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Shopping Centers Today -> May 2004
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HAHN EMBRACED THE UNTRADITIONAL RETAIL CENTER
BY DEBRA HAZEL
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| Photo: Steve Schoenherr |
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Ernest Hahn’s Horton Plaza brought the center of San Diego back to life. |
“As a human being, he was fantastic,” said Jon A. Jerde, who designed Hahn’s pioneering project, Horton Plaza. “He was our father.”
An inquisitive man who flew his own plane and devoted himself to business, Hahn founded a construction company in 1946 that grew into the San Diego-based Hahn Co. (later TrizecHahn).
Hahn’s understanding of people had as much to do with his company’s success as anything else, admirers say. Hahn knew the names of his staff’s children, says John M. Gilchrist Jr., who joined the Hahn Co. as a teen-ager in the 1960s and eventually became the company’s president.
“Ernie had a unique ability to relate to the people out there digging the ditches as part of our construction company,” Gilchrist said. “But that night, he could put on black tie and eat with the chairman of [department store chain] Carter Hawley Hale.”
That talent was critical to developing Horton Plaza, which opened in 1985. Hahn had been asked by then-San Diego mayor Pete Wilson to help build a project in a badly deteriorated downtown area.
Hahn called Jerde, saying, “Save me and save San Diego,” Jerde recalls. It soon became clear that a traditional shopping center format would not work. He told the designer: “Go back to the studio and do it the way you want. I don’t want to see anything I’ve ever seen before.”
Hahn was “funny as hell,” says Jerde, but he was no pushover. Anyone working for him had to know his business, and it was smart to bring up a plan’s flaws long before the boss did.
Nearly 11 years after his death in 1992 from prostate cancer, Hahn’s memory is now a permanent part of the project he is best known for. In September 2003 a bronze statue of Hahn was dedicated at Horton Plaza. But he wasn’t in the business for the glory.
“He had confidence but not an ego,” Gilchrist said. “He’s probably looking down at us and is a little upset that we’re making a big deal of him.”
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