Ron Hahn Sets His Sights on a Downtown Sports Arena

Developer Ron Hahn has a vision for downtown San Diego. He sees a $100-million, 18,000-seat sports arena rising in an area bordered by 9th Avenue, 15th Street, J Street and Imperial Avenue.

Hahn, 48, sees hockey star Wayne Gretzky firing a slap shot from the blue line in a neighborhood now used as a storage yard by San Diego Gas & Electric.

He sees basketball big man David Robinson slam-dunking on a patch of ground not far from where the San Diego Transit Co. has parked a fleet of old buses for years. Ron Hahn likes the proximity of the new building to the Convention Center and the rest of downtown.

Hahn sees his vision as nothing less than taking the city out of the shadows and into the 21st Century.

Hahn, the multimillionaire son of multimillionaire developer Ernest Hahn, recently completed a stock purchase agreement with Mississippi-born computer magnate Harry Cooper. Soon, possibly by mid-summer, Hahn and Cooper will have finished “the deal.”

The deal provides Hahn the lease to the city’s existing Sports Arena, near the junction of Interstates 8 and 5 in the Midway District. The lease has another 24 years to run. Even in its present state, the Sports Arena that no one seems to love is a moneymaking enterprise.

Hahn and four partners entered into the deal hoping to use the existing arena as the “wild card” en route to financing for the new place downtown. If Hahn can’t make it work downtown, he promises to look north, possibly near Del Mar.

Cooper, 58, who has lived in La Jolla for years, tried to build a new arena but got mired in the process.

Cooper now admits that “the politicians and the bureaucrats in this town drove me crazy.” After giving up on putting the arena downtown, he sought to build it on land he owns in Sorrento Hills, near Interstates 5 and 805.

Health problems finally forced the sale to Hahn, whom Cooper describes as “extremely bright, honest, perceptive . . . with a great ability to separate fact from fiction, the wheat from the chaff. I was impressed with him from day one.”

“If anyone can do this, Ron can,” said Cooper.

Ballard Smith, former president of the San Diego Padres and Hahn’s partner in the new venture, cites his friend’s credentials: “He’s developed 11 million square feet of property in San Diego County alone.”

As president of Land Grant Development Co., and of the Hahn Co. before that, the younger half of the father-son development dynasty has lived and worked in San Diego since 1968. Like his father--who developed Horton Plaza--he’s developed scores of buildings and shopping malls.

And, along the way, he’s acquired a reputation that Harry Cooper just didn’t have.

“Ron has credibility,” Smith said. “Ron was involved in helping to develop Horton Plaza, which a lot of people laughed at, but now it’s a cornerstone of downtown redevelopment. Ron has the ability to carry through on a project like this, which is enormously complicated.

“He has the contacts at City Hall. They’ve dealt with him, they know his word is good. All of those factors mean so much, especially in San Diego.”

For his part, Hahn says that if he is successful, Cooper’s attempt will have been a necessary first step.

“Working with the city, with its redevelopment and public financing vehicles, is an extremely sophisticated and difficult process,” he said. “Harry had dollars and cents, he had financial stability. He had a dream. He just wasn’t well-received. He wasn’t local to San Diego. He wasn’t part of the old-boys’ system.

“I said, Harry, your dream is real, your plans are good, what you want to do is right, but you’re not going to get it done. They’re not going to believe what you say. If you tell them the world is round, they’re going to say, ‘How do you know?’ ”

Tall and lean, with brownish-blond hair and pale eyes, Hahn will acknowledge in one moment that the old-boys’ system exists and then laugh about it. He admits he’s part of the city’s establishment but decries the city’s shortcomings in coping with staggering growth. And its lack of money.

“I’ve watched San Diego grow from a metropolitan area of half a million people to today’s 2 1/2 million,” he said. “We’re now the sixth-largest city in the country, the 26th major-media market in North America. I see 28 teams playing in most of these leagues and TV revenues driving professional sports.

“So, it’s hard to understand why San Diego, with its TV potential, doesn’t have a major league indoor sports team. We’re a big city, with a new Convention Center . . . and a 25-year-old sports arena.”

Hahn said that is there had been an arena near the Convention Center, the city would not have lost the 1992 Republican Convention to Houston.

“Are they that much bigger? Are they more Republican? No, Texas is a Democratic state. We’ve got Pete Wilson. Who did they have? They had the facilities.”

The difference between Houston and San Diego, Hahn said, was the difference between “a big-league city and a big little-league city. And we’re a big little-league city in a lot of ways.”

To make his dream a reality, Hahn realizes he can leave no chit uncalled. He has to sell the city on the numbers, and he has many on the tip of his tongue.

“Each sports franchise is worth $50 million to $200 million a year to the city in which it plays,” he said. “Could the city use that? Sure. . . . “

Hahn said he needs five to six acres for the “footprint” of the building. He hopes to start with 18,000 seats, with the capability of expanding to 22,000, which Harry Cooper says is “a necessity” for “getting the (NCAA) Final Four and the Madonnas.”

Parking, Hahn said, is critical. Structured parking, possibly shared with a proposed new city hall, would take 12 acres, he said; surface parking would take 60.

Hahn promises to provide the city $2 million a year in real property taxes, “which is far more than they’re getting now out of that neighborhood.” He hopes to sell the city the lease to the existing arena, allowing it to redevelop the land, which he says is worth $40 million.

Hahn sees most of the arena investment coming from private sources but says it can’t be done without help from the city.

The city, he said, “can’t constantly turn to the market and say to private capital: ‘Solve our problems. We want you to clean up 200 square blocks of urban blight. We’re not going to help with acquiring land, not going to share a parking structure. We don’t want to be over in that part of town, but we want you to be’ . . . .

“If it ends up costing us $160 million to build a downtown sports arena--to buy all the land and build the arena--and it costs, say, $90 million to put it in Del Mar, gee, I wonder where I’ll put it.”

Hahn is almost universally praised by people in local government, but one city official, who asked not to be quoted by name, said, “Like his father, he’s a master at political hardball, at cutting corners, and ultimately, at getting what he wants. Believe me, this will be no exception.”

Cooper said if the city gets moving with “a suitable plan,” it is “not out of the realm of possibility” that two existing National Basketball Assn. franchises, currently for sale, would agree to play in the old arena until a new one is built.

He said the San Antonio Spurs, with 7-foot center David Robinson, is a distinct possibility, but the city would have to “move fast with some kind of plan.” The other franchise that sources say is ripe for a move is the Indiana Pacers.

Hahn has “the will” to put the arena downtown and believes the city and its leaders share the dream. He worries, though, about who the mayor might be.

“If it’s Ron Roberts or Bob Filner, who have said they want it downtown, I’d feel real good,” Hahn said. “If it’s (County Supervisor) Susan Golding, whose interest in the past has been North County, well. . . .

“I’d like to be an enlightened, 20th-Century, altruistic person who says that once she becomes mayor, she’ll put the past aside and focus on what’s best for the city of San Diego.”

Hahn said that much of his will and style come from his father, the son of German immigrants, who worked to become one of the country’s most successful businessmen.

Ernest Hahn, 72, is his son’s primary role model--emotionally and professionally--and while the two have always enjoyed a close relationship, the son says they have had their differences.

He considers himself “lucky” to be Hahn’s son, “but expectations--that’s been tough,” he said. “Half the people cater to you as a way of catering to your father, and the other half tend to make you look bad as a way of making him look bad.

“I never had direct confrontations with him for a couple of reasons. We never really worked in the same office. Have I ever disagreed with him? All the time. Frankly, we agree on little, but it’s things that don’t matter, inconsequential . . . to our love for each other.”

As a young man, the Stanford-educated Hahn said that he and his father differed on hair, clothing, music and lifestyles, and sometimes, on what sons expected from busy fathers.

“He’s from the generation that believes any hair longer than a crew cut better be on a woman,” Ron Hahn says.

But Hahn says his wife didn’t like the mustache either, and when the couple recently celebrated their 25th wedding anniversary, she persuaded him to cut it off.

Hahn has an older and a younger sister. He and his wife, Linda, who live in Rancho Santa Fe, not far from his father, have a 23-year-old son and a 21-year-old daughter.

Hahn admits that much of his drive has been to impress his dad, and the current dream is no exception. He calls it a risk, but as he says, all good business is a bit of a risk, or no one would be successful.

“I could be the world’s biggest jerk in four years if we fail,” he said with a sigh. “I could have bought a tool and dye plant and failed, and no one would know. I’m overwhelmed by the response to this deal. Sports really gets people excited.

“If I succeed, well, I might be a hero. I’ll be a hero building a building that happens to be for sports, as opposed to a mall, which might be just as significant. It’s silly, but that’s how it is. Silly or not, I’ve jumped right in.”