Is Redevelopment the Right Vision for Vista?

When banker John Cosh searches his memory for an appealing image of this city’s downtown, he reaches back quite a distance--to the late 1930s.

In that era, Cosh recalls, residents from far afield would stream into central Vista on weekend evenings, park their cars and perch on hoods and fenders to gab about the weather, the church picnic or the health of the region’s citrus and avocado groves.

Haberdasheries and other stores served shoppers late into the night, and the soda fountain teemed with teen-agers and younger kids. Downtown was “simply delightful”--alive, bustling, the place to be, recalls Cosh, 60.

Today, the mid-city landscape is a bit bleaker in Vista, a community that carpets gently rolling hills and sits halfway between Oceanside and Escondido on California 78. Plagued by notorious traffic problems caused by an illogical street system, the modern downtown is a collage of weed-covered lots, abandoned gas stations and vacant storefronts. The few shops that remain close up early. The popular soda fountain is gone, replaced as the neighborhood’s major nighttime attraction by a seedy bar that caters to farm workers.

“The town is dying, bleeding to death,” said Cosh, chairman of the Vista Economic Development Assn. “Heck, we’ve got more stores closed than stores open.”

Cosh and his allies want to change all that. Their prescription: to use redevelopment in an effort to restore Vista’s dilapidated downtown to its former, or greater, glory. On Tuesday, Vistans will endorse or reject that plan when they vote on Proposition K, a measure that asks whether the city should form a redevelopment agency.

Victory for the would-be urban renewers is by no means assured. While virtually all of their North County neighbors have heartily embraced redevelopment, using it to build civic centers, finance downtown improvements and stimulate private investment, Vistans historically have scorned the idea. Ten years ago, in fact, voters here killed a redevelopment agency that was already planning projects--by a 3-to-1 margin.

Many of the opponents in that election are orchestrating the battle against redevelopment in 1985. They are led by Councilman Lloyd von Haden, a political veteran known for his Populist style and slow-growth philosophies.

Von Haden, whose team has spent about $800 on signs and fliers to fight redevelopment, opposes the program for two reasons--he believes it will fail, and he finds morally repugnant the concept of using tax dollars for improvements that primarily benefit the private sector.

“I think it’s wrong for a city to get into the real estate business and use public money to bail out private businesses,” Von Haden said. “If the merchants are dissatisfied with the downtown, let them pay for improving it through assessment districts.”

Von Haden, who has written and illustrated what he calls “a Bible” on redevelopment, advances another argument against the program, one frequently used by its critics statewide. Diverting money to a redevelopment agency, he said, strips the county of tax money needed to provide law enforcement, health and welfare administration and other services. Indeed, in some areas, counties now struggling with their reduced income have sued cities in an effort to recover money lost to redevelopment.

“Redevelopment’s promoters would have you believe it is a magic formula, that you get shiny buildings and a whole wish list of things for nothing,” Von Haden said. “The truth is redevelopment just takes money out of one pocket and puts it in another. It’s not painless, and the agencies run up huge debts.”

Other redevelopment foes sound a different warning. Community activist Patsy Filo said she does not oppose the program per se, but simply does not trust Vista’s leaders to implement it properly. Her worries focus on Mayor Mike Flick, the target of a $1.5-million lawsuit related to his business affairs, and Councilman Ed Neal, on trial for allegedly using city money to take his girlfriend to Washington.

Despite their resounding victory a decade ago, the anti-redevelopment forces are up against tough competitors this time--a highly organized, well-financed coalition of 250 residents and civic leaders that maintains a banner-draped headquarters in an abandoned bank in the heart of downtown.

Led by Milo Shadle, a real estate broker who practiced law in Vista for 22 years, the pro-K group is supported by the mayor, three council members and a host of area developers. Shadle said the group has so far spent about $20,000 on the campaign, which has included mail and telephone drives, 60 presentations to neighborhood groups and service clubs, newspaper advertisements, a sign contest for downtown merchants and a speakers bureau.

An additional $6,520 has been spent on mailings by Mayor Mike Flick’s Citizens’ Committee, according to the latest financial statements on file for that group in the City Clerk’s office. That’s not surprising; in the mayor’s view, redevelopment is “the biggest issue facing Vistans since incorporation (in 1962).”

As Flick sees it, Vista’s downtown, which has lost 263 clerical and retail jobs since 1980 and is home to 50 vacant buildings, will continue to wither and eventually “cease to exist” if redevelopment fails to pass Tuesday.

“Without the redevelopment tool, the city simply cannot afford to build the new streets that will solve our traffic problems and help us stop the urban decay,” Flick said. “If we can’t use redevelopment funds to correct these basic deficiencies and turn around the atmosphere of helplessness in the downtown, it is doomed.”

In attempting to mobilize support for Proposition K, Flick and his allies complain that Vista is missing out on the redevelopment bonanza being enjoyed by its North County neighbors. Carlsbad, Oceanside, San Marcos and Escondido are all using the redevelopment tool to revive anemic downtowns and finance ambitious civic projects.

“It’s rather upsetting to look around and see all these cities doing all these exciting things under redevelopment,” Shadle said. “Vista is missing the boat. I wouldn’t call it envy, but there’s a feeling of regret that our city isn’t enjoying the same success.”

Under California’s 30-year-old redevelopment law, a city defines a project area--a sort of subset of the greater community--and declares it “blighted.” Property taxes in the project area are then frozen for 25 years or longer, and any additional tax revenues garnered from new construction--known as the tax increment--are funneled into the redevelopment agency.

The agency may sell bonds and use the money to condemn buildings, purchase property, relocate businesses and construct streets. Such improvements, the theory goes, along with subsidies and discounts on downtown sites, entice developers who would otherwise view investment in a blighted area as too risky.

Although Vista as yet has no specific plan for redevelopment, a feasibility study conducted by a consultant recommended a project area roughly three square miles in size that would encompass most of the city’s commercial area plus a new 1,000-acre industrial park on the southeast border. The industrial park, which only recently began welcoming its first tenants, would provide most of the needed tax base for the agency early on.

The study also outlined a 45-year, $450-million revitalization plan for the project area. Projects under discussion include street improvements, downtown landscaping and parking, relocation of utility lines underground, and, eventually, a civic center.

Visions vary, but most redevelopment proponents, realizing their city of 44,000 could not support a Horton Plaza, hope to create a bustling, up-scale downtown with sidewalk cafes, boutiques and some residential developments. Others have suggested that Vista, which already hosts the North County court complex, could become the office-professional hub for the region.

Before the march toward such dreams can begin, however, Vista needs a newly routed street system to alleviate traffic problems in the downtown area, redevelopment promoters say. The odd road system, a remnant of Vista’s agricultural days, carries commuter traffic along narrow downtown streets, causing horrendous congestion that discourages shopping and has been a major contributor to the city’s economic decline.

One realignment plan calls for the widening of South Santa Fe Avenue and construction of a one-way loop that would skirt the center city. This plan, which has been controversial because it would wipe out a middle school as well as several blocks of businesses, would allow for creation of a walking mall in the retail sector of town.

Supporters of Proposition K say that Vista, a tax-poor bedroom community, simply cannot afford these and other improvements necessary to rescue the city’s commercial sector without the assistance of a redevelopment agency. Downtown merchants, many of whom have displayed signs supporting redevelopment in their windows, agree.

“We don’t have a mall like Carlsbad that rakes in the sales tax and allows them to do whatever they wish,” said Albert Barnebee, who has owned Colony Furniture since 1964. “We’ve got to have redevelopment to enhance what little resources we have.”

Some business owners, however, feel differently. Laverne Meeks, who owns Piper’s Appliance with her husband, said business is booming at her store, which opened in 1951. Meeks, whose store would be leveled under the proposed widening of South Santa Fe Avenue, criticized redevelopment as “too iffy and too much, too quickly.”

She added that merchants could make many of the cosmetic improvements redevelopment promises to deliver on their own: “We take care of our place, and I think the others should be responsible and spruce up their stores too.”

But Frank Lopez, owner of Casa Linda Restaurant and a supporter of redevelopment, noted that many businesses have absentee owners who “just won’t clean their places up.”

“If my neighbor’s business looks like a slum, why should I put money into my place?” Lopez said.

Von Haden, who calls proponents’ belief that redevelopment will create a thriving, high-class commercial district a pipe dream, conceded that there is presently little incentive for downtown merchants to beautify their neighborhood. But he’s not worried.

“Eventually, the property will go so far downhill that it will reach a point where the owner will give up or sell out for a low price,” Von Haden said. “Then someone else can come in, buy the land cheaply and start over.”

That scenario--with a somewhat different ending--is what worries Milo Shadle, chairman of the pro-redevelopment campaign.

“We have shops closing every month--and new people are not taking their place,” Shadle said. “In the last few months alone we had two businesses with over 30 years of history in this town move out.

“If redevelopment fails, many, many people will give up hope and move elsewhere. Eventually, Vista will become the stagnant backwater of North County, not a city one can be proud of.”