South Bay

Bill Toomey, an Olympic decathlon champion, will direct corporate fund raising for the new San Diego Olympic center in South Bay, San Diego Councilwoman Gloria McColl announced Monday.

A 150-acre site for the year-round training site near Upper Otay Reservoir was approved by the U.S. Olympic Committee earlier this month, along with a financing plan in which $15 million in local donations will be raised to finance the first construction phase to house 300 athletes.

Toomey, who won a gold medal in the 1968 Olympics in Mexico City, most recently has been national director of fund raising for the USOC. He resigned that position to assume his new duties in San Diego, McColl said.

The land for the Olympic site was donated by developers of Eastlake, a planned community in Chula Vista. So far, McColl said, five private donations of $1 million have been pledged for construction of the 300-athlete facility, which will eventually be expanded to serve 1,000 U.S. Olympic competitors.

McColl said that Toomey will be in charge of raising the remaining $10 million within the next 14 months so that the training center can be completed by mid-1991, in time for U.S. athletes to use the multipurpose facilities for training for the 1992 Olympic Games in Spain.

Toomey was hired for the fund-raising post by San Diego-based Atlas Hotels.