Secrecy About Donor Led to Plan’s Demise : Vauclain Point Mystery Deal Falls Apart

It had all the elements of a mystery tale with a happy ending. There was the local government that had been trying to sell scenic Vauclain Point in Mission Hills. There were the neighbors who wanted to make sure that at least part of that real estate was kept as a public park. There was the local hospice group looking for a place where terminally ill people could spend their final days in a bucolic setting.

And there was the central figure: an anonymous donor who was willing to pay $5 million to $10 million to make all their dreams come true.

The fantasy was supposed to become reality by a vote of the San Diego City Council Monday, but instead it unraveled into a political nightmare that eventually prompted council members to side with Mission Hills residents--whom they could see--rather than bow to the demands of a mysterious donor--whom they couldn’t. The council decided 6-2 to scuttle plans for a 24-bed hospice at Vauclain Point, praised by several council members Monday as one of the most beautiful places in San Diego because of its view of Mission Valley.

The council’s vote turned on the fact that it was frustrated dealing through intermediaries with a secret philanthropist who apparently turned fickle and scuttled a possible storybook ending with his or her implacable demands.

“I don’t like the Howard Hughes bit,” said Mayor Roger Hedgecock, complaining that the city was prevented from talking “eyeball to eyeball” with the donor because of the cloak of secrecy surrounding his or her identity.

“I don’t appreciate the anonymity. I don’t like getting muscled by someone I can’t see. I get muscled enough by people I do see,” he added, in a light-hearted reference to his legal problems.

Since late 1984, the County of San Diego has been interested in selling Vauclain Point, a finger mesa of about 12 acres that reaches north into Mission Valley from Mission Hills. At the northern end of 3rd Avenue, a county building houses the San Diego AIDS Project at a site that once was the county’s tuberculosis hospital and, later, a mental health facility.

When local residents heard that the county was interested in selling the land, they hoped to persuade elected officials to convert it into a park, said Joy Higginbotham, member of the Vauclain Point Advisory Committee, a group established by county Supervisor Leon Williams. County supervisors rejected that plan, so residents turned their attention to convincing the city to buy the land for a park, she said.

Meanwhile, in December, 1984, the San Diego Hospice Corporation was approached by an anonymous donor who said he or she would be willing to pay for a 24-bed hospice. The corporation has no building but serves about 100 people a day with in-home services, such as nurses and counselors, said Rich Edwards, San Diego Hospice vice president.

Hospice officials, with the generous offer in hand, went to the city and asked for help finding a suitable site for their 24-bed facility. Because the hospice would draw less traffic than, say, apartments or condominiums, city officials thought they would be able to steer the project to Vauclain Point if the anonymous donor would permit the general public to use part of the land as a park.

The answer seemed to be yes. Higginbotham said that, from the first day hospice officials contacted her during the spring, they assured her the donor was amenable to letting nature lovers share some of the point.

And city officials satisfied themselves that the anonymous donor was for real. Assistant City Manager John Lockwood said he received a telephone call from a “mutual friend” at one point in the deliberations over the Vauclain Point site to inform him who the do-gooder was.

His lips are sealed. “I can’t tell you, other than it is a philanthropist who has no issue other than they want to provide a first-class facility,” Lockwood said Monday.

Everything looked like it was going to work. The county was going to sell its land for about $3 million, and the donor said he or she would pay an additional $2 million to $7 million to build the facility. Residents would get some of the land as a park and would be assured that the point would not be occupied with a high-density residential development. Hospice officials would get a building for free within blocks of two major hospitals, UC San Diego Medical Center and Mercy Hospital.

As recently as Aug. 15, said Higginbotham, Edwards assured the community that the hospice would include a public park.

Then came Aug. 28, like the stroke of midnight. Higginbotham said Edwards called her with stunning news--the donor, apparently, changed his or her mind. He or she no longer wanted to let the public share the point with the hospice.

Higginbotham said she and other residents apparently “misunderstood” the role that hospice officials played in keeping the donor apprised of plans for the park. Edwards said Monday that when he publicly expressed support for the park, “it was my feeling and my feeling alone,” not the wishes of the donor.

Lockwood said the donor found out about the park when he or she asked for some details on landscape plans. Until then, the donor had assumed that the park area discussed by the city and neighbors would be limited to the terminally ill.

That change, however, made hospice officials and neighborhood residents adversaries when the question of whether to include the park came before the City Council. Hospice officials were asking, as a condition of buying Vauclain Point, whether city officials would approve the necessary permits for construction without public access to the area.

“The whole idea was not to put them in an isolated setting,” Michael Conlan told the Council Monday in urging the council members to reject the hospice’s request. Conlan asked council members not to allow the terminally ill to “live out their lives surrounded by high walls, chain fences . . . in what can be described as a gilded concentration camp.”

Edwards, however, urged the council not to table the item.

“Our donor is committed and magnanimous. I’d rather lose the property than lose the project,” he said, adding that hospice officials would look for another location for their building.

In the end, the council sided with residents, and pledged that the point would remain open to the public. Higginbotham agreed with the decision, saying the anonymous donor was trying to hold the community “hostage.”

While the council’s decision ended one question in the saga, leaving county officials no other choice except to find another buyer for its mesa, the central--and obvious--mystery remains.

“The community has been dying of curiosity to find out who the donor is,” said Higginbotham. “How could you not be working for six months with the Hospice Corporation and not know who this generous person was behind the funds?”