Between Rich and Poor : Hotel Maryland Tenants Are Fearful Over Being Caught in the Middle

Once battered and several times burned, the Maryland Hotel still stands, a hulking chunk of pre-World War I architecture, 30 paces from downtown’s Gaslamp Quarter.

On weekdays, from an upstairs window at the Maryland, residents watch the white-collar work force retreat to the Gaslamp to repair after a day’s work.

Come weekends, office workers are joined by revelers. The center of the 16 1/2-block historic district is abuzz.

Throngs of patrons pour into nightclubs and fashionable restaurants housed in what were once rundown storefronts. Valet-entrusted cars are packed in lots shared with the homeless. Sounds of slamming car doors, bursts of laughter and the spirited clicking of high heels carry half a block to the Maryland Hotel.

Just outside the Gaslamp’s eastern border, the Maryland, too, is full up. But with a different clientele--most low- or fixed-income folks.

They are fixtures of the area landscape--retirees on pension, Social Security, welfare and disability recipients, and others who toil at nearby working-class businesses. A few are moneyed eccentrics.

A downtown mainstay since 1912, the Maryland Hotel at 630 F St. has conformed with the times. Once one of San Diego’s premier hotels, the Maryland fell into disrepair with the decline of the Gaslamp. Little more than a seedy, single-room-occupancy hotel for seniors, it was refurbished five years ago by its current owner, Golden West Hotel.

The Maryland’s remake and the gentrification of the Gaslamp have brought new prosperity and new problems to the area. Crime has been greatly reduced in the Gaslamp, spurring business but depositing a new set of hardships on the area directly east.

Differences between the area’s well-to-do and the struggling seem more acute these days. It’s the Gaslamp’s newfound flash versus the longstanding grit of neighbors to the east.

To live at the Maryland is to see it all.

A growing number of industrious, if not always law-abiding, street people mill about vacant lots and street corners just east of the Maryland.

In the shadows of the hotel, self-styled entrepreneurs conduct a nightly sidewalk shopping network. It’s a pedestrian bazaar where dime store jewelry tries to masquerade as antique gold. Goods of questionable origin--still sealed cartons of Marlboro cigarettes and bottles of Chivas Regal scotch are sold from a worn duffel or out of a brown paper bag. A little farther east, the entrepreneurs sell Mexican brown heroin and rock cocaine.

On any given day, two dozen police officers may be assigned to a new foot beat devoted solely to the Gaslamp--the area bounded by 6th Avenue on the east, Broadway on the north, 3rd Avenue on the West and Harbor Drive to the south.

Outside the redevelopment area, there are no special patrols. And the pockets of crime that earlier marred the Gaslamp have migrated east, said Maryland Hotel resident Juan Manuel Carrillo.

“Redevelopment has been great for the Gaslamp,” said Carrillo, 42, a San Diego Trolley track maintenance man. “But it feels like our area gets forgotten sometimes.”

By proximity, the Maryland benefits somewhat from the increased police watch--which, according to a Gaslamp business association and police records, resulted in more than a 60% decline in auto break-ins in the area during the last three months. Violent crimes in the Gaslamp have also been way down, said Officer Jim Filley, a Police Department spokesman stationed in the Gaslamp.

Residents lounging in the lobby of the Maryland or in the hotel’s barber shop say they see patrol cars pass by on F Street up to half a dozen times a day--albeit usually in transit to the Gaslamp.

“The Gaslamp is actually a pleasant area to come to,” Filley said. “I wouldn’t have said that 18 months ago. Before then, it was a no man’s land.”

New business owners say that, even though officers spend much of their time on petty traffic citations and routine patrol, police presence was a prerequisite to investing in the Gaslamp.

“We’ve seen incredible, dramatic improvements with the new patrols,” said Louise Meisfeld, marketing director of the Gaslamp Quarter Merchant’s Assn. “But when you have success, you have to deal with growing pains.”

For two years, Korky Harmon has lived in the parking lot across the street from the Maryland. When it rains, he sleeps under cars that he knows have been left overnight.

Since arriving in San Diego, Harmon has been trying to kick a drug habit acquired in Las Vegas, he said. Successful, except for occasional dalliances with marijuana, Harmon focuses attention on his unofficial “car watching” service.

Harmon’s free-lance business and penchant for referring to the 100-stall parking area as “my lot” have made him an irritant to management at the lot. They have tried unsuccessfully to evict him.

Police also ordered Harmon to move on and ticketed him for conducting a business without a license.

“The police and the manager are new,” Harmon said. “They don’t know how things work here. They’re going to have to get used to me .”

Harmon said he has built up a rapport with many patrons who frequent the Gaslamp. They return to his lot, he says, because their cars don’t get tampered with. For their peace of mind, Harmon gets paid. All remuneration, he said, is voluntary.

“I don’t beg,” Harmon said. “But it’s hard down here. Sometimes you have to speak up. You know, a closed mouth just doesn’t get fed.”

Harmon said he will stay at the lot he calls home, despite pressure to move. He can’t think about moving, he says. He has nowhere to go.

Charles Wilder is ambivalent about the upgrading of the Gaslamp. Wilder, 55, stays at the Maryland Hotel, with his wife, Madeline. Both are longtime residents downtown.

“There’s been a great deal of change,” said Wilder, an unemployed apartment manager. “Places we all could go and feel comfortable have turned into fancy clubs only the rich can afford. We all envy the well-off, and now they’re right here for us to see.”

Wilder’s savings are dwindling as he pays a monthly hotel rent of $425. To move into an apartment requires a month’s rent, security deposit and perhaps a last month’s rent that Wilder does not have.

During a stint last month, when Wilder manned a store-front kettle and solicited donations for the Salvation Army, his concern about the future grew, as did his affinity for the homeless.

“Say you’re a street person walking by a restaurant window,” Wilder said. “You see a man eating a nice steak, and you can’t get the money together to buy a hot dog. That’s when you get to feeling angry.”

The Gaslamp’s newest business owners--a cadre of restaurateurs trying to instill in San Diego a big-city taste for downtown dining and late-night entertainment--are aware of the hardscrabble types who have been displaced.

“Certain criminals and the homeless are being pushed east, there is no question,” said Hedi Madani, owner of recently opened Hedi’s East West Cafe, which features a pricey mix of European and Asian cuisine. “I don’t like to see social problems created in a new area, but how can you avoid it? It is unfortunate, but, you know, it’s not something new when a big city is divided between rich and poor.”

And, ironically, the urban-splendor and naked-city combination may be attracting patrons, Madani said.

“There is a vitality to downtown, now,” he said. “Being out on the streets, exposed to the elements . . . with an elegant place to go to, that’s part of the excitement of being in a city.”

A La Jolla couple, after dining at Fio’s Cucina Italiana, stand on 6th Avenue, waiting for a valet to fetch their car. A homeless man exposes a ballooning sore on his shin, and begs for change.

“Go to a hospital,” blurts the wife, a 39-year-old physician who requested that her name not be used, as she grimaces and averts her eyes.

Moments later, she adds: “I think the area has a long way to go. I wouldn’t come down here if I had to walk several blocks to get to the restaurant.”

Of course, downtown is not limited to rags and riches. In between, there is the Maryland--respectable, with a tidy interior but an at times somewhat downtrodden clientele.

Around the corner from the Maryland, on the eastern side of 6th Avenue, is the venerable Albert’s Uniform Shop. For 42 years, it has outfitted Highway Patrol, and sheriff’s officers.

Farther east is the Royal Pie Bakery which for decades has supplied San Diego stores and restaurants. Garish Vibe and Behind the Post Office are struggling, nouveau clothing stores that came to the Centre City East district for its economical space. There, they hawk trends on the cheap.

Business owners just outside the Gaslamp have been resigned to watch the development from the sidelines. But the knowledge that massive structural improvements bring with them rent increases has helped neutralize their envy, said Anthony Quon, whose family bought Albert’s Uniform Shop two years ago.

“There are a lot of great buildings still spread around downtown, not just in the Gaslamp,” Quon said. “Like ours,” he said, referring to the five-story, brick behemoth of a building at 831 6th Ave.

But, after listening to years of debate over what area will undergo city-sponsored redevelopment after the Gaslamp, Quon is somewhat uninterested in the prospect of gentrifying his side of 6th Avenue.

“If they redeveloped here, this probably wouldn’t be a uniform store,” he said. “Looking at the way they’ve created this new restaurant niche, it doesn’t seem like an old uniform shop would fit in.”

A possible deterrent to development east of the Gaslamp has been the high concentration of social service agencies catering to the indigent.

Centre City East businesses have fought for years to keep the neighborhood from becoming a “dumping ground” for homeless shelters, soup kitchens and rehabilitation centers. At turns, business developers and the social service agencies both say they have lost out.

Even the Maryland, with rates starting at $16.95 a night and $285 a month, is part of the dying breed of hotels and restaurants catering to downtown’s poor, some residents say.

And some worry about the Maryland’s survival. The hotel has suffered five major fires since 1988, records state. The most recent, on Wednesday, was allegedly started by a 72-year-old resident who was angry with the management. A November blaze killed the man whose room caught fire.

With 285 rooms and a high turnover typical of single-room-occupancy hotels, close monitoring of residents has been impossible, said Shearn Platt, managing partner of Golden West Hotel. Negligence of residents caused the other fires, Platt said, some when they fell asleep while smoking in bed. Another was started by a resident who discarded a lighted match in a storage area.

The threat of fire has not affected occupancy, Platt said, and management has taken further safety precautions. A month before the last fire, the hotel began fitting rooms and hallways with new smoke detectors and sprinklers, Platt said.

“When there is a fire, it scares people twice,” said resident Carrillo, who has seen two fires at the Maryland. “You’re afraid of getting burned and afraid of losing the roof over your head. . . . If this place wasn’t here, there would be a lot more people on the streets.”

As Gaslamp patrons take in a relaxing meal or get bent on booze, street life serves merely as a backdrop for frivolity.

But, for hotel residents and people living on the street, the sense of desperation and fear looms large.

“Rich people come dressed in suits and heels,” Carrillo said. “They park their cars, walk a few yards, go inside a warm, secure restaurant and don’t have a care in the world. The people who are barely scratching by, who live on the streets, are the ones who get scared the most. They have nothing, yet they fear they’re going to lose everything. That is one of the cruelest ironies of life.”