcos, a project that would later lose its energy component and evolve (without him) into a white elephant threatening to bankrupt the county.
Nancy, a Maine native, cut her teeth in San Diego as the director of the then-fledgling Gaslamp Quarter. Fueled by high-octane energy and charm, she became a high-flying fund-raiser for Roger Hedgecock, Susan Golding and many other prominent politicians.
Under contract with the San Marcos trash project in the '80s, Nancy met and in 1989 married Richard, her third husband. (Graham MacHutchin, commercial developer of Mission Beach's Belmont Park, was her second.)
The Chases were a match made in heaven, at least from the perspective of Gregory Canyon, a privately financed venture fighting the high anti-dump tide in North County.
In a brilliant (foes would say infernal) stroke, the Chases masterminded Proposition C, a 1994 initiative seeking a county General Plan amendment to build a privately financed landfill in Gregory Canyon, off state Route 76 and three miles east of Interstate 15, not far from Pala's casino. County supervisors opposed C, calling it "ballot-box planning," but the lavishly funded initiative won in a landslide.
With Richard as project manager and Nancy as the behind-the-scenes lobbyist and PR play-caller, the Gregory Canyon landfill pushed slowly through the environmental bureaucracy as the Chases fended off repeated political and legal ambushes.
Sadly for the Chases, their marriage broke up around the turn of the millennium. Happily for Gregory Canyon's investors, the Chase business partnership endured.
"I would imagine in this day and age this is fairly common," Richard surmised, citing as an example celebrity chef Wolfgang Puck and his wife, a couple that divorced but retained their roles in their restaurant empire.
Yet there's a distinction between the Chases and married entrepreneurs who build up equity in a business, then divorce.
The Chases have none of their own money in Gregory Canyon Ltd., Richard said. Rather, they are the company's sole employees. (Legal, engineering and other work has been retained as needed.)
They each, however, have a large stake in the project's ultimate success. Both Chases will receive annual royalties once the landfill opens for business, Richard said.
"This (expectation) is part of our community property," he said. He likens the fixed percentage to their "pensions."
In other words, fat checks till death do them part.
Now primarily a policy consultant to "large infrastructure" projects, Nancy's list of recent clients is impressive: Poseidon Resources Corp. (desalination plants, notably in Carlsbad); Brookfield Homes (large housing tract in San Marcos); Herzog Contracting Corp. (regional rail transit). In addition, she is completing a master's degree in Jungian-based psychology, which she terms "a great adventure."
Still, trash is piled high on her plate. Despite the inevitable awkwardness of working with an estranged mate, the potential benefits of Gregory Canyon are too significant for either of the Chases to spurn.
Besides, "Richard and I always worked well together," Nancy understated.
The Gregory Canyon landfill's enemies ˆ Pala Indians, NIMBY residents, environmentalists ˆ no doubt wish the amazing Chases did not work quite so well together.
Logan Jenkins can be reached at (760) 737-7555 or by e-mail at logan.jenkins@uniontrib.com <http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20040628/MAILTO:logan.jenkins@uniontrib.com> .
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