Poinsettia Growers Hope to Skirt Proposed City

The grand old man of the clan, Paul Ecke Sr., came to town in 1923, a refugee from Los Angeles, and started growing flowers on a 40-acre plot he bought for $150 an acre. That was the start of an industry that grew through the years, to a point where Encinitas could boast that it was “The Flower Capital of the World.”

Ecke’s first homestead is now part of the office of the 910-acre Paul Ecke Poinsettia Ranch that sprawls along the coastal hills through the unincorporated towns of Encinitas and Leucadia, stretching almost to Batiquitos Lagoon on the north and to congested Encinitas Boulevard on the south.

Paul Ecke Sr., now 91, has turned over the reins of the multimillion-dollar flower business to his son, Paul Jr., but not without passing on the lessons he learned from his experience in Los Angeles. People and poinsettias don’t mix, the elder Ecke opined. If generations of Eckes are to continue to grow their world-famous Christmas blooms, the family must protect itself against spiraling taxes and land costs, encroaching subdivisions and strips of commercial buildings, the same things that drove them out of Los Angeles.

There, in the early 1900s, Paul Ecke Sr. and his father farmed along Santa Monica and Sunset boulevards--on land where UCLA now stands and high-rise office towers bloom.

After giving up on Los Angeles and moving down the coast, the Ecke family eventually expanded its San Dieguito agricultural domain north into what is now southern Carlsbad and, in 1969 and the early 1970s, protected its fields from rising taxes and developers by placing both acreages in agricultural preserves, state-authorized protectorates that freeze both tax rates and land use for 10 years.

Now Ecke Sr. has retired to his sumptuous home on the ranch, confident that his son, and perhaps his grandson, Paul Ecke III, will carry on the family business despite the urbanization that surrounds the property and the growing clamor for incorporation in the communities of Encinitas, Leucadia, Olivenhain and Cardiff.

Paul Ecke Jr. paused in his work last week to clarify his family’s views about the pending incorporation of the four San Dieguito communities, bending his standing rule about “mixing in local politics.”

“We have no quarrel with incorporation,” he said, “as long as they leave us out.”

Ecke, who is 60, concedes that the incorporation movement, which would bind the four communities into one city with the proclaimed purpose of slowing the growth that is carpeting the surrounding hillsides with tract homes and strips of commercial buildings, has goals in common with the Ecke family’s longstanding concerns about mixing agriculture and urbanization.

His concern about incorporation, Ecke said, is the creation of “another layer of government” to erode the Eckes’ longstanding franchise to use their land as they see fit. He’s coldly opposed to any move that would put the future of his ranch in the hands of others.

Leave his family’s land as unincorporated open space, protected from the pressures of high taxes and encroaching urbanization, and Paul Ecke Jr. would remain a good neighbor to the city that would surround him.

Attorney Gerald Dawson, in pleading the Eckes’ case, put the issue more dramatically: “If this ranch is lost to urbanization, the poinsettia as we know it today will cease to exist. . . . Inclusion in a city is the death knell of a greenhouse or farming operation.”

Ecke won a major concession last week when the Local Agency Formation Commission voted against the advice of its staff and excluded the Ecke fiefdom from the proposed city boundaries. County supervisors, who have already unanimously recommended the Ecke Ranch exclusion, are expected to second LAFCO’s action on Jan. 29, allowing a June 3 incorporation election to be scheduled. If the incorporation is successful at the polls, the vast Ecke holdings in San Dieguito will become an unincorporated--but legal--island between the City of Carlsbad and the new San Dieguito community.

More than one slow-growth proponent has admitted to being uncomfortable about excluding the Ecke Ranch from the incorporation, not because of anything that Ecke has said or done, but because of what he has not said.

“Why, when everyone else is trying to bail out (of the incorporation boundaries) so they can get a better deal, more density for their developments, is Ecke trying to bail out in order to stay rural?” one cityhood stalwart commented. “It makes you wonder if he has a hidden agenda, plans for doing something with his land that he knows the rest of the people around here wouldn’t buy.”

Gerald Steel, a San Dieguito activist seeking answers to the area’s mounting traffic problems, was the only speaker at the LAFCO hearing who opposed exclusion of the Ecke Ranch.

Steel pointed out that, in excluding Ecke’s 900 acres of prime real estate, commissioners were setting the stage for a bidding war among the three governmental bodies--Carlsbad, the county and the future San Dieguito city--over which would offer Ecke the best inducements for development of his land--and would thus get a big share of the tax proceeds that flow to local governments from such development.

Dawson answers Steel’s warning of a governmental bidding war for the ranch by pointing out that the Williamson Act requires that a decade pass before the farmland can again be available for other than agricultural uses--unless the owner agrees to pay stiff penalties in addition to accumulated back taxes.

Bob Bonde, the acknowledged leader of the San Dieguito incorporation effort, explained that his group--North Coast Incorporation Coalition--did not speak out against the Ecke Ranch exclusion from the proposed city because “there seemed to be no reason to do so.”

Since the Eckes’ land lies within the proposed San Dieguito city’s sphere of influence, “we feel that we have some control over the future land use,” Bonde said.

“Of course, we would have preferred that the land remain within the incorporation boundaries,” Bonde admitted. “We certainly had no intent to force the ranch into any other commercial use than the present one of flower-growing.

“Because of the need for continuity of planning, it is not good to have a vested island in the middle of an incorporated community. But, he (Ecke) has stated publicly that he would not annex to Carlsbad if he does change his mind about developing his land.

“I take him at his word, but I would feel better if I had his handshake on it.”

Ecke has no quarrel with present incorporation advocates, but, he said, “it may not remain this way always. The leaders of a city change.”

Although cityhood backers are trying to stem the population tide along the San Dieguito coast, future city councils might be of a different mind--seeking new sources of tax revenue by pressuring the Ecke family to convert some of its land into shopping centers or housing, Dawson said.

Ecke can cite a dozen examples, including his own father’s experience in Los Angeles, for remaining aloof from cities. It is a phenomenon found only in the United States, he believes, because “in Europe, there is no problem or conflict with industry and agriculture. In Europe, agriculture is recognized as an integral part of society. Europeans accommodate for it. You see cities and farms blending side by side.”

Ecke cannot move on to other fields because there are no others left in the United States that offer the unique climate that makes his poinsettias sought after by growers throughout the world. Baja California has sites with the same soft ocean breezes, the balmy temperatures, just the right humidity. But the Mexican land has no water and cannot be purchased by non-citizens.

“We must stay here,” Ecke said. “There is no other place to move.”

Ecke no longer needs all his acreage to grow his poinsettia cuttings in the spring and his colorful Christmas blooms because he no longer grows the fields of mother plants that thrilled motorists along California 101 until the mid-1960s.

His business has become more compact and high tech, with laboratory-controlled plant food supplementing the winter sun and natural light needed for the plants, now mostly grown in greenhouses. The excess fields are filled with other colorful crops--bird of paradise plants, hydrangeas, gladioli.

Why does he not sell off his excess land for the millions of dollars that California’s vanishing coastal acreage now brings?

Because, said Ecke, with an intent steel-gray stare, “this is our life. This is what we have chosen to do. . . . There are people all over, our workers, our customers, who depend on us to keep doing what we do.”

Ecke has never sold an acre of the family land, although he has given some away to the YMCA, the Scouts, the local Little League. He can’t understand why anyone would think that he ever will.

But, despite that 62-year-old record of single-hearted purpose by Paul Ecke Sr. and his son, there are still some who worry about what changes the future will bring to the Paul Ecke Poinsettia Ranch.