San Diego

Reese Jarrett, executive vice president of the city’s Southeast Economic Development Corp. for four years, resigned this week to go into a private partnership in real estate development. He will leave Sept. 30.

“Nothing happened internally within SEDC to prompt my leaving,” Jarrett said Wednesday. He said he felt he has been “fairly successful” in improving the economic climate in the minority neighborhood, but “I felt I could not pass up this significant opportunity in the private sector.”

He will leave his $65,000-a-year government job to go into partnership with Art Flaming to finance real estate projects and some joint ventures primarily in San Diego but also in the West.

He cited progress with the Gateway Center development as his major accomplishment and denied that a newer Southeast San Diego revitalization program led by City Councilman William Jones--Operation First Class--had influenced his decision to resign.

Jarrett confirmed that Al Rosenblatt, SEDC vice president of housing and finance, was leaving the agency to accept a private sector job, but he denied that two other officers of the corporation will lose their jobs because of city budget cutbacks.

The two positions remain in the coming year’s budget, Jarrett said, adding that any change would occur when city council members held hearings on the SEDC spending program next Tuesday, he explained.

SEDC was created in 1980 to attract industry and retail businesses to the Southeast San Diego area, where unemployment rates are the highest in the city.