Carlsbad Seeks Way to Save Grove : Voters Cause Council to Reopen Talks With Developer

Buoyed by strong voter support for a threatened eucalyptus forest, the City Council took steps Wednesday that they hope will protect scenic Hosp Grove from development.

The council voted, 5-0, to reopen negotiations with the owners of the 52-acre thicket on the city’s northern edge in an effort to work out a deal to buy the land.

A week ago, a ballot measure that would have raised property taxes to finance acquisition of Hosp Grove for nearly $6 million fell just short of the required two-thirds vote, gaining 64.47% of the votes.

Under an agreement with the landowner, the city was supposed to allow construction of a 10-acre commercial project and 104 condominium units if the ballot measure failed. The proposition’s strong showing at the polls, however, persuaded council members that they should seek new ways to buy the property and allow the forest to stand.

“I think the vote showed overwhelmingly that residents want to see the grove saved,” Councilman Mark Pettine said in an interview before Wednesday’s meeting. “If it can be worked out financially, that’s what we’re going to try to do.”

A spokesman for the landowner, Los Angeles-based Grove Investment Partnership, said a new round of negotiations could be arranged, but he would not speculate on what the outcome might be.

“If it appears the city wants to attempt to acquire the grove given the closeness of the vote, we would discuss with them ways that might be achieved,” said Howard Rubinroit, a Los Angeles attorney representing the partnership.

Those negotiations could prove complicated. Under city law, any expenditure in excess of $1 million requires approval by a majority of Carlsbad’s voters. If the city purchased the grove with money from its park or general funds, it would require a special election. Such a task would likely prove time-consuming and could test the patience of the landowner.

In the meantime, a grass-roots group has launched a referendum drive to block the commercial and residential project being proposed for the grove, a dense stand of eucalyptus trees that covers the hills rising from the southern shore of Buena Vista Lagoon.

Members of the Neighborhood Alliance to Save Hosp Grove hope to gather more than 3,000 signatures to qualify the referendum for a special election. As the group sees it, the referendum is necessary to provide “breathing room” to negotiate an alternative purchase plan. Without the referendum, the developer would have the right to begin building on the property by the end of the month.

The group began fighting to save the forest earlier this year, when a 216-unit condominium development on 26 lush acres went before the council for approval. After residents lambasted the project, the council agreed to delay it, calling for an environmental review before any construction began.

Hoping to work out a compromise in the meantime, city officials began negotiating with the landowners. After months of talks, the sides agreed to a two-pronged approach. If the ballot measure, Proposition F, were approved by voters, the city would buy the land. If it failed, the developer would build a scaled-back condominium and commercial project.

But leaders of the Neighborhood Alliance to Save Hosp Grove balked at the idea, complaining that even a smaller-scale project took too many of the trees.

When the development went before the council last month, members of the group protested. Nonetheless, the council voted unanimously to give the project the green light, contingent on the failure of the ballot measure.

But the strong showing in the election last week put pressure on the council to save the grove, often called the gateway to Carlsbad because of its prominent spot near the junction of Interstate 5 and California 78.

“I just don’t think it’s politically possible for the council to take up where they left off and go ahead with that development,” said Anne Mauch, a resident backing the effort to save the forest. “There’s obviously a strong sentiment in the community to save the grove. That was a whopping vote, bigger than just about anything.”

Mauch said grove advocates never really approved of the deal struck by the council and the landowners.

“That was the council’s deal,” Mauch said. “It was not submitted to the people. The people were not part of that process, and they’re not bound to that deal.”

City Atty. Vincent Biondo, however, said efforts by residents to delay the development could backfire. If a referendum were approved by voters, it would merely repeal the land-use changes that allowed the smaller-scale commercial project, he said. Faced with that, the developer might decide to build the larger, 216-unit residential project that was proposed earlier this year.

Rubinroit went further, suggesting that the landowners would file a lawsuit against the city if the referendum went forward.

“If it was clear that we could neither work out something to sell the property nor move forward with the rights we have to develop, I would not see any alternative we would have but to sue,” he said.

Planted by nurseryman E.F. Hosp in 1907, the grove has long been prized by residents as an inviting visual refuge in a city fast becoming a patchwork of development. Originally covering more than 200 acres, the forest is little more than a woodsy curtain separating the commercial tumult of the Plaza Camino Real mall from quiet neighborhoods to the south.