Mayor’s Call for Construction Moratorium Assailed : Property Owners Set to Battle for Mission Valley Plan

Developer Lance Burris spoke quietly, but his words were strong.

“I have a feeling we’re going to have to fight for our lives on this thing,” he told fellow property owners Wednesday.

Burris is senior project manager for Chevron Land & Development Co., which is planning a 200-acre development in Mission Valley.

For seven years, he and 23 other property owners and residents of Mission Valley have worked on a plan for managing the growth of office buildings, shopping centers, hotels, traffic circles and golf courses on six miles of land along the San Diego River.

Their plan--and alternatives to their plan--are to be considered by the San Diego City Council at a night meeting June 25.

But on Tuesday, the until-now-anonymous Mission Valley Unified Planning Committee took on a formidable foe: the mayor.

In a lengthy press conference, San Diego Mayor Roger Hedgecock read an eight-page statement decrying “the land rush in Mission Valley” and castigating the committee’s plan as the most unacceptable of eight alternatives that the council must choose from for developing the valley.

Calling this “the most important issue to face the citizens of San Diego in this decade,” the mayor asked for an immediate moratorium on all development in Mission Valley. If Hedgecock’s proposal is approved, Burris’ project and a dozen other valley projects, ranging from 5 to 200 acres in size, will be stalled--and possibly scuttled.

As luck would have it, members of the Mission Valley planning group had planned a meeting Wednesday to prepare for the June council meeting.

They were mad at the mayor--angry and perplexed that he had suddenly made them and their seven years’ work Public Enemy No. 1.

“Here we are now--the property owners --and now we are contrary to the general public and contrary to all the goody two-shoes in the world. And it’s not true,” complained Hal Tebbetts, attorney for the Stardust Country Club and Hotel.

“In every article I’ve read today, we’re against motherhood! And it’s not true,” Tebbetts said.

Committee members complained that, in Hedgecock’s prepared speech and comments to reporters, the mayor misstated their plan for developing the valley.

Although seven months ago, the group had supported Alternative 8, a blueprint for the most intense development in the valley, in the intervening months, the committee has shifted its support to a less intense plan, its members said.

W.K. Shearer, attorney for Atlas Hotels, explained: “Prior to Planning Commission hearings, the committee modified its position, so that the figures he (Hedgecock) is going on are much larger than the position of the committee.”

Instead of demanding the right to develop as many as 17 million square feet of office space--twice as much as exists in downtown San Diego--the committee now supports a concept of “development rights” or bonuses, Shearer said. For instance, if a developer paid money toward a proposed valley light rail transportation system, he would earn the right to additional development.

By unanimous vote, committee members decided they would send a delegation to see the mayor--to explain to him that they don’t want to “Los Angelize” the valley any more than he does.

If they don’t expect to win Hedgecock over to their side, neither do they want to get into a contest in the media with the mayor.

The committee opted to present a “dignified” statement of their views to the mayor. After that, they plan to try to convince the rest of the council to vote against a moratorium and back their development plan.

“The tragedy of this is that, after seven years of studying the problem, and now there’s all this inflammatory language, it will make (approval) much more difficult,” Burris said.