Saturday, August 25, 2007

Sunroad's building

As a longtime resident of San Diego, I have been following the Sunroad saga here with interest. In short Sunroad Enterprises built a building that is too tall in the flight path of the busiest municipal airport in San Diego county. The local paper had a good two part (one two) investigation into how the building was built. Now that an internal investigation has been completed and show to be questionable, two city officials have either resigned or been terminated. Now in all of this, the paper has only published one adequate shot of the tower, it is the arial shot in part one of the two part story. I was in Kearny Mesa today, and took a number of photos. If a photo is worth a thousand words, here are about seven thousand from me.

This first one is from about a mile away looking east/north-east.


These two are from about a 3/4 mile looking North/North-West. They were shot from the top of a 3 story parking garage. For reference both the building immediately in the foreground and the white one behind it are two stories tall. The third building that only the very top of can be seen (white with vertical black stripes), is now owned by Sharp and is about 500 feet from the Sunroad building. I believe it is a 4 story building, and know it was originally part of the General Dynamics plant.



These two are looking South from about a half mile away, along the interstate the building is next to. Again, the Sharp building can be seen in the background. You can use the power line for a very accurate comparison as to how much taller the Sunroad building is compared to the Sharp building, previously the tallest in the area.



These final two are looking West, about down the flight path an airplane making a missed bad weather approach will fly. Small planes will fly to the left of the building, and large planes to the right.



In all of the pictures, it is obvious how out of place the Sunroad building is for the area it is built in. The building is 7 stories taller than the next tallest building in the area, plus it has a 10-12 foot structure on the roof in addition. The master plan for the area calls for low-rise industrial/residential buildings of not more than 4 stories. I doubt we have heard the end of this, however this building will be another blot on San Diego's skyline for many years to come.

Think Baker & Taylor is happy?

I'm behind, but I saw this a couple of days back. Short of it is, AMS is now launched an investigation of the 1.76 Million B&T wants in expenses and fees for the acquisition. Just two greedy companies slugging it out, and only the lawyers winning.