Coastal Panel OKs Educational Park : Commissioners Praise Plans for 167-Acre Project Overlooking Batiquitos Lagoon

The California Coastal Commission on Friday approved plans for a private graduate university and residential development on the bluffs overlooking Carlsbad’s Batiquitos Lagoon, paving the way for construction of the ambitious 167-acre project.

Praising the developer, San Diego-based Sammis Properties, for pledging to take numerous measures designed to protect the ecologically sensitive coastal wetland, commissioners unanimously endorsed the Batiquitos Lagoon Educational Park after a brief public hearing here.

“Sammis Properties has gone through rigorous scrutinization on this . . . and they have had nothing but endorsements on all the environmental safeguards they put into this plan,” Commissioner David Malcolm said. “I think we should compliment them on that.”

Two points of controversy--concerning the developer’s request to begin grading on the property during the rainy season and the preservation of farmland on the site--appeared to cloud the proposal when it arrived before the 13-member state panel Friday. But commissioners resolved the dispute handily--rejecting the recommendations of their staff analysts and siding with the developer instead.

“We’re pleased,” Sammis Vice President Jon Briggs said after the vote. “It’s been a long haul and a lot of work, but we think we’ve got a fair compromise.”

Briggs said that if all goes well, construction could begin early next year, and the university could enroll its first students next fall. Nationwide recruitment of faculty and students, he said, is already under way.

The commission’s endorsement of the educational park comes just one month after the Sammis proposal sailed past the Carlsbad City Council, which commended it as a first-rate project and a prestigious addition to North County’s fastest-growing city.

The development, which Mayor Mary Casler has called the most unusual project ever attempted in Carlsbad, will be built on former flower fields and agricultural land atop a mesa just west of Interstate 5. The site overlooks the western bays of Batiquitos and is just seaward of where Texas oil barons W. Herbert and Nelson Bunker Hunt hope to build a resort and residential community.

Anchoring the Sammis project--and attracting the most interest--is a small, private graduate university with at least five separate disciplines: law, public affairs, communication and information science, land use and real estate, and Pacific Rim studies.

The university, to be closely aligned with the conservative political philosophies of company chairman and Rancho Santa Fe resident Don Sammis, eventually is expected to enroll about 1,000 students.

The educational park, which Sammis has modeled after those surrounding Princeton and Stanford, also includes a “think tank” or public policy center; research and development facilities linked closely with classroom activity; a 423-room hotel; a convention center; two libraries; several restaurants; convenience and retail stores, and about 600 homes and condominiums around the rim.

In addition, the company intends to build the permanent training facilities for the U.S. Olympic men’s and women’s volleyball teams. Don Sammis was a financial sponsor of the 1984 Olympic volleyball squad and owned two professional teams in the now-defunct International Volleyball Assn.

Throughout an 18-month planning process, the Sammis development has won support from myriad community groups. The Carlsbad City Council’s staunchest slow-growth advocate, Mark Pettine, voted for the project, and environmentalists endorsed the developer’s plans and praised the company for participating in an enhancement program for Batiquitos, reducing building heights on the mesa and observing strict setbacks on the lagoon bluffs.

Staff analysts for the Coastal Commission also had little quarrel with the Sammis plans--with two exceptions.

The first area of dispute concerned the number of acres of farmland on the 167-acre site. Under an agricultural conversion program in Carlsbad, developers who wish to build on land formerly designated for farming must pay a fee of $5,000 to $10,000 per acre unless they can prove that agriculture is no longer economically feasible on the property.

The commission’s analysts argued that 130 acres of the Sammis property--the company’s entire holdings excluding a portion of the lagoon and the bluffs--historically were in cultivation and therefore should be subject to the fee. Sammis officials, however, insisted that only 100 acres, at most, should be assessed, and commissioners agreed.

A second area of conflict centered on the company’s request to begin grading on the property during the winter. Generally, the commission has denied such requests on sites near lagoons because of the damage inflicted on the wetlands by silt swept into them by winter storms. Just last month, the commission flatly denied another Carlsbad developer’s request to grade during the winter on a parcel near Agua Hedionda Lagoon.

But Sammis officials noted that because of the topography of their site, large amounts of silt are already being washed into the lagoon. Proper, carefully engineered grading, they argued, could actually improve that situation.

Commissioners were convinced. But before construction can proceed, the company’s grading and erosion control program must be approved by the commission’s executive director, Peter Douglas, in consultation with the Carlsbad city engineer and the state Department of Fish and Game.