New Urban Sprawl Feared : I-15 Building Plans Draw Fallbrook’s Fire

By any measure, it’s a desolate stretch of land.

All along the northern reaches of Interstate 15, the signs of civilization are few. Dry, rolling hills studded with boulders line the freeway from Escondido 19 miles north to the county line.

But with development stampeding across North County, planners say there is little chance this rugged strip of unincorporated territory will be ignored much longer.

Eager to prepare for the building boom destined to descend on the area in the coming years, San Diego County planners have undertaken an ambitious study they hope will serve as a blueprint for orderly growth along the eight-lane freeway.

“The whole idea is to plan for development and not to react to it afterwards,” said Kaare Kjos, chief of the county Planning Department’s special projects section. “We’re trying to concentrate development in the most logical areas along the corridor so as to diffuse the pressure for growth elsewhere.”

Nonetheless, with a final decision on the plan still months away and any actual construction even further in the future, foes of the I-15 Corridor Study have begun to organize.

The bulk of the opposition has come from a group of residents in Fallbrook, a rural enclave that stretches to the west of the freeway. Their prime gripe is with the industrial, commercial and residential development proposed at the intersection of I-15 and California 76.

That long-range development, critics say, threatens to trample the rural character of Fallbrook by ultimately creating a city of 20,000 residents at the crossroads of the two highways.

“Fallbrook is in the mood for down-zoning, not up-zoning,” said Jack Wireman, a leader of Friends of Rural Lifestyle, a grass-roots group opposed to the study. “A town of 20,000 out there affects our rural life style. It is, in short, the urbanization of Fallbrook.”

Moreover, Wireman and other critics maintain the study is little more than an effort to undermine the county’s traditional planning process. The intersection being targeted for most of the development is part of the 56-square-mile region normally under the auspices of the Fallbrook Planning Group, one of the county’s regional planning bodies that make recommendations to the Board of Supervisors on land-use matters.

“We think it’s nothing short of good old garden-variety gerrymandering,” Wireman said. “It signals that there is no local control, that our planning group doesn’t mean anything, that the supervisors can come in, carve out a new area and do a special study.”

Wireman said his group plans to protest the study when it goes before the Board of Supervisors on Wednesday. Although county planners intend only to give the supervisors a progress report and ask for permission to finish the plan, Wireman fears that even a tentative vote could “lock it in” and said he will ask the supervisors to abandon the study.

County planners acknowledge that the study’s preliminary proposals--drawn up by a six-member committee of representatives of various planning groups along the I-15 corridor--include an increase in the area’s residential density, up from 2.75 dwelling units per acre to 3.1.

But the overall philosophy of the study, they insist, is to focus most of the development around the I-15 and California 76 intersection in an effort to prevent urban sprawl along other sections of the freeway and protect the visual qualities of the hills and valleys up and down the corridor.

They also note that several industrial and residential projects at the intersection are already on the books.

Chief among them is a planned Hewlett-Packard plant that will ultimately employ about 6,500. Construction of the first phase of the plant, which will have about 500 workers, is expected to begin before the end of the decade on a 300-acre parcel northeast of the I-15 and State 76 intersection.

“If we did nothing, you would still have a substantial amount of development at that intersection and it would be less integrated than what is being proposed by the study,” Kjos said.

With work on the Hewlett-Packard facility on the horizon, county planners are eager to lay the groundwork for housing that will accommodate its employees. Kjos said the idea is to plan for homes within easy driving distance for about 50% of the firm’s workers.

To accomplish that, the committee has proposed that several builders be allowed to raise the density of their housing projects. For example, the committee has recommended that Lake Rancho Viejo, a residential community that has approval for about 800 dwelling units, be allowed to build more than 1,300 units on a 470-acre parcel just south of the San Luis Rey River.

Hoping to ensure that “the cart doesn’t come before the horse,” Kjos said the study committee is proposing that the rate of housing construction be based on industrial development in the area. As industry expands and adds workers, construction of more homes would be allowed.

To absorb the demand of residents that move into new homes, commercial development of a 30-acre “town center” near the intersection is also being proposed. In addition, a 100-acre parcel sandwiched between the Hewlett-Packard plant and the freeway is being eyed for industrial use.

Critics in Fallbrook point to the town center proposal as well as plans to increase housing density and put an extra 100 acres into the industrial category as proof that the study is essentially a prescription for urban growth near their community.

“Just because it’s an intersection of two highways there’s no reason to jam it all up with housing and industry,” said Helen Sanford, who served as Fallbrook’s alternate member on the I-15 study committee.

With the study committee proposing extra industrial acreage, the group is “letting it feed on itself,” Sanford charged. “That extra industry is not going to contribute much to the area. It’s just an excuse to urbanize.”

Most members of the I-15 study committee, which was formed at the direction of the supervisors nearly two years ago, chafe at such assessments. As they see it, the whole point of the study was to approach the corridor as an integrated unit and not let provincial politics come into play.

John Mitchell, chairman of the Valley Center Community Planning Group and a member of the I-15 study team, said Fallbrook residents have little reason to squawk because their community is “actually five or 10 miles west” of the most intensive development proposed along I-15.

“Basically, it seems like they’re trying to build a fence around their area and don’t want anyone in,” Mitchell said. “They can do what they want in Fallbrook without getting so much involved with this I-15 area.”

Moreover, Mitchell said, many critics in Fallbrook fail to realize that the Hewlett-Packard plant and many other projects along the corridor are done deals. “Maybe they’d like to turn back the clock and cancel that, but it’s already been approved,” he said.

Other committee members suggest that Fallbrook residents are unaware that the proposals they’ve made involve growth that will take place over several decades, well into the 21st Century.

“This is not a signal for an overnight, major construction program,” said committee member Earl Ricker of the Bonsall Planning Group. “This is the signal for the start of construction which will take place over 20 to 30 years.”

In addition, the study includes design guidelines that will make much of that construction more aesthetically palatable than the hodgepodge of subdivisions and supermarkets that might result if there were no plan, committee members maintain.

The Hewlett-Packard project will serve as a good example for quality design, some committee members said. According to Mark LaBree, a project planner with Rich Engineering Co. who is helping design the Hewlett-Packard project, the plant will have a park-like atmosphere, with buildings that normally fit on 80 acres spread across the 300-acre parcel.

“It’s an extremely low-intensity use,” LaBree said.

Wireman, meanwhile, has questioned the makeup of the committee, noting that one member, Robert Pankey, owns land in the I-15 area. “It’s an incredible conflict of interest to have him on the committee because he’s deciding his own fate,” Wireman said.

Pankey countered that he has abstained from any decisions made by the committee that involved his property, more than 170 acres along the corridor. In addition, he insisted that as a resident of the area for 40 years he has “as much right, probably a lot more right, to serve on this committee than some people that moved in here just a few years ago.”

Many members of Friends of Rural Lifestyle have been attacked for being “new arrivals” to the Fallbrook area.

Times staff writer Daniel M. Weintraub contributed to this story.