SAN DIEGO -- A year of bickering, defiance and a political crisis over a Kearny Mesa office tower quietly ended this week when the Federal Aviation Administration notified Sunroad Enterprises that the company's building is no longer a hazard to airplanes landing at Montgomery Field.
The FAA removed the hazard designation after Sunroad finished demolishing the top two floors. The company informed the federal agency this month that the building is now 158.7 feet tall and meets the agency's safe-height limit of 160 feet.
"This is the final, maximum height of the structure," said a letter from the company's consultants to the FAA.
The FAA had labeled the building a hazard last year when it reached 180 feet in defiance of the agency's warning that it not be built that high.
The hazard designation touched off a firestorm of lawsuits, behind-the-scenes negotiations, and finally an admission by Mayor Jerry Sanders that the city had made a mistake in granting building permits for the project.
In June, Sunroad gave up its fight to preserve the full height of the building. Work to eliminate the upper floors began in September, at an estimated cost of $1.1 million.
City building officials say that when they receive official notification that the FAA has removed the hazard designation, they will issue the permits Sunroad needs to add a roof and complete the interior.
The roof should be finished early next year, and the building will be ready for tenants by mid-2008, according to a schedule Sunroad has submitted to the city.
Before construction started in spring 2006, the FAA notified Sunroad that the building would be a hazard to airplanes landing in bad weather at Montgomery Field if the height exceeded 160 feet. But Sunroad went ahead with its plans, arguing that the city had granted permits to make the building 180 feet tall.
The Kearny Mesa building is less than a mile from Montgomery Field near state Route 163 and Clairemont Mesa Boulevard.
