San Marcos Strives to Balance Rural Heritage, Growth

On one side of Mission Road, 1,000 cows graze on 130 acres of gently rolling hillside at the 35-year-old Hollandia Dairy.

Across the street, Tom Thurston and a handful of his employees at Micro-Radian Instruments assemble electro-optical equipment so precise that it can measure the angular equivalent of the thickness of human hair at a distance of 10 miles.

Thus is the dichotomy of San Marcos, North County’s little city in transition, as it tries to preserve its heritage as a small farming community while becoming a hub of small, high-tech industries.

It is a town of 21,000 that, in the shadow of neighboring Escondido, is trying to make a name for itself--and is pulling off a few coups along the way:

- Recognizing that it couldn’t develop a commercial retail complex the likes of Escondido’s North County Fair regional shopping mall, San Marcos instead landed three giant--and sales-tax lucrative--”off-price” retail warehouse operations: the Home Club home improvement center, Levitz furniture and the members-only Price Club discount house, all in a row. Those three megastores alone are expected to do nearly as much retail business as the 180-store North County Fair--$200 million a year.

- It is a leading candidate to land a full-service North County campus of San Diego State University--at a 600-acre site that was once one of the country’s largest egg ranches. Even Escondido officials say they can’t compete with San Marcos for the campus, and have deferred to their smaller and younger neighbor to the west.

- It will be the home of what may prove to be the nation’s most advanced and environmentally sound trash-burning power plant, which could become a model for other such projects around the United States.

- It is host to the fledgling United States National Sports Training Center, whose backers hope to develop it as the home of the country’s finest triathletes in training for future competitions.

This, in a city that generally is more known for a collection of restaurants, a community college, retirement communities, mobile home parks, and awful morning and afternoon traffic jams.

This, in a city that has grown in population by 600% in just 15 years, but still has no downtown, no hospital, no auto dealership, no movie theater, no department stores--and uses trailers for a City Hall because it’s not sure if, or where, a permanent civic center should be built.

The city incorporated in 1963 to protect its prime industrial flatlands from covetous Escondido. But government here is fragmented: The fire protection district, school district, water and sewer district, and cemetery district are separate. Sheriff’s deputies are used as city cops.

It’s a town whose industrial, commercial and residential growth is not unlike that of a gangly and awkward puppy, with different parts growing at different paces.

Indeed, through the years, developers here have been courted, then shunned and courted again as the city has Ping-Ponged in debating pro-growth, managed growth, slow growth and no growth.

The area was a Spanish land grant--Rancho los Vallecitos de San Marcos--and was settled around 1880 by a handful of German immigrants from Chicago who arrived after first spending time at Olivenhain to the south.

Population was measured in hundreds, and the main industries were chicken farming, dairies, rabbit raising, sheep herding and the like until the mid-1950s, when the water district was formed to bring Colorado River water to the community. With it came the need for a sewer system, which followed a year or two later.

In the mid-1960s, coupled with the completion of “the freeway”--two-lane California 78--through town, connecting Oceanside to Escondido, small industry was courted to give the new city some economic stability.

To this day, small manufacturers, distribution outlets, warehouses, machine shops and assembly plants line much of California 78 here, giving the quick impression to passing motorists that San Marcos is, first and foremost, an industrial town. And to some extent it is just that: The daytime population of the city is more than double the nighttime population.

During the early to mid-1970s, favorable interest rates and relatively cheap land prices brought a real estate and population boom to San Marcos; during one 12-month period, the city’s population doubled.

That pro-development attitude was perhaps best demonstrated by Oby Blanchard, who moved to San Marcos in 1949 as a sheepherder, served 20 years on the water district’s board of directors, and then served on the council from 1976 to 1980. He professes to have a soft spot in his heart for the rights of property owners.

“I wasn’t too good a politician. When someone wanted something, I said, ‘If you own the land and you’ve got the money to do it, then go ahead and do it,’ ” he reminisced a few days ago.

Blanchard accurately perceived a definite community swing in 1980 toward slower growth, and--in the face of a recall election--chose not to run for reelection.

The new council was decidedly slow-growth, exemplified by then-Councilman Bob Harman’s successful drive to introduce a growth management plan limiting the number of new housing units to several hundred each year. That, coupled with a downturn in the economy, slowed home building.

But last year, the council--with Harman no longer a member--disbanded that growth management plan in favor of a grow-as-you-go outlook. Development is again on an upswing, with City Hall considering a few residential projects of several hundred acres.

Coupled with that is a new, voter-approved redevelopment program that will spend $100 million over the next 30 years, primarily to improve roads and flood control channels.

Pro-growther Blanchard today lives in Anza, a small community just inside Riverside County, between here and Palm Springs. He escaped San Marcos because it has just gotten too crowded for his taste, Blanchard said.

Most old-timers, however, have stuck it out, taking what has occurred in San Marcos philosoPhically. “To see what this place used to look like, and to see it now . . . . Well, they’ve made a city out of it,” said 79-year-old Paul Hannegan, who has lived in the same turn-of-the-century house since moving here in 1944.

“It used to be you could walk down the street and call everyone by his name. Now, you don’t even see anyone you know. But you can’t deprive other people from moving here for the same reasons you wanted to come here. That would be selfish.”

Native Stanley Mahr, whose father was also born here, in 1886, said: “I always felt San Marcos was bound to grow under any circumstances, but we’ve done a fairly good job at controlling it.”

Harman, who taught government at San Marcos High School during his years on the City Council and who now is the school’s vice principal, said he wasn’t surprised by the city’s growth, despite his resistance to it.

“Three of the five council members were involved in real estate,” he said. “Developers would come in with their plans, only a few citizens would show up, and they weren’t prepared to argue with the developers’ attorneys. They (residents opposed to growth) didn’t have a chance.

“The feeling now is, the city will accommodate as much growth as we can handle. But we need to preserve our rural areas, and not keep encroaching on them until all of a sudden they’re gone and we wonder, ‘Where did it all go?’ ”

Jeff Okun, who was the city’s planning director from 1976 to 1981, agreed with Harman that “preservation of the rural (atmosphere) is not as great a priority as it once was. It used to be (that) ‘rural’ meant farms and large acreage. Now, to people coming down from Orange County or Los Angeles, ‘rural’ means a half-acre lot.”

“But one reason San Marcos will always feel rural is the topography of the community, the feeling of openness because of the hillsides which won’t be developed,” Okun said.

City Planning Director Daryl Gentry says San Marcos is relatively young from a long-range planning standpoint. Emphasis at City Hall is on developing larger-scale, mixed-type residential projects to provide close-in living to the people who work here, he said.

But that isn’t to suggest that commercial and industrial growth will be lagging behind.

The Union-Tribune Publishing Co. has announced plans to build a printing plant in San Marcos, including editorial and advertising offices.

Developer Jack Mahan, who is chairman of the San Marcos Chamber of Commerce’s business and economic development committee, plans to break ground next year for an $80-million “Centennial Square” retail commercial-office complex at California 78 and Twin Oaks Valley Road. It will include a hotel, restaurant, dinner theater, 30,000 square feet of specialty retail shops, a bank, a retirement home, and even a new city hall and public library.

“Our challenge for the future is to balance the relationship between keeping San Marcos a nice place to live and in utilizing our economic resources where appropriate,” Mahan said. “That’s been the major issue for years, and it won’t change.”

Dr. Lionel Burton, who has served 18 years in various elected positions in San Marcos and is now in his third two-year term as mayor, said he is excited by the city’s future, though traffic congestion will be a continuing problem.

“We’ve finally got our act together as a city,” he said. “We’ve got light industry, we may end up being a university town, we’ve got active redevelopment, we’ve approved a waste-to-energy plant which, if it works, will end up in every community in the United States, and we’ll have Centennial Square.

“We’ve made progressive steps, and we’re still progressing.”