Growth Ushers in Urban Problems : Clogged Streets Concern Triangle Residents

Melissa Griffin says she’s a realist, and, because of that, a pessimist. She became that way, she says, because of what she’s seen firsthand happen in San Diego’s Golden Triangle.

It’s people like Griffin who feel that the triangle--where rapid growth is in full bloom--is on the threshold of choking on its own success, taking with it the qualities that made the community desirable in the first place.

“The people of University City were quite content with their status. These approvals (for Golden Triangle development) had been in the mill for four or five years, but they were in unpopulated areas, and when (zoning) notices went out, the jack rabbits didn’t respond,” says Griffin, who has lived in the area for 14 years, the last seven as a member of the city-sponsored University Community Planning Group.

“When construction actually started, many of the people out here didn’t believe what was going on,” Griffin said, who is no longer a planning group member. “They didn’t jump on the bandwagon until it was too late. And it is too late, obviously. The only sort of cohesion out here . . . is the sign of the green dollar bill, as in profit.”

While Griffin’s sentiments may be extreme, and certainly the triangle’s boosters would take great issue with them, they touch on the side effects of the area’s development boom, predominantly traffic congestion, which have left many community residents feeling uneasy.

Similar situations--where change caused by rapid development leads to a shaking of the status quo and skepticism on the part of many--aren’t new to San Diego or California, where such turmoil seems almost eternal. But that’s both the dilemma and challenge facing the triangle, if it is to fulfill its golden promise for everyone, and not just for the few.

“I look at this area as an urban center in its childhood,” says Abbe Wolfsheimer, the newly elected City Council member who represents the Golden Triangle area. “There is on one level enough industry and commercial (buildings), but when it comes to supplying the daily needs of people who live out there, it comes up short.”

It’s clear that by almost every measure, the Golden Triangle is growing by leaps and bounds in all development phases--residential, office and high-tech industrial--at a pace showing no signs of slowing in the near future.

Permanent residents in the triangle, who now number 30,000 or so, are expected to increase by at least 72% by the year 2000, according to estimates by the San Diego Assn. of Governments. Construction of high-priced housing, mainly apartments, town houses and condominiums to accommodate this growing populace, is intense.

One firm, the Bren Co., is developing La Jolla Colony, which alone will produce a 3,594-unit development spread over 220 acres off of La Jolla Colony Drive.

While this is considered relatively high-density by Golden Triangle standards, it pales in comparison to a mixed-use development proposal by Guaranty Service Corp. called Costa Verde, which calls for the construction of 3,266 units in several seven-story buildings, a 14-story hotel, restaurant, grocery store and gas station on only 35 acres. Considering only the land set aside for residential development, this comes out to about 100 units to the acre, making it one of the densest housing developments in all San Diego.

The Costa Verde project, if approved by the City Council, would be built at the southwest corner of La Jolla Village Drive and Genesee Avenue, one of the busiest intersections in the triangle. La Jolla Village Drive is the aorta of the Golden Triangle, a four-lane artery carrying most of the area’s traffic. It is fast turning into a strip of high-rise offices and hotels from Interstate 805 west to Interstate 5.

But La Jolla Village Drive is not the only street in the triangle with heavy traffic. North Torrey Pines Road, parts of Eastgate Mall and Genesee Avenue and Towne Centre Drive all are accommodating thousands of vehicles a day.

According to a grim preliminary city traffic study of the area released last week, which tested development scenarios in the triangle, including current plans and various alternatives, traffic on these main streets is likely to be so heavy in the future as to violate City Council policy on acceptable levels of traffic.

For example, some sections of La Jolla Village Drive are expected to handle 96,000 vehicles a day, while the maximum city standard calls for no more than 50,000. On North Torrey Pines Road, where several large research and development firms and corporate offices are located, car trips will amount to 70,000 a day.

“We know we have to have growth, but we can’t ignore the needs of the community. I have to go two miles in a car through seven or eight stoplights . . . to go to the cleaners,” says Norma Carey, who lives in a condominium in the triangle and is past president of the University Community Planning Group. “The community doesn’t have a chance in hell. We’re winning some battles but losing the war.”

There is, however, another perspective on traffic in the triangle, one that suggests that critics are of a suburban mind set and unwilling to see the area for what it has become, a mini-city.

“People look at congestion at UTC (University Towne Centre shopping center) like it’s the end of the world. But when you talk about congestion downtown, it’s exciting. People must see UTC as an urban area,” says Paul Buss, of the architectural firm of Buss Silvers Hughes & Associates, which has done design work in the Golden Triangle.

Dr. R. H. Hamstra, a management psychologist and one of the people involved in the early master planning for the triangle, says, “We’re extremely blessed with the freeway access this area has. You know, we’re a little bit spoiled. If we can’t make a traffic light, then it’s disaster. It’s all in our mentality.”

And while many developers and businesses locating in the triangle are, to varying degrees, concerned about traffic, none interviewed for this series see it as an obstacle to future growth.

“Traffic is not that bad at all compared to Los Angeles or going into La Jolla,” said Gene Ray, president and chief operating officer of Titan Corp., which builds computers for the military and industrial products for private industry and whose headquarters are in La Jolla Gateway, an office complex at the corner of La Jolla Village Drive and Towne Centre Drive.

“As far as we’re concerned, it’s centrally located and very convenient to where people live,” Ray added.

Obviously such optimism is not shared by all people who live and work in the triangle. The city itself is in a quandary. It has created a complex system that allocates each development project a quota of car trips. This is based on a formula that takes into account the project’s use, density and square footage.

The allocation system was founded on a 1980 traffic study, which the city, residents and developers acknowledge is outdated.

A revised study was done in 1983, but its methodology was flawed and thus the study was thrown out. In the meantime, however, development activity in the triangle was taking off in a big way, and developers were using the 1980 allocations, which some residents considered too high.

With construction activity peaking, traffic on the increase and more development proposals coming in, the city last year called time out and instituted a limited moratorium on future construction in the Golden Triangle, pending a new, revised traffic study and a reevaluation of land uses.

The moratorium is limited only to projects seeking higher quotas than allowed in the 1980 study. The City Council, however, has allowed some exceptions and at least one developer has traded with others for their excess allocations.

So when the preliminary traffic study revision was released last week, it was greeted with much interest by developers and community residents alike. The study, which won’t be final for several more months and is open to change, concluded that unless reductions are made in the density of future projects, the Golden Triangle’s main thoroughfares will be clogged far beyond their capacity.

And while that finding sent groans through the development community, the real fight will come if the city is forced into picking and choosing who gets what allocations, as the study suggests. The city Planning Commission is having a workshop on the study Thursday.

The hope of developers is that an expanded street system, paid for through a more than $80 million Facilities Benefit Assessment fund, will solve most of the problem, or, at a minimum, assure traffic doesn’t get any worse.

“We have an exceptionally well-planned street structure,” says George Lattimer, executive vice president of Harry L. Summers Inc. and chairman of the University Community Planning Group.

“Sure, there will be some clogging,” Lattimer said. “We have more than a passing interest in this, too. We don’t want to get so badly diminished people won’t come down . . . harming our investments.”

The money in the fund, paid for by developers and property owners, is for improvements to several streets, such as extending Nobel Drive to I-805, widening La Jolla Village Drive and adding new on- and off-ramps to I-5 and I-805.

Even some of those who support growth in the triangle aren’t sold on the street improvement plan. “When you clear the chaff and look at the real world, it doesn’t work. It’s taking a problem that’s out there and making it worse,” says Bud Bass, city property agent in charge of industrial marketing for the city’s three office/industrial complexes in the triangle.

The main problems with the plan, Bass says, is that development in Sorrento Valley is ignored and most traffic in the triangle is funneled back onto La Jolla Village Drive.

Whatever the solution, the remedy must take care of the automobile, because it’s the only game in town. Although general plans exist for extending the city’s light-rail system to the Golden Triangle, they aren’t specific or financed and no one will hazard a guess as to when such a system would be operational. The best guess is the trolley will reach the Golden Triangle sometime after the year 2000.

“Overall, I think the Golden Triangle is a dramatic testimonial to our growth-management plan,” said former mayor Roger Hedgecock. “But if there’s one mistake out there . . . it’s that it is the last of the purely automobile-dependent (planned) areas in the city. That’s a big mistake, and we’re going to pay for it.”

The feeling among some residents, that they were left behind as development in the triangle plunged ahead, led to the creation last year of UCARE, University City Area Residents for Equity. Harry Mathis is president of the group, composed of about 500 households, and a member of the University Community Planning Group. He’s lived in the area for 15 years.

He and others point to the recent approval of Proposition A as evidence residents are seriously concerned about the course and effects of growth. The proposition, which passed overwhelmingly in the University City area, requires a citywide vote when developments are proposed in the city’s urban reserve.

“A lot of us felt out of contact with what was going on (in the triangle), and there were issues affecting our quality of life, traffic, air quality, city services,” Mathis said. “Only recently has traffic become so visible that it’s struck a cord with the community. We try not to be against everything, we realize property owners have certain rights, but, at the same time, you can only widen a road so much or engineer the movement of traffic only so far.

“Our concern is: What’s it going to be when it’s all built out? There has to be a compromise with developers . . . who want to maximize profits and residents who have to live with the results.”