Manchester said he perceived an implication that paying Hughes would aid in dealings with the city on the downtown high-rise. One of the players who sought to cut a deal with the city – developer and former 101 Ash minority owner Doug Manchester – claims that Hughes suggested Manchester pay him for an introduction to a potential investor for one of his other projects. They also shed new light on how the deal came together and the work of a volunteer who played a significant role in talks to sell the city on acquiring 101 Ash. What has largely gone unexplored is the role that Hughes, a volunteer real estate consultant who made headlines for favorable deals he cut for the city, played in an acquisition now considered one of the worst real estate debacles in city history.Įmails and documents obtained by Voice of San Diego show Hughes was one of the architects of the lease-to-own structure and an influential negotiator who had the ear of Mayor Kevin Faulconer, city real estate officials and developers. Among them: Why did the city pursue a lease structure that left it holding the bag on repairs to a building that turned out to need tens of millions of dollars in work? How much money did middle-man seller Cisterra Development pocket in the controversial transaction, and who else may have benefited from it? Who might have influenced the city’s decision making on 101 Ash? Years later, several questions remain about the 101 Ash deal. That’s when Hughes’ volunteer work with the city effectively ended. He blasted the city’s former real estate chief over email claiming he had been “rope-a-doped.” The city’s own staff had started coordinating construction. But then he learned he wasn’t going to get the job. After years of serving the city for free, this time, he would be paid. His company has a construction management team and after it won a nonspecific bidding process, Hughes thought it would manage the remodel of 101 Ash St. His deal-making saved the city money but by 2016, he had set the stage for the lease-to-own purchase of 101 Ash St., a downtown high-rise that was previously Sempra Energy’s headquarters. That is when Jason Hughes began negotiating leases for the city to house workers it didn’t have space for in City Hall. In 2013, facing a crossroads with expiring city leases, then-Mayor Bob Filner took up a prominent downtown commercial real estate broker’s offer to help for free.
The Hughes Marino office / Photo by Brittany Cruz-Fejeran