Del Mar Goes to Polls Over New Shopping Center Design

No one has ever accused the people of Del Mar of timidity with respect to civic issues. Whether the topic is property rights along the beach or the placement of flagpoles in a city park, residents of the coastal village rarely hesitate to have their say.

Still, the hue and cry surrounding the proposed reconstruction of a downtown shopping center may well break some records. Consider:

- There have been numerous dramatic “unveilings” of the center’s design by its developers, and no fewer than four press conferences by supporters and opponents.

- Citizens have deluged the city’s two weekly papers with letters regarding the plaza over the past month. At last count, it was 28 letters for, 17 against.

- Nearly half a dozen public hearings have been held on the center, with debate spanning countless hours.

- Local columnists--there are seven who write regularly about Del Mar--have churned out a sea of copy dissecting every square foot of the project.

All this, on behalf of a shopping center?

Well, as locals will tell you, this isn’t just any old shopping center we’re dealing with here. It’s the Del Mar Plaza, the virtual commercial centerpiece of town.

Today, the once-thriving plaza is all but deserted, home to a liquor store, a barber shop and a dry cleaner. Its owners hope to raze the deteriorating structure at 15th Street and Camino Del Mar and replace it with a terraced ensemble of buildings housing restaurants, retail shops, a grocery and offices.

The City Council has enthusiastically approved plans for the $18-million project, and Mayor Lew Hopkins has predicted that it will provide a “focal point for the community, a place for people to congregate, socialize and shop.”

But under a ballot initiative approved last April, the plaza reconstruction must win an endorsement at the polls as well. On Tuesday, voters will decide whether the 74,600-square-foot project is right for Del Mar.

The vote will mark the first test of Proposition B, a measure backed by slow-growth forces that requires a public vote on all large developments in the city’s commercial district. If the project is rejected, its developers would be forced to submit a new design to both the council and the people.

Developers David Winkler and Ivan Gayler are billing the hillside plaza as a resident-serving project that will restore a “sense of community to the village.” Key to that argument is inclusion of a grocery store within the plaza, something that Del Mar has lacked since Boney’s Market closed last summer.

Proponents also applaud the three public plazas that will grace the ocean-view development and provide a meeting place for residents. And storefronts along Camino Del Mar will be individually designed to “continue the flavor of the village” and dispel any resemblance to a typical suburban shopping center, developers say.

Despite such amenities and what most agree is an appealing architectural design, the plaza has a hardy band of critics working feverishly to see that it is never built. Most opponents believe the project is simply too large for Del Mar.

“We take a perverse pride in being a little bit rural here, with a low-key village atmosphere,” said Chuck Newton, one of the plaza’s leading critics and a mover behind last spring’s Proposition B campaign. “The (proposed) plaza is quite handsome, but does it fit in a town that doesn’t have sidewalks? I think it would stick out like a sore thumb.”

Of even greater concern than aesthetics is traffic. Although consultants for the city and the developers say the plaza will have no significant effect on downtown congestion, critics say they don’t buy it and profess fears of gridlock, particularly during the summertime.

“During the summer racing season, you have to plan your life around the traffic here,” said Newton, a leader of Citizens for Sensible Growth. “If they build this thing, we’ll be planning our lives around traffic every day of the year. That would be like living in La Jolla, and we don’t want that.”

Opponents say traffic generated by the plaza will be worse when a hotel planned for a site just opposite the center is built. Hearings on the 125-room hotel--which also must face a test at the polls--already are under way.

Tuesday’s vote will culminate a long battle by developers Winkler and Gayler to get the plaza built. The two men, both North County residents, purchased the 1950s-era center in 1983 and have been attempting to build ever since.

That has proven to be no easy task. The current plaza proposal is a scaled-down version of a design approved by the City Council last spring. That project, which totaled 110,000 square feet, was scrapped in face of community opposition.

In September, the developers unveiled the new, much smaller project, convening a press conference at which numerous Del Mar dignitaries--among them some slow-growth activists who had worked for Proposition B--endorsed the plan.

The City Council in November gave the project its blessing after some revamping that spanned two nights of debate. Council members persuaded the developers to limit the number of retail shops to 30, to help pay for putting utility lines underground and to improve 15th Street.

The council also agreed to pump revenue generated by the plaza into the acquisition of open space and street and sidewalk enhancements. Developers project $140,000 from sales taxes and business license fees will go to the city in the first year of operation and more than $200,000 in subsequent years.

Councilman John Gillies opposed the plaza, contending that it is too large.

According to the developers, they have done everything possible to scale down the plaza in response to community concerns about its size. The limiting factor they face, however, is the inclusion of a grocery within the project, developers say.

“Residents have made it very clear they are anxious to have a full-scale market within the plaza,” Winkler said. “That’s fine. But markets require a significant subsidy by the property owner because they just can’t make fair market value rents.”

Winkler said Boney’s Market was paying about 30 cents a square foot when it vacated its plaza space last summer. By contrast, retail rents just across the street are as high as $2.60 a square foot, Winkler said.

“We’ve done everything we can to keep the market in the plaza and still make it work,” Winkler said. “We’ve even lost all our equity in the property and brought in investors for over $2.5 million to get the project this small. If it’s not good enough for Del Mar, then we’ll just sell the property and move on.”

Some opponents won’t be too disappointed if that happens.

“The truth is nobody in town objected to the plaza that used to be there,” Newton said. “We had a useful public market and other services that were just great until these speculators came along and shut it down. If they don’t make a buck by enlarging the thing, then, doggone it, that’s their risk, not mine.”

Councilman Scott Barnett, however, believes the plaza’s failure at the polls could ultimately be a risk for all Del Mar residents. If voters turn down the project and reject subsequent projects as well, Barnett predicts that the legality of Proposition B might come into question.

“If someone owns a piece of land and the citizenry keeps denying them the right to build a project on it, then I view that as a taking of property,” said Barnett, who calls the existing plaza “a ghost town” and an eyesore. “I believe a judge would agree.”