Proposed Developments for Shores of County Lagoons

Although the Coastal Act and other environmental protections probably will prevent anyone from converting North County’s lagoons into parking lots, there are many development proposals that will affect both the ecology and the aesthetics of the remaining wetlands.

What follows is a summation of the major projects planned for the shores of the lagoons.

Buena Vista

This fresh-water lagoon, which sits between Oceanside and Carlsbad, and much of its shoreline are in a state-owned ecological reserve.

Hughes Investments of Newport Beach, however, owns 27 acres on the lagoon’s northeast shore. The company plans a commercial center with several small stores, restaurants, a bank and a department store on 17 acres, and hopes to build an office complex on the remaining 10 acres. Hughes has obtained Coastal Commission approval of the commercial center; construction is expected to begin late this year.

Agua Hedionda

An Irvine-based developer, Cal Communities Inc., plans to build 1,600 housing units and a small commercial center on 433 acres northeast of this large and deep lagoon, situated south of downtown Carlsbad. The project, which has been approved by the City of Carlsbad and is due before the Coastal Commission this month, is opposed by some local residents because it would require the extension of Cannon Road, which would traverse some wetland areas.

Coastal Commission planners say that although the plans contain some controversial points, the developer has offered to improve tidal action to the inner channels of the lagoon, fence and protect some sensitive wetlands, and construct a badly needed situation basin to trap sediment released from Agua Hedionda Creek.

Batiquitos

If all goes as planned, Texas oil and silver magnates W. Herbert and Nelson Bunker Hunt will begin construction of the Pacific Rim Country Club and Resort on 1,385 acres north of Carlsbad’s Batiquitos Lagoon early next year. The project includes an Arnold Palmer-designed golf course, a hotel and a residential community likely to rival neighboring La Costa.

Architectural plans have not been completed, but officials of Hunt Properties Inc., the development arm of the Hunt empire, say they envision a “resort-style development” with more than 5,400 housing units clustered along the ridges and among the eucalyptus trees bordering Batiquitos.

Still awaiting approval by the City of Carlsbad and the state Coastal Commission, the Pacific Rim master plan contains several points of controversy. Among these are the lodge and restaurant the Hunts propose to build in two corners of the lagoon’s east bay, structures that state Department of Fish and Game biologists say would encroach on the wetland and thus violate the Costal Act.

Fish and Game officials also oppose a “meandering scenic route” the Hunts hope to build along the northeastern shore of Batiquitos, saying the road’s alignment crosses the 100-foot buffer that the Coastal Act requires between development and wetland areas.

Across the freeway, Sammis Properties plans to build the Batiquitos Lagoon Educational Park on 166 acres on the mesa above the lagoon’s western bays. Few specifics have been released, but company chairman Donald Sammis said the project will include graduate schools in law, political economy, communications, architecture and land use, plus related research and development facilities. A hotel, convention center, commercial complex and more than 600 residential units of the “early California, Irving Gill style” will also be built, Sammis said.

Because details of the plan are sketchy, officials with regulatory agencies say they cannot determine the impact the Sammis development would have on the lagoon. But an initial concern of the Coastal Commission is whether improving access to the proposed campus would require the construction of new freeway offramps and, if so, where they would be built.

San Elijo

Last month, the Coastal Commission awarded MiraCosta College a permit to build a branch campus on 43 sloping acres just north of this lagoon, which divides Solana Beach and Cardiff. But citizen and commission staff members’ concerns about increased traffic and erosion prompted the coastal panel to attach conditions to the plan.

Among these are strict grading standards and a requirement that an open space easement allowing wildlife to travel from the bluffs above the lagoon to its shores be preserved. In addition, enrollment at the branch campus was limited to 3,000 and any widening of Manchester Road, which skirts San Elijo’s north shore, must be done upland of the lagoon.

The conditions mollified some opponents, but others worry that the high traffic flow the campus is expected to generate and the development’s proximity to the lagoon will frighten away several endangered birds that nest and feed at San Elijo.

Still more controversial is the 38-unit housing development proposed for Holmwood Canyon, a lush green valley on San Elijo’s southern shore. The 15.9-acre project was approved by the San Diego County Board of Supervisors in December, despite protests from environmentalists and local residents who predicted that the development will increase sediment flowing into San Elijo and damage the aesthetics of the pristine southern shore.

A lawsuit has been filed over that project and negotiations are under way between developers Joseph and Donald Balsley and the San Francisco-based Trust for Public Land, a nonprofit organization that buys environmentally sensitive land threatened by development and sells it to public agencies. In the meantime, the developers are expected to go before the Coastal Commission this month.

San Dieguito

Situated northeast of downtown Del Mar and just west of Interstate 5, San Dieguito Lagoon is targeted by a developer hoping to build a hotel on its northern edge. The 22nd District Agricultural Assn., which manages the Del Mar Fairgrounds, would like to use another parcel of marshland as a parking lot.

More worrisome, environmentalists say, are the numerous plans for the wide valley that extends east from Interstate 5 along the San Dieguito River toward Rancho Santa Fe. The valley contains several pocket wetlands that state officials would like to preserve, and development of the flood plain likely would dump tons of silt into the lagoon, which recently underwent $2 million worth of restoration work--the largest such project to date in California.

The City of San Diego has labeled the area a “future urbanizing” parcel, meaning it cannot be developed until 1995, but that designation can be lifted at any time by the City Council.

Los Penasquitos

Already being deluged with silt from North City West and other developments in its watershed, this lagoon is half owned by San Diego Gas & Electric Co., which purchased the property intending to build a nuclear power plant on the wetlands’ edge.

When the City of San Diego changed the zoning of the parcel from industrial to open space, precluding the company’s plans, SDG&E; sued the city for inverse condemnation in 1981, the suit reached the U.S. Supreme Court, where justices remanded the case, saying the company had not exhausted local administrative remedies. The lawsuit has languished since.

Meanwhile, SDG&E; has filed plans with the city for an industrial park on 100 acres just north of Sorrento Valley and west of Interstate 5.