Vista Project for Gateway Gets New Life : Development: Court says city can search for a new developer for the long-stalled project on city’s western edge.

Vista’s on-again, off-again efforts to build a major commercial center at the city’s western edge are back on track.

A court decision last week gave the city clearance to find a developer to complete the so-called Gateway project, which now stands as a concrete shell alongside California 78 at Emerald Drive.

The 7-year-old project was most recently stalled by convoluted bankruptcy proceedings that prevented the city from signing a new developer to take over the weed-infested project.

“We can finally get moving ahead,” a relieved Mayor Gloria McClellan said. “We have had this thing hanging on our necks for a long time. It has not been easy. But Thursday was a wonderful day and now things are looking up.”

The source of McClellan’s optimism was an Aug. 13 U.S. Bankruptcy Court ruling that gave the city undisputed title to the 14-acre center. Judge John Wilson ruled that the bankruptcy filing of the last potential developer, Robert Rippe, could not hold up further Gateway development.

In effect, that ruling gives the center back to Vista, City Manager Morris Vance said.

“For all intents and purposes, the property is ours again,” Vance said. “We just have to go through and complete the proper paperwork and the title of the property will be cleared.”

Once that is finished, the city will again be able to woo developers. Vance and McClellan said suitors have been standing in line for a shot at the project, now envisioned as a center with one major store and three smaller ones, once the legal morass was untangled.

“This is the hottest spot going in the North County,” McClellan said. “We have 11 people looking at it. The council will evaluate each offer and take the best one.”

When the city incorporated in 1963, it took over the property from the Vista Sanitation District with hopes of designing a project to create jobs and provide sales-tax revenue, Vance said. Vista’s $4-million annual sales tax revenues are the lowest per capita of any North County city, Vance said.

“This is a very important center for us, in terms of generating sales tax,” Vance said. “In this day and age when the state is trying to take it away as fast as we can make it, we are trying to generate a little more sales tax nearly any way we can.”

Once completed, the 150,000-square-foot center will anchor other commercial development at the western entrance to the 18-square-mile city of 75,000 residents. Next door and already under construction is Home Base, a warehouse-style home improvement center. Circuit City will be nearby, for a total of 29 acres of contiguous commercial property, Vance said.

“One of the things these centers will do is keep sales in Vista,” Vance said. “We have provided housing and provided jobs; we’re probably the leader in the North County in those areas. Now we have to find places for the people to spend their money, which we are losing to neighboring communities.”

For the moment, however, the abandoned shell of the failed Rippe development stands as testimony to the frustration the city has experienced over the project. Instead of a vital sales tax generator, the property has returned nothing but headaches in costly legal battles and unfulfilled promises, said Mike Boyle, an attorney with Higgs, Fletcher and Mack, the San Diego firm representing the city.

“It has been a long and twisted story. It would tax any lawyer’s patience to try and explain it,” Boyle said.

Starting in 1985, a series of environmental requirements by the state Department of Fish and Game and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service delayed ground breaking. Then, in 1990, just as developer Richard Boatman launched development of a Price Savers store, the recession hit, causing the project to crash with the economy.

After Price Savers was bought by PACE, a subsidiary of K Mart, a corporate decision by PACE not to enter the San Diego market doomed that venture, Vance said. Then, with work already started and contractors screaming about not getting paid, Rippe and his Vista Center Associates took over the lease and became the managing partners, only to fail in their bid to win financing to continue the work, Vance said.

Finally, last January, just as the city was again shopping for a new developer, Rippe declared bankruptcy and mired the project in court until last week’s favorable ruling.

“The ruling made us all feel good because once again we can proceed, but we don’t feel good about the problems the developers have had,” Vance said. “Mr. Rippe, too, was a victim of the economy more than anything else.”