Modern loft apartments overlooking Tijuana's oldest tourist district. Boutique hotel rooms amid curio stores and taco shops. A breezy red brick office building in the place of a dilapidated drug house. A new wave of developers is bringing a fresh eye to old Tijuana, breathing life into decaying and abandoned buildings, and creating new ones. They talk of a city with art galleries, cafes, breweries, colorful murals, bike stations, collaborative work spaces, markets with organic produce. They envision bustling streets where adventurous foreign tourists mingle with city residents.

A city of more than 1.7 million, Tijuana is in the midst of a generational transition, and the modest flurry of mixed-use projects near the U.S. border is an expression of that. Whether blending in or standing out from their surroundings, the projects aim to revive a section of the city that has stagnated.

The Estación Federal buildings in Tijuana's Colonia Federal are being renovated into apartments and commercial spaces. Photo by: David Maung

Developers hope their projects set a precedent that will encourage other efforts that bring residents and businesses back to Tijuana's downtown. It is a vision that would be strengthened under the city's plans to update development rules and launch a new public transportation system.

About a dozen new projects have arisen in Tijuana's centro historico , the name for the old center of the city made up of 53 blocks near the U.S. border that includes Avenida Revolucion, the city's traditional tourist strip. This is an area that has been struggling in part because of the drop in U.S. tourism— the result of long waits at the border after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, economic recession and drugrelated violence in Tijuana that spiked from 2008 to 2010. But in fits and starts, abandoned blocks have been coming back to life. Genaro Valladolid, a commercial real estate broker, sees a turnaround that has taken place in phases over several years— from the revival of bars on Sixth Street to the reopening of Caesar's Restaurant on Avenida Revolucion and the 2014 launching of the Escuela Libre de Arquitectura in the Zona Norte. "Everything that's going on in Tijuana, with the food, wine, craft beer, culture, in my view it's very organic, very grassroots, where young people, or people with a different outlook started doing things," he said.

San Diego developer Greg Strangman (right) and Tijuana architect Jorge Gracia are renovating Hotel Lafayette into a boutique hotel called One Bunk. Photo by: David Maung

More changes are in the works. Near Seventh Street, an independent arts group called Cine Tonala is preparing to turn an abandoned building into a cultural center, offering film, theatre, music performances. At the corner of Fourth Street, businessman David Saul Guakil is turning the old Sara department store into offices with commercial space on the bottom floor, and perhaps a rooftop beer garden. Architect Jorge Gracia, founder of the Escuela Libre, said Tijuana's residents needed to change the city's narrative: "We felt that our history, our souls were taken by this mafia, and after everything calmed down, the good people felt the necessity of expressing in the arts, music, restaurants." Developers in Tijuana are paying attention to what their buildings look like. "They're investing in architecture, which is something that another generation didn't do," said Hector Bustamante, whose company, Bustamante Realty Group, works with several of the projects. "It is changing the face of downtown. Now we have other developers looking at their projects, and saying, 'I want to do something like that.'" David Mayagoitia, an industrial real estate developer, called the efforts laudable but said "they're small projects on a piecemeal basis." He has his own proposal for downtown: the establishment of an IDEA district that would bring design and tech jobs to the city. "The first thing we need to do is repopulate our downtown, and make it an exciting and vibrant and beautiful place," said Mayagoitia, who urges government policies that encourage greater density and the use of public transportation.

For years, Tijuana grew outward. As rapid population growth in the 1990s and 2000s created a demand for more housing, the federal government encouraged vast development projects that brought tens of thousands of tiny houses to the city periphery. But Mexico has since dramatically changed course with efforts aimed at encouraging greater density.

Under President Enrique Peña Nieto, "the idea is that we don't extend our territory, that we become compact and connected," said Nora Marquez, head of Tijuana's Municipal Planning Institute, known as IMPLAN. To that end, city planners have been busy updating the city's urban development plan to incorporate the new policy— from downtown Tijuana to the city's Rio Zone to areas to the east. Marquez said the aim is to encourage density along a Bus Rapid Transit route scheduled to open this year. Tijuana is one of five cities in Mexico working with the nonprofit group Embarq Mexico — part of the WRI Ross Institute for Sustainable Cities — to review its planning rules under the notion of "transit-oriented development."

Tijuana developer Sergio Rosas Bustamante (second from right) visits the construction site for a new apartment building called Revolucion 1764 in Tijuana. Photo by: David Maung

"Local governments already know that urban development policies are now for the re-densification of centros historicos," she said.

"They need the instruments to allow it to happen."

The launching of Tijuana's Bus Rapid Transit gives the city a unique opportunity for change, said Tanya Jimenez of Embarq Mexico. "It gives us a framework, so that along its path, and its stations, we can create urban development to complement it."

Private developers are often the first to spur the revitalization of decaying downtowns, Jimenez said. In many cases, the projects are geared to high-end markets, and it is up to the city to create the mechanisms "so that people with less resources also have access to these centros historicos."

Members of the Urban Land Institute of Tijuana and San Diego picked up on the area's potential in a Revitalization Concept Plan prepared in 2013 that focused on an area three blocks wide and nine blocks long straddling Avenida Revolucion.

The plan recommended re-launching the area for local residents, with parks, offices, shops and higher-density housing. "It gets better every time I go there," said Greg Shannon, a San Diego development expert who led the panel, with new cafes, restaurants and retail spaces. "The one that will really have legs is residential," he said. "If IMPLAN is willing to promote high-density residential, that's a gamechanger," Shannon said.

The developers have a vision, said Marquez, the planning director. "They have a need to be innovative, of doing this here in the city rather than going elsewhere. And if we give them the right tools, I think a lot is going to get accomplished."

sandra.dibble@sduniontribune.com

By Sandra Dibble for The San Diego Union-Tribune

More news at SanDiegoRed.com

Follow San Diego Red on Facebook and Twitter.

editorial@sandiegored.com