Kriozere may be downtown's last happy developer; he's got funding.

You'd never know developers are having trouble selling homes by talking to Mike Kriozere. He's about as upbeat as they come in today's depressed real estate market.

Although he occasionally grumbles about San Diego's expensive and lengthy redevelopment process, City Front Terrace developer Kriozere has become part of it.

City Front, a 321-unit condominium community, will be bordered by Linear Park as well as by Market and Union streets. Along with financial partner Kabuto Decom, a Japanese firm, Kriozere's development firm, UrbanWest Inc., will spend the next two years building the 13-story midrise condo project.

Its development cost, including land, construction, interest paid on financing, marketing and permit fees, will total $90 million. If all goes according to plan, City Front will sell out for a total of $116 million, Kriozere said.

Not everyone has been as fortunate as Kriozere. Some of his fellow downtown developers claim that Kriozere arranged that last big financing deal to come out of the land of the rising sun for some time.

Eight partnerships are frantically searching the globe for millions they need to build downtown condominium towers. (See related story, page 1.) Without large cash infusions, few of them will get built, said Meyers Group senior consultant Peter Dennehy.

"There's a market for the condominiums in the $100,000 to $200,000 range. There's also a market for the move-up condominium, and Kriozere's City Front Terrace should sell well," Dennehy said.

City Front is Kriozere's first San Diego project. He moved to San Diego project. He moved to San Diego two years ago after developing five high-rise apartment and condominium communities in his native Chicago.

Kriozere sees a big difference in the way Chicago and San Diego officials treat developers.

"In Chicago, the city officials look at your plans and tell you how much you have to pay in fees to get it approved. In San Diego, they look at your plans, tell you how they want them changed and tell you how much they want in fees. Sometimes they come back to you after you've started the project and ask you to make more changes," Kriozere said.

Originally, Kriozere wanted to build 263 condominium units in one 198-foot tower. Because that height exceeds city standards, Kriozere had to redesign the project with a lower profile.

The delays in the approval process indirectly helped reduce construction costs. Kriozere originally expected to pay $60 million to have the midrise built. Contractor Koll Construction is building it for $53 million; construction companies are out of work and bidding jobs more reasonably today than two years ago.

Even with the redesign, the project preserves a design more typical of Chicago than San Diego. Kriozere's architectural firm, Chicago's Solomon, Cordwell, Buenz & Associates Inc., designed City Front to incorporate the Pacific Soap Factory. The remodeled building will include 29 of City Front's most expensive units.

The Soap Factory is a turn-of-the-century red brick building. Reflecting construction methods of the period, Koll workers will lay red brick on exterior walls of City Front instead of the more common concrete panels and reflective glass. The solid red brick will be accented by limestone ledges and floor-to-ceiling windows that will give residents views of the harbor and downtown from their sofas and easy chairs.

"If we built solid walls up from the floor three feet before we put in the glass, residents would have to walk over to the window to get a good view of the city," Kriozere said.

City Front will be built next to the Metropolitan Transit District trolley line on one side, but its residents will be shielded from noise by triple-pane windows and double walls, Kriozere said.

While under construction, City Front is dominated by an elaborately painted construction fence along Harbor Drive. The combination of photographs has pop-up features much like the large innovative billboards in downtown Chicago and along Los Angeles' Sunset Boulevard.

Kriozere paid Del Mar-based Design Group West $100,000 to provide a larger-than-life series of photos that show people enjoying downtown life. The color photos were reproduced on plastic sheets using special laser jet printers. Steve Simpson was the photographer; Jim Crouch was the designer.

Kriozere didn't stop spending at the fence. He paid National City-based Premiere Studios $100,000 to produce a scale model of City Front. As part of the sales presentation, Kriozere paid Design Group West $35,000 to produce a slide and sound show that uses 14 slide projectors to show 1,000 images of downtown San Diego. The slide show is presented at the City Front sales office at 448 W. Market St.

So far, Kriozere's efforts appear to be paying off. He said he had 280 serious lookers in the first two weeks that the office was open. If each of them bought, he would have only 41 of the 321 condominiums left to sell. He expects the unsold downtown condominium inventory to vanish by City Front's projected completion in April 1993.

The sales staff will start taking deposits and reservations in January 1992, Kriozere said.

Life at City Front won't be cheap. Whether they buy a $190,000 one-bedroom or a $590,000 three-bedroom model, owners will need healthy incomes. Each resident will pay $380 in monthly association fees. Nevertheless, Kriozere claims they'll get their money's worth.

"We'll build two levels of underground parking and have 24-hour-a-day security. We're spending over $2 million on landscaping and will build a 5,000-square-foot health club on the east side of the building," Kriozere said.

Its most expensive models, five corner lofts that will have dramatic two- and three-story atrium entryways, are planned for the old Soap Factory building.