Gene Trepte, builder of the Pechanga Arena San Diego, a San Diego Zoo trustee and ionate sailor, died Sept. 13 of respiratory failure. He was 97.
“He was the finest trustee I ever worked for,” said retired zoo executive director Chuck Bieler. “When you were in trouble, he’d say, ‘OK, let’s work it out.'”
The third-generation president of the Trepte Construction Co., founded in 1895, continued his father and grandfather’s record of building major landmarks in San Diego County — hospitals, university buildings, office towers, hotels and shopping centers.
“He was a man of integrity and a real gentleman,” said Bill Gabrielson, a longtime employee who succeeded Trepte a few years after the family turned over the company to top executives in 1983.
And because he served on so many civic boards, he “dressed like a banker,” even on construction site visits, in case he had to rush off to a meeting, Gabrielson said.
However, Paul Muzzy, who heads the Trepte Investment company and its commercial real estate portfolio, said Trepte insisted on employees calling him by his first name: “Forget the Mr. T stuff,” he would say.
But Trepte’s ion was sailing, a sport he took up when he was 7, and continued on in big-boat regattas. His victories were regularly noted in the sports pages.
As a past commodore of the San Diego Yacht Club, Trepte was involved in organizing America’s Cup races in the 1980s and ’90s.
“(He) really taught me what big-boat sailing was all about,” said Malin Burnham, a childhood friend, sailing legend and civic leader.
Albert Eugene Trepte was born Sept. 8, 1925, in San Diego, grandson of the company founder, German immigrant Moritz Trepte, and son of Walter Trepte. He graduated from Point Loma High School, ed the Navy in 1943 and attended California Polytechnic University in San Luis Obispo, majoring in architectural engineering, before ing the company in 1948.
Five years later, he married the former Celeste Mockenhaupt in 1953 and lived in Point Loma They had three daughters, one of whom, Christine McGregor, ed the company in the 1980s and currently oversees some of the family’s investment properties.
“Till the end, the guy’s mind was sharp as a tack,” McGregor said.
He professionalized the business, brought in outside architects, introduced computers before many other competitors and capitalized on his social and business connections to compete for construction contracts.
“I wanted to give back to the city that did so much for my family,” he wrote in his 2014 memoir, “Looking Up.”
“As it turned out, a great deal of business came from those associations — not always directly, but one way or another,” he said.
On the sports arena, he worked with Robert Breitbard to secure financing and finalize plans before completing it in 1966.
“The sports arena people were antsy to see something rising from the ground,” he wrote. But his grandfather’s meticulous attention to detail in his woodshop “taught me a kind of patience for the planning process.”
Now as plans move forward to replace the arena, this will not be the first Trepte project to be demolished or is on tap to bite the dust. They include the downtown Marston department store, county courthouse and State Office Building, and the Sixth Avenue Medical Center, now The Park condo tower by the same developer chosen recently to replace the sports arena with a new facility and housing.
Arsonists torched two Trepte-built projects in 1984 — the Old Globe Theatre Festival Stage, three years after Trepte completed the replacement for the main stage lost in a 1978 arson fire, and The Landing condominium project in Coronado.
“Home in Point Loma one evening, enjoying retirement, I noticed smoke coming from the bayfront in Coronado,” he recounted in his book. “Poor son-of-a-gun hasn’t even got the thing (under control) … I was the poor son-of-a-gun!”
He rebuilt both to completion.
Other notable projects during his time as company president from 1966 to 1983 included the First National Bank Building (now Union Bank on B Street), 1966; Scripps Memorial Hospital, 1964 and 1974, and Children’s Hospital, 1970; UC San Diego Muir College academic departments building, 1968; Century Plaza Towers in Bankers Hill, 1972; and Parkway Plaza in El Cajon, 1973.
Before he took over from his father, Trepte also was involved in the Harlan Dam in Lincoln, Neb., in 1952, and Trinity Dam in Lewiston, 1956; numerous roadway and bridge projects, such as the 54th Street over on state Route 94 in 1954; and Catamaran and Islandia hotels in Mission Bay, 1958 and 1961, respectively.
At the University of San Diego, where he was a longtime trustee, former president Mary Lyons recalled Trepte’s donation of a major flagpole at the entrance.
“That was a big gift (among many) and it made a big difference to us,” she said, adding that he also enjoyed following the university’s Torrero football team.
At the zoo, where he was a trustee and board chairman for over 48 years, Trepte championed the construction of what is now the San Diego Safari Park, while trying to keep up with zoo director Charles Schroeder’s ambitions to make it more than just an animal breeding ground.
“You were always pulling back on the reins,” he said, according to Lynda Rutledge Stephenson in her two-volume zoo history.
Trepte was a member of San Diego’s biggest Rotary Club since 1951 and served as president in 1979-80; San Diego Trust & Savings Bank board from 1972 until its sale to First Interstate Bank in 1994; the San Diego Yacht Club board, where he served as commodore in 1961 and built a new clubhouse in 1963; the Old Globe board; and active proponent to build the San Diego Automotive Museum in what was originally the California State Building in Balboa Park’s Palisades area.
Major yachting races included five Trans-Pacific (Los Angeles to Honolulu), three from San Diego to Acapulco and two around Bermuda. In later years he favored the 32-foot PC (Pacific Class) sailboat, developed by San Diego-based Kettenburg Boat Works.
When two of Trepte’s daughters moved to the Midwest, the couple bought a cottage on Lake Geneva in Wisconsin and during summer visits, Trepte sailed with his grandchildren. He also enjoyed gardening with his wife, taking in flower shows here and abroad.
Trepte is survived by his three daughters, Ann Porter of Chicago, Dana Porter of Lake Geneva, Wis., and Christine McGregor of San Diego; nine grandchildren and seven great-grandchildren; and his sister, Gretchen Trepte Allen of La Jolla. His wife of 61 years, Celeste, predeceased him in 2014. In lieu of flowers, his family suggests donations in his memory to the Balboa Park Fund at the San Diego Foundation or the University of San Diego scholarship fund. No services are planned at this time.
