City Canyon Dispute May Lead to New Growth Vote

Two weeks after voters dropped the Proposition A-bomb, its political fallout began to rain down on the San Diego City Council, prompting Mayor Roger Hedgecock to charge Monday that a plan to allow greater development in inner-city canyons was “revenge” for limiting growth in the city’s northern tier.

The effect of Proposition A, the slow-growth initiative passed by voters Nov. 5, loomed over council discussion Monday as officials took their first glimpse at a plan to govern development on canyon slopes north of downtown, east of Old Town, west of California 163 and south of Mission Valley--slopes considered among the most scenic and pristine in the Mission Hills and Hillcrest neighborhoods. The final draft of the plan will be the subject of a public hearing next Tuesday.

The plan began six years ago as an effort by the Uptown Planners, the community planning group for the area, to stave off development on canyon slopes by placing tighter restrictions on developers. But on Oct. 14--less than a month before the Proposition A vote--the council followed the lead of Councilman Bill Cleator and voted to rewrite the proposal to actually turn the plan on its head by allowing developers greater leverage to build more homes, apartments and condominiums on canyon slopes than is recommended by the community plan.

When that realization sank in Monday, it touched off acrimonious discussion that featured Hedgecock’s charge of “revenge” by some who were trying to make good on their promise that “if Proposition A passes, this council would fill up the canyons . . . with development.”

“I think that the final chapter in the war to preserve the canyons in the city is opening next week,” Hedgecock said of the scheduled public hearing. “Uptown is the battleground . . . If it takes another initiative to protect the canyons of this city, we’ll have another initiative to protect the canyons of this city.”

What will happen to canyons in Uptown and other inner-city neighborhoods has been one of the key questions in San Diego’s escalating debate over growth. While groups such as the Uptown Planners have been fighting developers on the slopes, other groups such as the Sierra Club have been fighting developers over construction in the city’s “urban reserve,” a total of 52,000 acres the city’s Growth Management Plan theoretically declared off limits to builders until 1995.

Environmentalists and slow-growth advocates, displeased with City Council decisions allowing some construction in the urban reserve, sponsored and convinced voters to pass Proposition A, which calls for a public vote on any future development proposals for the area. Opponents of the measure, however, warned that shutting off development in the northern reaches would only jam more houses, people and congestion into neighborhoods like Hillcrest and Mission Hills.

Even without Proposition A, pressure to build in canyons such as those in Uptown has escalated in recent years as the recession eased and developers followed a conscious policy by the city to encourage construction in inner-city neighborhoods. Members of the Uptown Planners say their canyons became vulnerable to a crush of proposed projects because zoning maps did not respect the geography of canyons, thus allowing dense construction on steep grades.

The group claimed that its current community plan, which recommends a maximum of four homes, apartments or condominium units per acre of canyon wall, was woefully outdated. It worked for six years to develop a plan that ultimately set a limit of no more than one dwelling unit per acre in a canyon.

The plan was accepted by the city’s Planning Commission, but met strong opposition when it reached the council from developers and landowners who said the restrictions were “down-zoning” and tantamount to stealing their land.

After at least two stormy public hearings, the council voted Oct. 14 to approve a “compromise” from Cleator, whose district includes part of the Uptown area. During the confusion of the council discussion, members of the Uptown Planners endorsed the compromise and the council voted unanimously to endorse it.

“Basically, the community plan group agreed to a motion that it had all of 30 seconds to look at before the last meeting,” Jim Kelley-Markham, a spokesman for Uptown Planners, told the council on Monday in explaining the goof.

Cleator’s compromise, however, yanked the teeth from the measure. It called for elimination of numbers that “arbitrarily limit density” on canyon slopes, and called for every Uptown proposal to undergo scrutiny under standards established by the city’s hillside review ordinance.

By taking out numbers in the proposed plan, Cleator’s compromise not only lifted the one-unit-per-acre ceiling sought by the Uptown Planners, it effectively did away with the current four-unit-per-acre recommendation. The plan, as it is being written, could permit developers to build more than the old limit, planning officials confirmed Monday.

“It comes out clear as day . . . we’re losing everything, and we’re getting a situation that is worse than six years ago when we began this process,” Kelley-Markham said before Monday’s discussion.

Cleator responded to the briefing with objections, saying Hedgecock had really scheduled a hearing without legally notifying the public. Hedgecock allowed the briefing to continue. Cleator declined to engage in general discussion on the plan until it is presented at the public hearing next Tuesday.

After the meeting, Cleator declined to comment on Hedgecock’s charges that his compromise was designed as revenge for Proposition A, which Cleator opposed.

“I’m not going to respond to a fight that he’s trying to start,” Cleator told reporters after the council meeting. “It doesn’t make any sense.”

Cleator acknowledged, however, that his compromise could allow developers to build--on some canyon slopes, at least--more than four dwelling units per acre, the recommended ceiling under the current community plan.

“There are some areas in District 2 that are not . . . pristine canyons . . . that possibly could” see more than four units per acre, he said.

Although the council took no official action at Monday’s briefing, the discussion served notice that next week’s public hearing on the final draft of the Uptown plan could become an emotional donnybrook.

Kelley-Markham said the Uptown Planners would send out flyers to 400 families in the area to see “if they are as outraged as we are.”