Council OKs Development Next to UCSD : Controversial Plan Put to Vote Despite Protests, Mayor’s Plea

Despite the angry objections of La Jolla planning groups and ignoring the personal plea of Mayor Roger Hedgecock’s plea to delay the vote, the City Council voted 6-2 Tuesday to approve a controversial development adjacent to UC San Diego and the exclusive La Jolla Farms subdivision.

Only Councilmen Bill Mitchell and Ed Struiksma voted against the 24-acre Blackhorse Farms project proposed by Christopher Sickels and John O’Brien. Hedgecock, who arrived midway through the hearing after his Superior Court trial was recessed for the day, was ruled ineligible to participate because he had missed part of the public testimony.

Mitchell, as deputy mayor, chaired the council session and attempted several times to enlist support for continuance of the hearing to a time when Hedgecock could attend and participate. At one point, Hedgecock himself made an appeal to his colleagues for a delay in the proceedings. But a motion for continuance, normally routinely granted when requested by a council member, failed to gain a second from an unusually reticent council.

“I was assured this morning that there were five votes (a majority) for a continuance. I don’t understand what the heck is going on here,” Mitchell said after the two-hour hearing.

A Sickels-O’Brien proposal to build housing, a shopping center, a conference center and a research-development complex on the North Torrey Pines Road site was unanimously turned down by the City Council in September.

Support Enlisted

O’Brien said Tuesday that he had followed the advice given by council members after that vote and had gained support from La Jolla Farms property owners and University of California at San Diego officials for the compromise proposal presented Tuesday.

That proposal omits commercial and research buildings, substituting 206 condominium units and two single-family houses. The 210-room conference center proposed earlier was retained.

O’Brien and attorney John Thelan argued that the revised plan was acceptable to La Jolla Farms residents and to UCSD officials. A three-way agreement among the residents, developers and university also pledges that the university will develop its other La Jolla Farms properties for residential uses and will work to prevent students from parking their cars there.

Parking problems and the deletion of the shopping center brought opposition to the plan from a UCSD student body official who said that plans to ban parking along North Torrey Pines Road would remove 600 badly needed parking spaces for students. The shopping center, he said, was the only part of the development that would have benefited UCSD’s 11,700 students. Representatives of the La Jolla Town Council, La Jollans Inc. and the community’s Parking and Business Improvement Assn. criticized the development as a breach of the La Jolla Community Plan, which calls for a maximum of 48 residences on the property. The plan as approved includes 208 residential units and a 210-room hotel.

Protest Planned

La Jollan Virginia Grizzle complained that the development proposal “is just another case of the all-powerful university and a developer ignoring the wishes of the community” and seeking to profit at the community’s expense. Traffic congestion, already present in the La Jolla area, will be worsened by the new development, she said.

Nancy Ward, a La Jolla Town Council spokeswoman, said that opponents of the Blackhorse Farms proposal had planned to send two busloads of residents to the hearing Tuesday but had cancelled their plans after being assured that the matter would be continued to a later date.

City planning officials said that opponents in La Jolla had no recourse to appeal the decision except through the courts. But Ward and other opponents said that they will express their opposition to Blackhorse Farms when it comes before the California Coastal Commission, probably in about two months.