Lake Hodges: Can It Stand All of the Attention?

It’s the most visible body of water in inland North County. It’s the most coveted. And it’s the most fickle.

One year it’s brimming over its dam; another year, much of the lake bed is a parched cow pasture and a laughingstock to passing motorists along Interstate 15.

There’s talk of golf courses on both sides of it, a hotel or two on its north shore and new boat ramps down to its shore.

Yet, other people are planning to drain it to less than half its size every year to quench San Diego’s thirst, starting around 1992.

And while it is a water reservoir for the City of San Diego, the city currently doesn’t have any way of getting the water, except by bucket brigade.

Something for Everyone

This is Lake Hodges, which has something for everyone but can never be everything for everyone because its supporters and fans are at cross purposes.

It is touted in fishermen’s magazines as perhaps the finest bass fishery in the United States; a group of Japanese businessmen are planning to fly across the Pacific to fish for the lake’s prized largemouth bass.

For Dick Carey, who lives in an Escondido condominium overlooking the reservoir, Lake Hodges means the peace and tranquility of the setting sun spilling its last rays over the water, of Canada geese in the backwater reeds and scavenging coyotes along the lake’s shoreline.

To the developers of the upscale Lomas Serenas housing subdivision, Lake Hodges means big bucks; a handful of homeowners paid an additional $100,000 for premium lots with unencumbered views of the lake and its nooks-and-crannies shoreline.

It seems sure that, despite its allure, Lake Hodges will never become a Mission Valley of North County. Most of its shoreline is too steep to be developed, and the general consensus of public opinion is opposed to large-scale or high-density developments around it, and so far the politicians generally have obliged.

Developments Planned

But that isn’t to say that the lake is stagnant from a development standpoint. Among the projects planned or proposed around Lake Hodges:

- A championship, 18-hole golf course proposed by JC Resorts, the family-owned company that owns the Rancho Bernardo Inn. The course would be laid out on city-owned land just south of Lake Hodges and west of Interstate 15, on property generally between the Rancho Bernardo Parks and Recreation Center ballfields and a finger of the lake to the west.

The proposal is being discussed by the San Diego City Council’s Public Facilities and Recreation Committee, which would have to agree to lease out the city-owned land before the proposal is forwarded to the Planning Department for further assessment.

- An amphitheater, proposed by the Lake Hodges Performing Arts Assn., which would be situated near the center of the golf course site. The city already has approved the concept of the amphitheater and has worked out the lease agreement; fund raising is under way, and the final go-ahead is pending the golf course negotiations.

The amphitheater would have about 1,000 permanent seats and could seat as many as 4,500 patrons--the balance using blanket seating on the hillside overlooking the stage.

- Westwood Valley, a 979-unit subdivision by developer Barry McComic, mostly made up of single-family homes on lots ranging in size from 5,000 square feet to nearly half an acre.

Construction is expected to begin in July on the 287-acre project, situated just west of the Westwood community of Rancho Bernardo, along a north-south valley that terminates at Lake Hodges near the proposed golf course.

- Bernardo Vista del Lago, 886 apartment and/or condominium units on 77 acres on the southeast corner of Pomerado Road and I-15, on the north side of landmark Battle Mountain.

The project, proposed by Avco Community Developers as its last development in Rancho Bernardo, is currently being discussed at the staff level of the San Diego Planning Department, and construction is not expected to begin before next year at the soonest.

- A three-story, 119-room hotel on four acres at the southeast corner of I-15 and Via Rancho Parkway, at Sunset Drive in Escondido.

The developer is Ash Israni, a San Diego businessman and commercial developer who has won the conceptual approval of the Escondido City Council to move ahead. The project is now being discussed at the Escondido Planning Department staff level.

- A 40-acre parcel on Lake Hodges’ north shore, on the south side of Bear Valley Parkway and directly across the street from North County Fair but within the San Diego city limits and owned as well by the city. The site is rich with development potential but is subject to the constraints of Proposition A, which requires that leapfrog development outside the city’s urban areas first be approved by San Diego voters.

“That’s the hottest piece of property I have in our property portfolio,” said James Spotts, the city’s property director. “There’s been every kind of conceivable proposal for that piece of property,” including frequent discussion that it be used as a “destination resort-convention” complex.

- A 160-acre site, also owned by the City of San Diego but situated within Escondido’s city limits, bounded by Bear Valley Parkway on the west, Beethoven Drive on the south and San Pasqual Road on the north.

The City of Escondido wants to buy the parcel from San Diego and, in turn, sell it to the Lomas Group, a Rancho Santa Fe-based development company, to put in a public golf course and some single-family homes.

- A 107-acre parcel west of Interstate 15 and north of Via Rancho Parkway, across the freeway from North County Fair, within Escondido’s city limits. That parcel is also owned by the City of San Diego but is sought by Escondido, to be sold to the Lomas Group for a housing subdivision. Lomas would be allowed to build homes at a density greater than the current zoning of two homes to the acre, in exchange for agreeing to build the golf course off Bear Valley Parkway.

Negotiations between Escondido and San Diego for both pieces of property are progressing smoothly at the staff level “and I’m confident that we’ll have something both sides will feel good about in recommending to our respective City Councils,” said Escondido City Manager Vern Hazen.

- “Bernardo Mountain,” an 82-home project on quarter-acre and one-acre lots just west of the existing Lomas Serenas subdivision west of I-15 and north of the lake. The project, recently approved by the Escondido City Council, would generally have a northern exposure and not have a view of Lake Hodges because of the land’s configuration.

The proposals to build around Lake Hodges have not triggered any public alarm. To the contrary, Hazen said the ambiance of the region continues to be enhanced.

He points to the lake, Kit Carson Regional Park just north of North County Fair, the proposed golf course off Bear Valley Parkway, the low-density residential zoning in the area and the absence of strip commercial development.

“As the I-15 corridor becomes more urbanized, can you imagine 15 or 20 years from now driving along I-15 through all the developments, and pulling off at Via Rancho Parkway?” he said. “It will be simply delightful. What a release in the whole urban scheme of things to pull off the freeway there and find a semi-rural setting!”

Land Owned by City

The property immediately surrounding the lake--including much of the lakeshore hamlet of Del Dios--is owned by the City of San Diego’s Water Utilities Department, purchased years ago when plans called for the 130-foot-high dam to be heightened, thereby enlarging the lake. The city purchased the surrounding watershed--including much of the upstream San Pasqual Valley--so it could ultimately be inundated.

Those plans fell by the wayside, but the city has not given up its ownership of the land around the lake and now leases much of it, primarily to agricultural interests, as a way of generating about $1 million a year in revenue.

“The property is an asset to the city and we’re trying to put it to its best use while protecting the city’s interests,” said Spotts, the city’s Property Department director.

“From a revenue point of view, a hotel-convention center would have been nice (on the south side of the lake where the golf course is now proposed). But from a land-use point of view, the community said it wanted open space and we’ll respect that,” he said.

The single largest piece of property bordering the lake is the 3,634-acre 4-S Ranch, owned by the Ralphs supermarket family. But most of that land, on the south side of the lake immediately west of Rancho Bernardo, is under contract to the county as an agricultural preserve and will not be open to development before 1992. Some of the property on the south side of the ranch, farthest from Lake Hodges, has been zoned for mixed industrial-commercial-residential uses.

Perhaps the biggest single fan of the lake is Jim Brown, who manages the public recreation programs--primarily fishing--for the city’s reservoirs, including Hodges.

Famed for Fishing

“If you’re not involved in fishing, you might not think too much of Hodges, but in the fishing world, Hodges is where it’s at,” Brown said.

He said he fields calls from all around the United States--and recently from a group of Tokyo businessmen--from people making plans to fly to San Diego in order to throw some plastic worms and yellow spinners into the lake for its bass.

But the lake is no longer just a fisherman’s paradise; kayaking and canoeing are now permitted, and the state health department is considering a request to allow swimming in Hodges. (Typically, domestic water reservoirs are off-limits to bodily contact activities, but San Diego won state legislation exempting its reservoirs from the ban and it is now moving ahead with specific permits to allow swimming at the reservoirs.)

Long-range plans for Hodges are to include it in a long, proposed regional park that would run along the San Dieguito River basin from Del Mar easterly into the Cleveland National Forest above Ramona. Those plans are held up somewhat because of plans to construct the Pamo Dam and reservoir near Ramona and concern that some of the San Pasqual Valley watershed area will have to be preserved for mitigation, depending on the final environmental impact findings on the Pamo project.

But one man who has his sights on Hodges, no matter what, is Tibor Varga, the senior civil engineer in charge of the Water Utilities Department’s planning section.

His office is preparing plans to hook a pipeline between Hodges and a city water aqueduct around 1992, at a cost of $2 million, so some of Hodges’ water can be used by the City of San Diego during the summer months.

Most Water Unused

Currently, the lake’s water goes unused except for a relatively small portion that is earmarked for two downstream water agencies--the Santa Fe Irrigation District and the San Dieguito Water District--which built the Hodges dam in 1917 and turned it over to San Diego eight years later with the promise that they could always buy water cheaply.

Vargas said plans call for Hodges’ water to be shipped to storage tanks in San Diego during the typically drier and hotter summer months--when water demand is greater--and to allow the lake to refill during the wet, winter months.

He said the lake’s level may purposely be lowered as much as 29 feet below the spillway during each summer, thereby reducing the overall surface acreage of the lake from its maximum 1,234 acres when the lake is full to the spillway, to only 500 acres when the lake’s water level is drawn down by 29 feet.

By the spring of each year, the lake would be recharged to within at least 12 feet of the spillway, he said.

LAKE HODGES DEVELOPMENT PROPOSALS 1. 18-hole championship golf course and performing arts center: The San Diego City Council has approved leasing city-owned land to the nonprofit Lake Hodges Performing Arts Assn., a community group that is raising money to build an amphitheater. Construction is held up, however, because of a proposal by JC Resorts, owner of the Rancho Bernardo Inn, to develop an 18-hole championship golf course in the same area. The golf course proposal is being considered by the San Diego City Council’s Public Facilities and Recreation Committee. It would be constructed west of the existing Rancho Bernardo Parks and Recreation Center on land owned by the city’s Water Utilities Department, and would surround the proposed amphitheater. 2. Westwood Valley: Approved by the San Diego City Council, it calls for 979 units, mostly single-family homes, on 287 acres on both sides of a small valley. Developer Barry McComic hopes to begin construction on the project in July, with completion in five years. 3. Bernardo Vista del Lago: Still being discussed at the San Diego Planning Department staff level, the proposal by Avco Community Developers--which has built most of Rancho Bernardo--is for 886 attached units--either apartments, condominiums or a mix--on 77 acres north of Battle Mountain. The project must be reviewed by the Planing Department staff before being forwarded to the city’s Planning Commission; the site previously was considered as an office building for E.F. Hutton. Avco hopes to begin construction in 1988 with occupancy in 1989 and 1990. 4. A hotel site on privately owned land within the City of Escondido. Developers have proposed building a three-story, 119-room hotel. The Escondido City Council has approved the concept but has not approved specific plans for it. 5. Potential hotel resort site on property owned by and located within the City of San Diego immediately across Bear Valley Parkway from North County Fair shopping center. There are no specific proposals pending, but city Property Director Jim Spotts says it is “the hottest piece of property” in the city’s inventory. Because of Proposition A, voter approval would be needed before the city could develop the property. 6. This 160-acre parcel is owned by the City of San Diego, but is within the city limits of Escondido. Escondido wants to buy it and, in turn, sell it to the Lomas Group, which would build a public golf course. Negotiations are under way between the two cities.