The financials for the two City Hall development proposals were released yesterday. Portland based Gerding Edlen's numbers came in lower than Hines.

Check out the UT story here with links to the city's slideshow explaining the financials. 

Before anyone had a chance to get their head around the numbers, today Hines withdrew their proposal. Hines stated that "While we remain confident in the strength of our proposal, it is clear that the initial analysis conducted in this process does not favor our approach."

See the UT story here with links to the Hines press release.

Also interesting was the CityBeat story this week about how San Diego seems to be destined to repeat mistakes of the ultra conservative past that gave us the original City Administration Building. So non-descript that they were not even willing to call it City Hall.  It features many quotes from SDAF board member Mike Stepner. In the early ’60s, he said, “we did not have the understanding then that we were building a civic center, a facility that represented who we are and what we aspire to be as a community. And good design doesn’t cost more!”    Let's hope this message gets through this time.

 Read the CityBeat story here.