City Council Places Cap on Building in Inner-City Canyons

Canyon preservationists Tuesday scored a political upset when the San Diego City Council unanimously voted for a measure that would keep everything but the barest of development off the open hillsides in Hillcrest, Mission Hills and related neighborhoods.

Just last week, the preservationists believed that their plan to protect the inner-city canyons had been bowdlerized by development interests bent on taking “revenge” for the passage of Proposition A. Instead of offering greater protection, the council had voted to amend the plan at the behest of Councilman Bill Cleator to give developers greater freedom than currently exists to build on hillsides in Uptown--the area bounded by downtown, Old Town, Mission Valley and University Heights.

But as the council prepared to make its final decision Tuesday on the fate of the Uptown canyons, Cleator apparently changed his mind and pushed through another change that restored most of what the preservationists wanted.

“It got turned around and the council listened to the demands (that) we protect the canyons,” Mayor Roger Hedgecock said after a three-hour council hearing that featured much wrangling over the issue.

The council’s final decision Tuesday limits developers to building one to four single-family homes, apartments or condominium units on the hillside portion of a canyon lot, a restriction that guarantees nothing but the smallest of projects on canyon slopes. The plan will cover all of Uptown’s canyons and hillsides, a departure from the current plan, which protects only half of the community’s canyon acreage.

Cleator said after the marathon hearing Tuesday that the final compromise was what he intended to achieve all along. In explaining why his first proposed amendment in October actually achieved a different result, Cleator said: “Maybe I was trying to design the perfect horse and I came out with a camel.”

But others credited one of Cleator’s friends, architect and Planning Commission Chairman Ron Roberts, who met with Cleator in an attempt to persuade Cleator to further limit construction. Jim Kelley Markham, spokesman for Uptown Planners, attributed Cleator’s apparent change of heart to “public pressure” and Roberts’ intervention.

Council members at Tuesday’s meeting peppered city staff members and each other with questions and counterproposals. The focal point of all the worry was exactly what should be included in a proposed update of the Uptown Community Plan, a document considered to be the planning blueprint for the community.

Members of the Uptown Planners, the community’s official planning group, asked the City Council to update portions of the plan to stave off development in canyons by designating them as open space. They have argued that the current community plan, approved by the council in 1975, was deficient because it ignored some smaller canyons and didn’t prevent developers from following incompatible zoning that legally permitted them to construct apartments and condominiums on slopes.

Although the possibility of problems existed for years, they have become particularly evident recently as parts of Uptown have attracted younger, upscale homeowners. Plans for additional housing followed and, since 1980, there have been 47 projects approved for Uptown slopes, yielding 300 apartment and condominium units, according to Planning Department statistics. An additional 28 hillside projects are on the drawing board for yet another 236 units, according to an Oct. 9 city report.

Uptown Planners hoped to stop imminent development by using the updated community plan to offer stiffer protection for the slopes. The proposed update designated all the canyons as open space--effectively doubling the amount of land in that protective category--and called for a drastic down-zoning of the open space to allow only one house, apartment or condominium unit per acre, the city’s strictest category. Members of the group claimed that some canyon parcels were legally zoned for 60 to 100 units per acre.

Landowners and developers protested the update because they said it would effectively “steal” their property.

On Oct. 14, it appeared that a truce had been forged when Cleator, whose district includes parts of Uptown, pushed through the council a compromise on how the community plan update should be worded.

But the bloom soon faded from the compromise when members of the Uptown Planners realized that Cleator’s amendment actually gave developers greater leverage to build in the canyons than they currently enjoy. Not only did the amendment lift the proposed one-unit-per-acre restriction for areas designated as open space, it also did away with the four-unit ceiling suggested by the current community plan.

When the realization sunk in during a council meeting last week, it angered Councilman Mike Gotch and Hedgecock, two of the council’s strongest canyon preservationists. Hedgecock was so irked that he accused development interests of trying to exact “revenge” for the passage of Proposition A, which was aimed at limiting construction in vacant land along the city’s northern tier. He warned that attempts to weaken the Uptown plan would result in a second environmental uprising and a new ballot initiative to protect the canyons.

The realization also prompted Roberts to visit Cleator, and the Planning Commission chairman said Tuesday that he tried to persuade the councilman to change his position. Roberts is not only chairman of the Planning Commission, he is an Uptown resident who lives in a canyonside home on Jackdaw Street.

On Tuesday, Cleator agreed to amend the plan again, this time creating a cap of four units per acre in the canyons. Members of the Uptown Planners said that having the number in the community plan was important becuse it will be included in the hillside review process for the area and will override all other zoning designations.

Cleator also made sure, however, that landowners who might have grounds to ask for an exemption from the limit can appeal directly to the City Council rather than go through the time-consuming and expensive process of sending their requests through the city Planning Department.

The sudden change Tuesday left landowners and developers who thought they had the upper hand stunned and disappointed.

“I am not pleased,” said J. Michael McDade, Hedgecock’s former chief of staff who was hired by some Uptown landowners to fight the planning group. “I don’t think it was a balanced decision,” he said. “I think the arbitrariness of it is going to get the council in trouble in the future.”