Hotel Proposal May Make It to Del Mar Ballot

A wealthy Del Mar landowner says he has more than enough signatures to qualify a controversial ballot measure seeking voter approval to build a 500-room hotel on his 20-acre hillside estate.

Millionaire James E. Smith, rebuffed by the City Council on his offer to pay for two city elections to determine Del Mar residents’ views on the project, launched an initiative petition drive last spring to put the issue to a vote at city expense. The issue now appears to be a certainty for the April 8 city election.

Another controversial issue already set for the April 8 council election is a citizen-sponsored initiative that would give city voters veto power over all major development projects in downtown Del Mar.

Smith said Tuesday that he and his co-workers have gathered 776 signatures favoring the vote on a major hotel for his property. Of those, 613 are registered Del Mar voters, he believes. He needs about 390 signatures--15% of Del Mar’s registered voters--to qualify the measure for the ballot.

In early September, when Smith’s initiative petition drive appeared stalled at 200 signatures, he and aide Larry Kallett decided to station a worker outside the seaside community’s post office, where many residents come daily to pick up their mail. He also signed up residents who were not registered to vote, then asked the newly qualified voters to sign his hotel petition.

Del Mar Days, a weekend of sports competition and fun held Sept. 21-22, brought a large number of signatures for the Smith proposal, which promises to give all registered Del Mar voters a 50% discount on food, drinks and rooms at the hotel if it is built.

The ballot proposal also promises to give the City of Del Mar “all proceeds in excess of $9 million” from sale of his 20-acre estate if voters approve a change in zoning that would allow construction of a hotel on the property.

City Manager Bob Nelson said that the petition signatures will be sent to the county register of voters for validation after Smith submits them to City Clerk Diane Lennert. Smith said he has agreed to present the petitions to the city on Oct. 18 and will continue his signature drive until then, with a goal of obtaining 1,140 signers by that time.

Smith’s property currently is zoned for residential development. Smith has announced publicly that, if the initiative measure loses at the polls, he plans to sell off the estate for 20 one-acre house sites.

The land, on the northernmost Del Mar hill overlooking the San Dieguito Valley and Del Mar Race Track, is known locally as the Snakewall Property because, some say, the cement wall surrounding it was built to prevent snakes from invading the hillside tract. Others say that the estate gained its nickname because the 6-foot wall meanders down the 350-foot hillside slope in an undulating path that resembles a giant snake.

Smith bought the Snakewall tract in 1977 and, over the years, has proposed to sell it to the city, to develop it for various commercial ventures and/or to sell it to anyone with $21 million, a price he arrived at by adding four zeros to the address: 2100 Gatun St.

He said he got the idea of putting the hotel proposal to a citywide vote from a similar issue in Santa Barbara proposed by Fess Parker, the actor who played Daniel Boone and Davy Crockett in television shows. Parker’s plan for a 360-room hotel and 1,000-seat convention center on a 14-acre oceanfront site was overwhelmingly approved by city voters there earlier this year.

Smith said he is still puzzled about the initiative measure’s slow start and admitted that citizen efforts to stop two major downtown developments helped spur interest in his initiative.

In May, he sent out petition blanks to all registered voters in Del Mar, asking them to sign his petition putting the hotel proposal on the ballot. Only 88 of the estimated 3,900 voters returned the signed petitions. A door-to-door effort and a telephone campaign also brought little result until citizen interest was aroused by another city issue--proposals to build two large shopping centers in downtown Del Mar.

“If I planned it myself, I couldn’t have done a better job,” Smith said in describing the whirlwind petition campaign that put the downtown development initiative on the ballot in less than three weeks. Citizen concerns that the Del Mar City Council might not accede to residents’ wishes in controlling the size of commercial projects in the small city spilled over to Smith’s petition drive, which also represented an attempt to give citizens a voice in city policy-making.