Proposed Development Draws Cry in Del Mar

Early on Monday morning, long before most citizens were awake, Paul and Cassie Youngborg were abroad. By auto and on foot, the couple traveled the winding streets of their hillside neighborhood, pausing at each home to stuff a message into plastic wrappers encasing morning newspapers lying in driveways and on lawns.

The warning they distributed around town was: “The developers are coming!”

The Youngborgs are credited with attracting an overflow crowd of nearly 100 that packed the Del Mar City Council chambers Tuesday night for the public unveiling of designs for a $25-million hotel-commercial complex on the former site of the old Del Mar Hotel. A chorus of criticism greeted the developers’ plans despite what the firm’s officials described as six years of efforts to create a project in the Del Mar image.

Most of the negative remarks from a crowd of homeowners centered on the traffic that would be generated and the ocean views that would be blocked by the development on the northwest corner of Camino Del Mar and 15th Street.

Joseph La Breche, president of Mission West Properties, and architect Michael LaBarre fielded the hostile questions of homeowners who saw the major project--the largest ever proposed for the seaside community--as a threat to “our village atmosphere” and an attractive nuisance which would bring thousands of shoppers and visitors to town.

Mission West is proposing a commercial center with 20 to 30 small shops, three restaurants and 24,000 square feet of office space, plus a 175-room hotel, all designed in “eclectic Del Mar style” suiting “a small, coastal town with an outdoor life style.”

But opponents protested that planned beneath the center would draw traffic in amounts that would clog Del Mar’s streets and bring little benefit to residents.

Despite the developers’ efforts to counter complaints by bringing in experts to rebut the residents’ fears, most of the audience went home from the presentation unconvinced, and 35 signed an informal petition protesting “rapid, irresponsible commercial development.”

La Breche said that the city would benefit by the addition of a 660-space underground parking garage that, he said, would help solve Del Mar’s chronic parking problems.

He also hinted that Mission West plans to propose to city officials that they create a redevelopment district covering the 5.5-acre site so that the city could capture all of the estimated $250,000 in annual property taxes which the new center would yield.