Today we’d like to introduce you to Jason Wood.
Thanks for sharing your story with us Jason. So, let’s start at the beginning and we can move on from there.
Cisterra was founded by Steve Black and Todd Anson to partner with Cisco Systems (hence the “Cis” in Cisterra) to buy and develop land (“terra” is the Latin word for land) into corporate campuses for Cisco. We then came back to San Diego to develop the Biogen-Idec campus in UTC (now Illumina’s HQ). I joined the firm during the initial phases of this project – I was with Steve Black at Kilroy Realty a few years before this when he was Chief Development Officer of that company before departing to start Cisterra.
Our next project was DiamondView Tower adjacent to Petco Park where we purchased from the Padres the right to acquire a full city block from the City and develop the 1st Class A office building in the Ballpark District. DiamondView Tower was a huge success and led us to acquire another downtown property a block away. After surviving the great Recession, we were fortunate enough to link up with Sempra Energy and build them a new Headquarters building on the site. We’ve also purchased and leased to the City two high-rise office buildings in the core using the same financing structure we used for the Sempra Energy development project.
Currently, we are working to get the iconic project at 7th and Market underway as soon as possible. This project will provide to the downtown community its 1st 5-star hotel in the form of a Ritz Carlton hotel, a gourmet grocer with Whole Foods Market, 59 Ritz branded residences, 159 market and affordable apartments, and 152,000 SF of Class A office space. It will be a true urban mixed-use project with several uses all working together in a single building. We are also actively working on a few other prospective projects we hope to be public with in the near future.
Great, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
There rarely is a smooth road in real estate development and the overall challenge with the business is you never know what the issue will be with each project and the issues rarely repeat themselves consistently so the strategy is to do your best to plan the work, work the plan, and be nimble to react to the rocky parts of the road that are sure to come. On DiamondView the struggle was the Padres and City needing to work through the size of the Park at the Park. The legal parcels created after the City and the Padres finalized their initial deal didn’t match the marketing flyers used to promote the public vote for the ballpark. For Sempra the challenge was that Sempra had a lease expiration in their then current home without holdover rights so we had to design, entitle, design, permit, and construct a project under an extremely tight timeframe with very little flexibility for interruption to that schedule. For the City deals we had seller expectations the City couldn’t meet so Cisterra had to push, pull, and bend the acquisitions, leases, and financings to get the sellers, the City, and Cisterra all in “win” outcomes. 7th & Market we are dealing with a lawsuit over the issuance of our entitlements. We have extremely high certainty that the lawsuits have very little to do with the action items in the lawsuit but instead the lawsuit is because the plaintiff did not get their way in negotiations on completely unrelated items concerning the project. If it wasn’t for these rocky road situations development could occur by simply putting a banker, investor, architect, engineers, and a contractor in a room. Our job is to guide that team and lead the team through those rocky road situations so they all can do their role on as smooth a road as possible.
Please tell us about Cisterra Development.
Our company specializes in the development of Class A projects that need a high level of attention paid to the execution so that the end product meets the needs and wants of the user that one day will occupy the space. We seek out the challenging projects as competitors may shy away from the unknown or the difficult. Sitting in Petco Park and seeing two completed jewels over each the right field and left field fences (DiamondView Tower and Sempra Energy HQ) and remembering the challenges we overcame on each is a recurring proud moment. Those feelings of pride, success, and accomplishment cannot be replaced with anything.
Do you look back particularly fondly on any memories from childhood?
I’d spend hours a day as a young boy on the beach and in the water on the Jersey Shore in the Summer. Whether body surfing, boogie boarding, surfing, skim boarding, or playing frisbee that beach in my hometown in New Jersey was a major part of every day during the Summer growing up. Every time I go in the ocean here in San Diego or walk along the beach I reminisce about those days on the Jersey Shore.
Contact Info:
- Address: 3580 Carmel Mountain Road, Suite 460
San Diego, CA 92130 - Website: www.cisterra.com
- Phone: 619-615-0200
- Email: jwood@cisterra.com
Sempra, Location: San Diego, CA, Architect: Carrier Johnson
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