Voters OK Shopping Complex in Del Mar

Del Mar residents narrowly passed an $18-million downtown shopping complex Tuesday in the first test of a new law requiring voter approval of all large developments in the city’s commercial core.

With 11 ballots remaining to be counted today, the measure was ahead by 35 votes, as 1,018 residents cast ballots in favor of the shopping center and 983 voted against it.

“It’s a great day for Del Mar,” City Councilman Scott Barnett said.

Ivan Gayler, director of operations for The Del Mar Partnership, developer of the complex, said: “I’m ecstatic at this point. I can’t wait to break ground.”

Del Mar resident Bill Malone, who led the campaign against the shopping complex, said he was not surprised by the outcome.

“When I saw that they spent $20,000 to our $400, I figured it was like Davy Crockett at the Alamo,” Malone said. “We were just going to go down on that. . . . Without a doubt, in my opinion, it is going to lead to more growth.”

While such large shopping centers in other cities typically require little more than city council approval, an additional hurdle exists in Del Mar. Under Proposition B, a city ballot initiative approved in April at the urging of slow-growth forces, a public vote is required for all sizable developments downtown.

The fight over the 74,600-square-foot plaza grew ferocious in the weeks before the election, as local newspapers were flooded with letters both for and against the complex.

For years, Del Mar Plaza has been the virtual commercial cornerstone of the city. Today, however, the once-thriving commercial complex at 15th Street and Camino Del Mar is nearly deserted. The owners of the shopping center want to demolish it and build a terraced ensemble of restaurants, retail shops, a grocery and offices.

Developers Gayler and David Winkler billed their planned hillside plaza as a resident-serving project that would restore a sense of community to the village.

As Winkler and Gayler saw it, the key element was the inclusion of a grocery store in the plaza, something Del Mar has lacked since Boney’s Market closed last summer. Moreover, three public plazas would provide meeting places for residents, while the storefronts would be designed to blend architecturally with the rest of the village.

Despite the appealing design, critics waged a feisty battle to kill the commercial center.

Most argued that the project was simply too large for Del Mar, where the commercial strip along Camino Del Mar is peppered primarily with small shops, restaurants and boutiques.

They also complained that the new shopping center would cause problems with traffic, particularly

during the summer horse racing season at Del Mar Race Track. Moreover, critics said the vehicular traffic would only get worse with construction of a 125-room hotel planned for a site across the street.

The developers, meanwhile, said they had done everything possible to scale down the plaza after residents expressed their concerns. In September, they reduced the project from 110,000 square feet to its current, smaller size. To make it even smaller would be financially infeasible, they said.