LAFCO Keeps Ecke Ranch Out of San Dieguito Plan

Nearly 1,000 acres in the heart of a proposed North County city will remain outside the incorporation boundaries, the Local Agency Formation Commission decided Monday, despite recommendations against the action by the LAFCO staff.

County Supervisors Paul Eckert and Brian Bilbray, commission members, led the successful push to keep the Paul Ecke Poinsettia Ranch outside the boundaries of the proposed San Dieguito incorporation, arguing that pressures for urbanization of the prime agricultural land would follow once the city is formed and its residents begin demanding urban services requiring new revenue sources.

Paul Ecke Jr., head of the giant poinsettia firm which markets its stock worldwide, successfully urged the LAFCO commissioners to delete the Ecke property from the proposal, explaining that he has applied for a 10-year extension of the agricultural preserve which covers most of the Ecke land and which would prevent development of the property for other than agricultural purposes during the next decade.

Eighteen other property owners seeking exclusion of their properties from the proposed incorporation of the communities of Olivenhain, Cardiff, Leucadia and Encinitas were not successful. Included among the landowners turned down were 15 property owners in the Quail Gardens area south of the Ecke Ranch and north of Encinitas Boulevard; Peter Fletcher, who plans a shopping center on land along Encinitas Boulevard at the western edge of Rancho Santa Fe; property owners in a 600-acre tract in southeast Olivenhain, and residents of Lake Val Sereno, a residential development along Escondido Creek.

Michael Ott, LAFCO analyst, said the Quail Gardens landowners recently gained permission from the county Board of Supervisors for increased residential and commercial densities on their properties and fear that, if the San Dieguito area incorporated, their zoning would be changed by city officials.

Ott recommended against excluding the Ecke property from the incorporation, arguing that inclusion would not bring pressures for urbanization on the agricultural preserve, but would allow local officials to deal with the problems of traffic flow and flood control that the large Ecke holding poses.

The Ecke property lies across the path of a proposed highway that would link Interstate 15 and Poway with Interstate 5 at Leucadia Boulevard. San Dieguito planning groups have opposed the extension of the highway--Route 680--to the coast because of the traffic congestion and parking problems it could bring to coastal cities, but county supervisors have endorsed the highway construction, pointing out the need for an east-west artery in North County. There is no major east-west road in the 22-mile stretch between California 78 at Oceanside and Miramar Road in San Diego.

Eckert and Bilbray still have the ability to block an incorporation vote on the four-city proposal June 3. The Board of Supervisors will decide whether to hold a public hearing on the incorporation Wednesday and have tentatively decided to set the hearing for Jan. 29. But a county registrar of voters ruling requires that all incorporation issues be completed by Jan. 31--meaning a delay in the hearing date or a delay in final action by the county board could force postponement of the cityhood election until Nov. 4.

Ecke cited the more than 60-year history of the Ecke Ranch in San Dieguito and the family’s intention to remain in agriculture “for generations to come” as reasons for keeping the land outside the incorporation boundaries of the proposed city. He said that political pressures in Carlsbad have forced him to allow Carlsbad’s automobile sales strip along Interstate 5 “to expand into our flower fields” and warned that the poinsettia ranch “cannot pick up and move again” to another area because only the climate of the Southern California coastal slopes permits the poinsettia operations.

Gerald Steel, an incorporation advocate and member of the San Dieguito Community Planning Group, said that Ecke’s desire to retain his land in agriculture “is not at issue” in the incorporation drive because only the landowner can propose urbanization of his properties. Steel warned that if the Ecke land remains outside the proposed city boundaries, it could become a pawn in “a three-way jurisdictional battle” among the officials of the future city, Carlsbad (which borders the Ecke Ranch on the east) and the county.

After Monday’s LAFCO decisions, several property owners who were unsuccessful in their bids to remain outside the boundaries of the proposed city said they would seek their attorneys’ advice about filing lawsuits seeking to overturn the LAFCO rulings or to prevent the incorporation election.