Last month, I mentioned in this column that there had been “a lot of hoopla” about downtown San Diego trying to reinvent itself to become something called “Bandwidth Bay.” While I criticized and even made fun of the name, I said as clearly as I could that San Diego is and will become even more so a major world-class technology center and that downtown San Diego is and will become even more so the business, civic, and cultural center of the entire region. I even read my column draft aloud to a couple of people I know with serious attention deficit disorders before sending it to the newspaper to be sure that I was being as clear as I thought I was.

Turns out I wasn’t as clear as I had hoped to be at all. The so-called Bandwidth Bay hoopla to which I referred in that column paled in comparison to the storm of e-mails, nasty notes, phone calls, and menacing glares I’ve had since that column was published in early July. A couple of important clients misunderstood what I was trying to say. Even several of our firm’s leasing representatives who specialize in other areas of the county would only mumble a stifled grunt or two when I greeted them in the first few days after the column ran. It wasn’t pretty.

Without being overly defensive, I need to set the record straight as to what I believe is the future of both downtown San Diego and our high technology industry. If there’s anyone who works in downtown San Diego who’s more committed than I’ve been to advancing downtown, I’ve yet to meet that soul. And from this point forward, I will outline my rationale without once mentioning the name, Bandwidth Bay, or offering my opinion on its relevancy. Been there, done that.

First, let’s deal with what is downtown San Diego. The fact that our firm works with tenants and properties in downtown and throughout the San Diego region gives me the perspective and frame of reference necessary to be able to emphasize the special role downtown San Diego has to our region’s economy. It is the hub, the center, the headquarters, and the heart of everything south of Camp Pendleton, north of Tijuana, west of Imperial County, and east of Ballast Point. Specifically, it is the center of local and regional government and the headquarters of the federal government’s presence in this region. It has been and continues to be the business and professional services hub of the county as well as the center of our legal and justice community. Thanks to the new ballpark and several pioneering developers, downtown is emerging as the new recreational and urban housing center for the region.

The Navy continues to maintain a strong and visible presence in our downtown, thanks, in part to the role our firm played in arranging for the Navy to occupy 80,000 square feet in the Golden Eagle Plaza building on B Street. Oops, I almost forgot to mention that, among the hundreds, if not thousands of downtown office leases we’ve handled over the years, we arranged for Golden Eagle Insurance Company to relocate from the suburbs to occupy 200,000 square feet as the anchor tenant in that downtown building.

Both these tenants are relatively “low-tech” organizations that have traditional reasons for being located in downtown San Diego. I believe they represent the future office tenancy of downtown San Diego, more so than the technology sector. I believed otherwise as recently as a couple of years ago when Sun Microsystems and a half a dozen other national technology names were looking seriously at downtown San Diego as a major location for their business operations. For a wide variety of reasons, some of which have nothing to do with downtown San Diego itself, these and other technology companies are no longer looking at downtown as a serious location. It’s time to shift our thinking to reflect the new market realities.

I’m concerned that a proactive marketing effort to attract only technology companies to downtown will define the area too narrowly and, in effect, put downtown San Diego in a box that’s far too small and confining. For many years now, I’ve encouraged technology companies and other major users to consider locating downtown. It’s my bread and butter.

However, my experience in promoting downtown San Diego has shown that prospective large office users are no more impressed with the availability of fiber optics in the downtown district than they are in the fact that the buildings come with electrical lights and toilets. Neither of those amenities would make a good marketing campaign, either.

One of the arguments for trying to attract high technology to downtown is that we need to stimulate demand for the additional two million square feet of new office space that’s been announced. I certainly support in more ways than one the need to promote this new space as well as maintaining quality tenants in our existing inventory. In fact, our firm is responsible for securing the 120,000-square-foot anchor tenant for one of those future buildings, Rob Lankford’s 655 Broadway building at Broadway and Kettner. As it turns out, that tenant, the Millberg Weiss Bershad Hynes & Lerach law firm, is a traditional and existing downtown tenant. I don’t think we need to send marketing messages that try to lure technology tenants from far away lands or highlight only one type of user in downtown San Diego to the exclusion of other types of industries and professions. I fully support the efforts of the Centre City Development Corp., Downtown San Diego Partnership, and other civic entities to promote this important sub market in ways that I believe are more practical and results oriented. Fact is, downtown San Diego never will have near the amount of high-tech facilities as Sorrento Mesa which, it so happens, is in the corporate city limits of the city of San Diego as well.

My point is simply this: we should market downtown San Diego and our city’s other environs by playing to the well-established identities in these sub markets. Our marketing efforts will be much more successful and cost effective if we promote downtown San Diego, Sorrento Mesa, and other locales for what they already are and are continuing to become.