In 1995, the city's downtown redevelopment agency began working on something different from its typical projects.

Normally, Centre City Development Corp.—the nonprofit in charge of property tax-funded urban renewal efforts, now Civic San Diego— redeveloped whole blocks at one time.

Take an entire block, consolidate it into one property and hire one developer to construct a big, multi-use building there. That's what's common in most downtown areas, and it's what Civic San Diego continues to permit today.

But in '95, a group of architect-developers put together a single proposal to redevelop a whole block in Little Italy. The "Little Italy Neighborhood Developers" would conspire instead to build the "LIND block."

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Source: http://voiceofsandiego.org