Growth Plan for Mission Valley Passes

Thirty years after the dairy farms of Mission Valley began to give way to shopping centers, high-rises and a labyrinth of roads, the San Diego City Council early Wednesday adopted the city’s first plan to manage growth in the increasingly congested valley.

By an 8-1 vote, with only Mayor Roger Hedgecock dissenting, the council approved a plan that allows significantly more traffic, hotels and office buildings in the valley.

Nevertheless, the development permitted under the plan is considerably less than previous zoning would have permitted. And the plan for the first time limits new construction in the valley based on the traffic a project is expected to generate.

In addition, the plan will require valley property owners and developers to contribute an estimated $100 million for public improvements, including streets, neighborhood parks and a light rail transit system.

“It is not a perfect plan,” said Councilman Ed Struiksma, whose district includes Mission Valley and who for has been working on the plan for three years. “But it is the first plan that Mission Valley has ever had. . . . At least we’ll have a document to start working around, and the people in the valley will have a better understanding of the process.”

Although some valley property owners support the plan and believe it gives them “fair value” for their land, “it’s not going to make everyone happy,” Struiksma noted. “Overnight their land has been reduced in value by half. Overnight we down-zoned the valley on average by 50%.”

But environmentalists, led by Mayor Roger Hedgecock, were not sympathetic. They warned that rather than controlling growth, the plan will create traffic gridlock and “a wall of buildings” in the flood-prone river valley.

As the meeting ended Wednesday, Sierra Club leaders Jay Powell and Bob Hartman termed the council’s vote “the Mission Valley Massacre, the Mission Valley Slaughter.”

During a marathon six-hour council meeting, which began Tuesday evening and continued until 1 a.m. Wednesday, Hedgecock argued that the final plan contained too many loopholes, including “allowing much more traffic than we’ve ever had before.”

Although three weeks ago the mayor had urged his colleagues to shelve the plan and impose a moratorium on valley development, he said Tuesday night that he had realized there was little council support for a moratorium. Instead, Hedgecock said he wished to amend and improve the plan.

Though he won two of his seven amendments, the final plan was still unacceptably flawed, Hedgecock said as he urged a “no” vote. “There’s one loophole you could drive a lot of trucks through--the failure to put a cap on the number of average daily trips,” or traffic, that a project would generate, he told reporters later.

The rest of the council disagreed. Struiksma argued that the plan’s formula on average daily trips would properly limit development and that Hedgecock’s idea of a cap was “simplistic.” Besides, Struiksma said, the plan offers the first guidelines ever on development in the valley.

“Keep in mind that a lot of people spoke here tonight who would just as soon not have a plan,” Struiksma said. “And if those forces would have prevailed, five to 10 years could go by without a plan” and the hodgepodge development that has characterized the valley would continue.

Over the last 30 years, commercial development and the construction of Interstate 8 along the San Diego River have pushed the valley’s dairy farms into extinction. Seven years ago, the city created the 24-member Mission Valley Unified Planning Committee, a mix of valley developers and residents who were to write the first guidelines for developing the valley. Working with city planners, that committee produced a 400-page document describing eight possible plans.

Many unified planning committee members favored Alternative 8, calling for the most intense commercial and retail development. The city Planning Department and, on Jan. 24, the city Planning Commission endorsed a plan for moderate development--Alternative 5, the plan the council approved early Wednesday morning.

To hear the council debate, more than 1,000 people gathered Tuesday evening in a huge conference room at the Town & Country Hotel on Hotel Circle, the heart of Mission Valley.

On Struiksma’s side were city planners, the San Diego Chamber of Commerce, other local business leaders and some of the valley’s largest developers. Opposed were Hedgecock, Sierra Club members, planning groups near the valley and valley residents like Nancy Weber who complained, “Every night at 6 o’clock I see bumper-to-bumper traffic. I can’t imagine what would happen with 10 times the development.”

In a third camp were some members of the Mission Valley Unified Planning Committee, who urged amendments to the plan that would ease limits on developers. Committee chairman William Walker asked the council to abandon one element of the plan--a 30% reduction in the development density on land south of I-8.

After two hours of testimony, when the council finally began to debate, there appeared to be a 5-4 split. Council members Bill Cleator, Uvaldo Martinez, Dick Murphy and Gloria McColl backed Struiksma and the plan; Councilmen Mike Gotch, William Jones and Bill Mitchell joined Hedgecock in a more critical view.

But when Hedgecock began offering a series of technical amendments on issues like flood protection and financing public improvements, the mayor’s support appeared to wane.

At 11 p.m., Hedgecock insisted that the council consider each amendment one by one, not as a package. As the discussion dragged on, Hedgecock won only two of his seven amendments--one on restricting height limits south of the San Diego River to 40 feet, the other on the need to prepare a financing plan for public projects in the valley.

And his strategy of late amendments to the plan riled Cleator, who said he was unwilling to ignore the valley planning group’s years of work and “go along with the Roger plan.”

“Your methodology is just wrong this evening, Roger,” Cleator said. “What you’re trying to do is unscramble an egg, and I don’t think you are going to do it.”

It was 12:45 a.m. Wednesday when Hedgecock offered his final comments on the plan. It lacked the backbone to say no to developers, the mayor complained, urging a “no” vote.

But this time even some of his traditional allies were not with him.

“We do need some backbone, but I can’t vote to deny this plan,” said Mitchell, who is known as one of the strongest environmentalists on the council. “Maybe it’s not exactly what you want, but right now I feel to deny the Mission Valley people a plan would be wrong of me.”