The filing gives Stockdale until May 7 to cure the default before a notice of sale is published and the property is sold at auction or returned to the lender.

The foreclosure notice follows mechanics liens against the property that were filed by contractors and subcontractors seeking millions for unpaid construction work from April 2024 through January 2025.

Stockdale is planning to open some retail storefronts at the Campus at Horton in the fall, including Sprouts, Studio Three and SunLife Organics at building 200, also known as the green building.

In 2018, Los Angeles-based Stockdale purchased for $175M a 10-acre downtown site stretching from Horton Plaza Park along Broadway to G Street, including Horton Plaza, a 1980s-era mall.

The following year, the developer won approval from the city to convert the mall into a mixed-use campus with 772K square feet of office space and 300K square feet of retail. Stockdale also has plans for a second phase at the site that will include two apartment towers encompassing a total of 800 units.

Stockdale secured a $330M construction loan from AllianceBernstein for the project in 2020, an amount later increased to $399M with a due date of July 2024, according to the notice of default. As of Jan. 27, Stockdale owed its lender $351M, not including default interest and late fees.

Before the pandemic hit, the Campus at Horton was expected to attract tech giants to downtown San Diego, a plan that fizzled as remote work proliferated among tech players after the outbreak of Covid-19.

During the pandemic, the developer began aiming at the then-booming life science sector, incorporating specialized building systems for research into the project, including a speculative wet lab on the second floor of building 100, which is rising on the site of a former Nordstrom store on G Street.

Last year, Stockdale began talks with the city of San Diego, which was negotiating with the developer to acquire the lion’s share of the Campus at Horton’s office space to replace its City Hall complex, the Union-Tribune reported.

However, the city delivered a crushing blow to the project in December when it scrapped its ambitious redevelopment plan for the aging downtown Civic Center, a plan that included relocating city workers into the new buildings of Campus at Horton.

Facing projected municipal budget deficits of nearly $1.5B over the next five years, San Diego dropped its plan, known as the Civic Center Revitalization effort, which envisioned selling or leasing a four-block city-owned complex including the City Administration Building.

After city voters in November rejected a sales tax increase that would have helped offset the projected budget deficits, Mayor Todd Gloria announced a package of emergency budget cuts and said the plan to acquire new space for City Hall would not move forward.

Instead, San Diego is planning to renegotiate or terminate office leases elsewhere downtown and will be moving more of its downtown city workforce back into the City Administration Building, which was built in 1965.

The total office vacancy rate in the 11.7M square foot downtown submarket of San Diego was 24.6% at the end of 2024, CBRE reported.