Tale of Two Canyons Tells How Crusade Has Faltered

North of the mid-city, busy Fairmount Avenue severs a canyon. From a helicopter, the halves look like mirror images--thin green fingers fanning toward mesas jammed with houses.

While the canyons appear essentially the same, City Hall has decided they are not equal.

The city last month spent $605,625 to buy and preserve 35 acres of the Kensington Hillsides on the west of Fairmount, south of Interstate 8. Meanwhile, the City Council, over vehement neighborhood protests, has paved the way for the construction of 110 apartments in the mouth of Talmadge Canyon, directly across Fairmount to the east.

Two similar canyons. Two different fates.

So it goes when city government tries to save canyons.

Explaining what happened to the mid-city canyons is as complex as city government itself, where layers of decisions and lines of responsibility become blurred. It is a story of a well-meaning municipal crusade that has fallen short of its goals, a program that some critics say is hampered by contradictions and bureaucratic inertia.

The crusade began in 1978, when San Diego voters approved $65 million in bonds to purchase and set aside canyons and other lands as open space, areas to be left untouched forever. Canyons were to be the backbone of the city’s open space program because they are a distinctive part of the landscape and form a natural hedge against the inevitable tangle of streets and houses.

Yet seven years later, the city has spent only $45 million. And as canyons in Uptown, Golden Hill, Mira Mesa and Clairemont are feeling the pinch of development right now, the city has for fiscal reasons decided to begin spending the remaining $20 million in July, 1987--two years later than expected.

There are other apparent contradictions. Last year, the city reworked some regulations aimed at making it tougher for developers to build on canyon slopes and hillsides. At the same time, residents are complaining that city zoning maps create loopholes that permit canyon development in the first place.

While the City Council accepted those tougher regulations for development on slopes and hillsides in December, it voted four months later to let a home builder bury a seven-acre canyon in Mira Mesa, despite a map in the city’s community plan that shows the canyon should be preserved as open space.

Confused? Developer Paul Tschang is.

“The city really doesn’t have a (canyon) policy,” said Tschang, whose company has pushed plans to build in Clairemont and La Jolla canyons. “It’s a matter of politics . . . . We never know what’s going on.”

Councilman Mike Gotch agreed. “There are some successes,” he said about the city’s crusade to save canyons, “but I would consider it a checkered success story.”

Indeed, the city’s canyon crusade has made some gains. Bond money has purchased parts of Lopez Canyon in Mira Mesa, Radio Canyon in Southeast San Diego and portions of Mission Trails Regional Park, which runs through San Carlos and Tierrasanta on the city’s eastern edge. The city also reimbursed citizens who earlier had taxed themselves to buy Crest Canyon near Del Mar, Navajo Canyon in Navajo and Tecolote Canyon in Clairemont.

But there were bound to be disappointments.

Inflation, for one, was sure to eat away at the city’s money, although it was able to make up some ground by putting millions of dollars in the bank to collect interest.

The city inadvertently added another complication of its own when in 1979, under then Mayor Pete Wilson, it adopted its controversial “growth management” plan, aimed at controlling urban sprawl.

The plan divides the city into different zones, with the furthest from downtown called “future urbanizing” and declared off-limits to developers. The idea was to freeze development in that zone until a future date, thus preventing the kind of leapfrog development synonymous with Los Angeles.

The next zone, called “planned urbanizing,” embraces neighborhoods such as Scripps Ranch, Rancho Bernardo, North City West and Los Penasquitos. The city has opened the lands for development, but levies a special fee on builders for every house and apartment they construct. The fee is used to finance new streets, libraries and schools, thus easing the pinch on the city’s public purse for services required by growth.

Today, for example, a builder pays fees ranging from $609 for a house in Rancho Bernardo to $8,346 for one in North City West, with the average fee in the planned urbanizing area hovering around $2,000.

However, the heart of the growth management plan is the “urbanized zone,” an area encompassing established neighborhoods such as North Park, La Jolla, Mission Hills, Clairemont and Kensington. City officials had hoped to create urban redevelopment by enticing developers into the inner city to build on scattered vacant lots or to replace old, decaying structures with new housing.

This way, the city reasoned, “in-fill” development would be painless. Expensive streets, schools and bus routes were already in place. As an inducement, the city assessed no developer fees in the urbanized zone.

The plan drew a warning. “We said if your growth management plan is going to work and you want building in the inner city, then you’ve got to let us develop in those canyons,” recalled Jim Williams, a lobbyist for the construction industry.

Thus the city began an expensive race against itself: Its growth management plan encouraged developers to build on canyon lots, while its open space plan tried to buy up the canyon lots to keep them from being developed.

The result, said Councilman Dick Murphy, was a “cannibalization” of the inner city’s canyons and open space. It has created a “terrible dilemma” for the city when a “property owner comes in and says ‘I want to build 50 houses on (potential) open space.’

“Choice Number One is to say ‘Yes.’ Choice Number Two is to say ‘No, but we’ll let you build something.’ Choice Number Three is that we’ll buy it.

“Choice Number Three isn’t always possible,” Murphy said.

Even the most enthusiastic supporter of the open space plan knew the $65 million could not buy up all of the canyons. But early in the race, it became obvious that the crusade was even falling short of its stated goal of snapping up 10,000 to 11,000 acres.

To date, the city has committed or spent $45 million of its bonds, plus interest. Its gain: 3,196 acres of land.

Councilman Bill Mitchell, among others, blames bureaucratic inertia for not buying more. His favorite example is Lopez Canyon, which runs parallel to the Los Penasquitos Canyon Preserve. A June, 1979, cost estimate for the 274 acres in Lopez Canyon was $2.1 million, but by the time the sale was completed in 1981, the price was $3.8 million--an increase of 80%.

“It does take time to identify and purchase the properties, but I’m personally not satisfied with the speed that the city manager is working,” Murphy added.

Under Murphy’s direction in 1983, the council’s Public Facilities and Recreation Committee revamped an open space wish list that ranked 111 properties--many of them canyons--that were likely candidates for purchase with the bond money.

Old criteria used in judging which canyon was better produced a strange result: Most of the higher-ranking properties were located north of I-8. The committee ordered a second look, and an expanded list of 141 properties redirected the open space drive into established neighborhoods, where the land was vulnerable to development.

The lists recognized what even the most ardent canyon preservationist knew--some of the less desirable canyons would be given over to development. As land-use attorney John Thelan says, “All canyons aren’t equal.”

However, Murphy says he is irked by how long it is taking the city to buy some of the top priorities, like the 190-acre Rancho Mission Canyon in his district. The San Carlos canyon is part of a $15-million package of purchases approved by the council in late 1983.

But nearly $14 million of the money is still in the bank.

Such criticisms rankle Sue Williams, assistant city manager in charge of the open space acquisitions. She said city staff members are often “astounded” by the number of ownerships in any given canyon, which means extra work because of the number of negotiations over land prices. If the city decides to hire outside appraisers, that will add three to four months to the purchase process, she said.

“They don’t know the system,” she said of complaining council members. “They simply don’t think about it. When they say, ‘Go buy it,’ they visualize it like a picture on the wall, without thinking about the steps the city has to go through.”

Williams has recommended that as the city struggles to use the money at hand, it postpone spending an additional $10 million in bond money until July, 1987. City officials had hoped there would be enough money in the “environmental growth fund,” a portion of the city’s franchise fee assessed to San Diego Gas & Electric Co., to underwrite the remainder of the bond issue. By using the fund, the city was able to avoid property tax increases, a point that voters in 1978 liked.

It now appears that enough money will flow into the fund to issue the remaining $20 million in two years, a fiscal decision that leaves council members no easy outs in quelling the canyon wars during the election season.

If the city can’t buy the land, it sometimes will haggle for it.

Since 1978, city staff members have been able to coax developers to deed over 3,321 acres in canyon slopes and other open space. The biggest gift was in 1979, when Genstar Southwest Development Co. gave 1,806 acres worth $22.1 million to the city to create the Los Penasquitos Canyon Preserve, one of the city’s most beautiful natural parks that separates the Mira Mesa and Los Penasquitos areas before emptying into Sorrento Valley to the west.

Gifts of canyon slopes and other lands have become routine at City Hall. Developers often give a few acres of land, sometimes slopes too steep for economic development, in return for other concessions or approval of their subdivisions. City administrators are eager to take the gifts, because it is a free way to augment the inventory of open space lands.

Bargaining like this, however, is most effective in the suburban areas, where one company owns a large piece of land. It is of limited value in smaller, inner-city canyons, where development is pressing at the rims and down the slopes and parcel ownership is divided, often among dozens of people.

Without enough money to go around, the City Council has tried a back-door approach to slowing canyon development by beefing up its “hillside review” ordinance.

The ordinance, enacted in the early 1970s, requires special permits for anyone building on canyon slopes of at least 25%--slopes that fall at least one foot in height for every four feet in length. Previous specifications, however, were so vague they allowed developers to cut and grade canyons and hillsides as long as they promised to plant vegetation to cover the scars.

But under Mayor Roger Hedgecock’s direction last year, the planning department began putting teeth into a revised ordinance, which was adopted by the council in December. “It makes the development tougher to design, tougher to finance and more expensive,” Hedgecock said.

In addition, the City Council on Wednesday approved even more stringent building standards for canyons and hillsides along the northern coast. The standards would limit development to between 10% and 20% of significant slopes north of La Jolla that are dangerous to build on, offer nice views, or serve as homes for endangered plants and animals. By far the city’s strictest slope guidelines, they would extend to portions of the Los Penasquitos Canyon Preserve and Lopez Canyon.

Pending approval from the Coastal Commission, the new coastal standards could become law within eight months to a year, say city staff members.

Despite the rise of tougher regulation, residents complain that the city’s existing zoning in older areas acts like a loophole to invite the development in the first place. They say it sometimes permits heavy residential use in canyon areas, although the community plans call for the slopes to be retained as open space.

“On one hand, they (city planning department) say, ‘Hey, look, community, we’ve got a plan that calls for open space. You can relax now,’ ” said Jim Kelly-Markham, former chairman of the Uptown community planning group.

“On the other hand, they’re allowing multifamily zoning in canyons,” he said. “They are sending a mixed message.”

This is particularly true, say residents, in the Golden Hill community, which lies directly east of downtown. The neighborhood’s “precise plan,” adopted in 1979, calls for areas around the 32nd and 34th street canyons to be designated as open space, although some of the parcels there are zoned for relatively heavy residential use. In the 34th Street canyon alone, there are plans to build up to 447 housing units, such as apartments.

Despite those systemic problems, some say it is the City Council that should shoulder the full responsibility for what happens in the canyons.

“Anytime you see development (in a canyon), it’s not that the staff hasn’t brought it to the council’s attention,” said Asst. City Manager Williams. “It’s because the council’s made the decision to allow the development to proceed.”

Adds Gotch: “Canyons are not only under threat, and a tremendous number have been developed, but there is a singular answer why: The majority of this City Council and past councils have put contributions (to their campaigns) ahead of conscience.” A recent Common Cause study showed that employees of development-related companies gave 29% of all political contributions to council incumbents during their successful campaigns prior to the 1983 election.

But others, like Councilmen Ed Struiksma and Bill Cleator, say they are satisfied with the city’s efforts so far to save canyons from development. “I think we’re operating from the point of view that the vast majority of the canyons will be retained,” Struiksma said.

Over the last five years, the council’s voting record on canyons has been a mixed bag.

In one strange twist, it approved an 11-unit condominium project for the Dove Canyon in Uptown in January, 1984, after rejecting four months earlier a virtually identical 12-unit canyon condominium proposal down the street. The winning developer hired a powerful land-use attorney to plead his case before the council.

On May 13, the City Council officially reversed an earlier controversial decision to allow developer Tschang to build 78 condominiums in a 19-acre finger canyon off of San Clemente Park in Clairemont. The reversal came after residents won against Tschang in court.

The council voted stiffer hillside requirements in December, but it approved a plan in April for Genstar and partner Fieldstone Development to fill in a seven-acre canyon in Mira Mesa that had been designated as open space on the city’s own community plans.

In addition, the city last month completed the purchase of Kensington Hillsides in mid-city, four months before a developer is scheduled to begin constructing 110 apartments that will fill a portion of the nearly 30 acres in the Talmadge Canyon across the street.

The apartments were made possible after the council voted in December, 1983, to proceed with his plans, despite a dogfight from residents who wanted to keep the canyon pristine. As part of the deal, developer James Roth has agreed to build on up to five acres of the canyon and give additional land along Montezuma Road in the area to the city as open space.

Roth said one side of him “says if you are in control of a property, you have certain property rights, and other people should not tell you what you can and cannot do with that property, within reason. That people on the rim (of Talmadge Canyon) basically looked at the canyon as their canyon--I don’t know if that should be.”

“The other side of me says the canyon’s been there all these years,” he said. “It’s a beautiful canyon. That’s the way it should remain.”

Up the road from Roth’s property is an even more intense canyon development called Kensington Park. Although the subdivision is nearly 10 years old, the canyon walls scraped to accommodate the condominiums are still bare of vegetation, exposing the lines where heavy machinery cut the earth like cake layers. Below, 145 condominiums and streets literally fill the canyon.

Like the Talmadge Canyon area cases show, the council’s decisions appear inconsistent. Struiksma maintains, however, that there is no better system to judge canyons except on a “case by case basis.” Written guidelines will not help, he said.

“What is a canyon?” he asked. “A depression in the ground? A gully? Is it 100 yards long? . . . A simplistic approach is not in the offing. You can’t have one paragraph covering all of the canyons in San Diego and all of the facts that surround each one.”

The council may have to make some hard choices about canyons in the next few months.

One question will be how the council responds to a proposed moratorium in Uptown on all development in canyons slopes and hillsides. The residents are asking for the emergency down-zoning measure to keep developers out of the canyons until a new community plan can be enacted to set aside the slopes as open space.

Another issue may come up during municipal budget hearings. Hedgecock predicted the council will discuss how it can get more money for open space bonds, something that he and other council members say will likely mean taking money from other city functions. Hedgecock acknowledged the prospect is questionable, especially when there is such a vocal demand for more police protection.

Meanwhile, there are signs that the battle over inner-city canyons is starting to escalate on all fronts, with even city staff members making it more difficult for developers to call in the cement trucks and carpenters.

“If someone were to bring me the concept of going forward today, building in the canyon, I probably would not go for it,” Roth said. “Just the difficulty of the processing, the mapping process . . . It’s a most difficult process to go through. I think the city, by design, is trying to discourage it (building in canyons).”

But Hedgecock and others worry that may not be enough. Unless the City Council gets more open space money, and unless local residents decide to wage political war over the fate of their neighborhood canyons, Hedgecock said the future is clear:

More canyons will disappear.