Minding Their Manors : Lower San Dieguito Valley Is Now a Red-Hot Playland for the Wealthy, Much to Dismay of Environmentalists

Suddenly, the bean fields and chaparral canyons of the Lower San Dieguito River Valley are being bulldozed and landscaped into a residential and recreational area for the sports-minded rich.

“Money follows money, it’s that simple,” said Stephen Games, president of Pickford Realty Inc. at Fairbanks Ranch, pronouncing the eternal truth of Southern California real estate.

“Right now, this area is red hot, and success breeds success,” Games said. “People have been waiting to get into this area and now is their chance. There is virtually no limit to the money for development and investment.”

With the city and county governments at an impasse over the valley’s future and whether it can be preserved for the public, a flood of capital from investors such as Eugene V. Klein and Cubic Corp. founder Walter J. Zable is fashioning a luxurious community for the wealthy.

The moneyed leisure class, well-fixed retirees and a new group called by one community activist “the golden yuppies” are all clamoring for the North County good life. The most glittering names in the world of golf and tennis are eager to accommodate them.

Chic Growth

In the next year, golf courses, estate homes, country clubs, a tennis resort and at least one chic shopping area are scheduled to sprout in an area that until recently was used to grow lima beans and was home mainly to undocumented farm workers.

The valley area from Fairbanks Ranch to El Camino Real will soon reach what planners call “maximum build-out.” Still, community activists worry that problems of traffic flow and environmental protection have not been adequately addressed.

The first big jolt to the rural nature of the lower valley, south of the San Dieguito River, came in the early 1980s when the San Diego City Council and the county Board of Supervisors approved the controversial Fairbanks Ranch country club, golf course and residential development.

For the council, the move meant granting the project an exemption from the city’s growth management plan, which had ruled the area off-limits until 1995.

But council members were enticed by the prospect of Fairbanks being host to part of the equestrian events of the 1984 Olympic Games. The offer of 680 acres of open space was also a lure; the area is now a private golf course and polo field.

Next came Klein’s Rancho Del Rayo Thoroughbred Facilities and the Wayne B. Lukas Training Center.

Klein, the Rancho Santa Fe resident and multimillionaire car dealer and entertainment conglomerate head, sold his controlling interest in the San Diego Chargers and boldly set out to be the most successful racehorse breeder in the business. His horse operation covers 240 acres, with gleaming white fences, well-groomed stables and manicured practice tracks.

Soon, Fairbanks and Klein’s stables--where he keeps up to 200 horses--will be but prologue to even greater development. Within a few months, sales will begin at Klein’s two residential developments--Del Rayo Downs and Del Rayo Estates.

Most Lots Spoken For

Work has already begun on the Rancho Santa Fe Farms golf course and country club, and all but a handful of the 91 estate lots have been spoken for.

Within a month, ground will be broken for John Gardiner’s Rancho Valencia tennis resort, with 30 hacienda-style rooms, 14 tennis courts, a restaurant and clubhouse and 22 homes. The Farms’ golf course and Gardiner’s tennis resort are set to open in mid-1988.

Even before the first golf ball is sliced at the Farms, the Board of Supervisors, which has seemingly never met a country club and upscale housing development it didn’t like, is set to consider another golf course and fairway homes project, the 99-home Heritage Country Club in La Zanja Canyon south of Klein’s property.

“The speed that things are occurring is amazing, but no more amazing than the amount of money involved,” said Dan Chesivoir, a resident of Whispering Palms and chairman of the San Dieguito Planning Group, which advises the county on land-use matters.

“For decades, this area was horses and farmers and then along came Fairbanks Ranch,” Chesivoir said. “Now everything is happening all at once, even before we’ve solved problems of traffic, river flooding and water supply. There is a feeling on the part of both buyers and developers that if they don’t get in now, they may lose out because the door is going to shut.”

To those of modest means, the money involved is dizzying.

Rancho Valencia’s one-acre home sites are going for $300,000 to $350,000 and up, sans house. Deed restrictions will most likely require a custom-built house of equal value.

The same restrictions will apply on the carefully contoured hills of Rancho Santa Fe Farms, where barren sites, most between a half-acre and acre, run from $295,000 and up. Price depends on the view and proximity to the fairway and man-made lakes.

Membership in the country club, even for homeowners, will cost $40,000 to $45,000, with a monthly fee of several hundred dollars. The 450 memberships are expected to be snapped up quickly once financial details are ironed out with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

And the Prices Go Up

At Del Rayo Estates, where some hillside locations afford ocean views, a two-acre lot starts at $575,000 and a 13-acre site is going for $2 million. A house is extra. Del Rayo Downs is more modest: lots with homes from $550,000 to $750,000.

“Many of our clients are down-scaling from estates,” explained Joan Reid, Del Rayo Downs sales and marketing manager. “They don’t want to pay $1 million for an estate but they don’t want to get stuck with a $400,000 tract house.”

Not everyone is cheery about the valley’s future as a playland for the rich. The proliferation of golf courses is a major concern for community activists and environmentalists.

Golf courses are notoriously thirsty and crave large amounts of fertilizer and other chemical treatments. The more water that is drawn from underground streams, the more rapid the underground march of saltwater up the valley.

“To state it bluntly, to put golf courses around water resources is an incredibly insensitive thing to do,” Lynn Benn, San Diego city planning commissioner and Sierra Club activist, told a recent seminar on the San Dieguito River Valley.

Each course is trying something different. The proposed Heritage course would use reclaimed water from Whispering Palms.

The Farms course won’t use reclaimed water, opting instead for fresh stuff from the Rancho Santa Fe water district. Course designers Pete and Perry Dye and golf director Tommy Jacobs are experimenting with a strain of Bermuda grass that will need less water and fertilizer.

“The environmentalists want everything kept natural, but they don’t want to pay for it,” said Jacobs, a former touring pro who was Tournament of Champions director at the La Costa Resort Hotel & Spa for 15 years before joining the Farms. “They want somebody else to buy it and pay taxes on it so they can look at it.”

He added, “Our course will be gorgeous and a lot better use of the land than wall-to-wall homes.”

County-City Battleground

The Lower San Dieguito River Valley has been a battleground of sorts between the recent slow-growth attitude of the San Diego City Council and the more pro-development Board of Supervisors. Most of the area lies in unincorporated areas outside the city limits.

Just outside the valley, visible from the Rancho Santa Fe Farms home sites, is the La Jolla Valley, approved by the council for a commercial project and a Christian university in 1984.

In 1985, city voters overturned that approval, and the council, sensing a shift in political sentiment, sought to bring much of the San Dieguito River Valley under city control. Having started the growth spurt by approving Fairbanks Ranch, the council sought to apply the brakes.

To the delight of property owners and chagrin of environmentalists, the Local Agency Formation Commission rejected the city’s request, leaving the county firmly in control.

“We’re in the county, thank goodness,” said Robert K. Adams, managing general partner of Red Tail Golf Associates, the group which is developing the Farms.

But even the county has modified its views on growth. The Farms’ project received approval for lot sizes based on a “clustering” formula that allows increased density if there is offsetting open space elsewhere--in this case, the golf course.

This spring the supervisors overhauled the “clustering” ordinance, with the result that the use of a private golf course as open space to get approval for more housing units is no longer allowed. The new rules were not made retroactive, however.

By the autumn of 1988, a five-acre shopping center, anchored by a gourmet market, is scheduled to open at San Dieguito and Rancho Diegueno roads, called Del Rayo Village. A larger shopping center, on El Apajo, is being redesigned after meeting community resistance and being rebuffed by county planners.

“Once Heritage is approved in La Zanja Canyon, the (county-controlled) western portion of the San Dieguito River Valley will essentially be built out, except for a few small parcels,” one county official said.

The City Council’s determination to keep the city portion of the lower San Dieguito River Valley in rural and agricultural uses is being tested by owners of property between El Camino Real and Interstate 5.

Industrial Park Sought

The owners, including UC San Diego founder Roger Revelle, want the area zoned for commercial uses and an industrial park. Hearings are set for Thursday before the San Diego Planning Commission and Sept. 14 before the council’s Transportation and Land Use Committee.

The request to shift the area out of the urban reserve created by the Managed Growth Initiative, approved by city voters in 1985, is vigorously opposed by the 330-member Friends of the San Dieguito River Valley.

Development in the lower San Dieguito Valley is disheartening to those who are dreaming of a regional park in the valley, either the 8,000-acre portion between Lake Hodges and Fairbanks Ranch, or the entire 43-mile-long valley from Del Mar to the Sutherland Reservoir near Ramona.

Development breeds development, they reason.

“A golf course is preferable to a tennis resort, but I still do not think of private reserves as a public benefit,” said San Dieguito Planning Group member Barbara Bouzan. “The trend seems to be for property owners to seek to intensify the use of their land, to increase profit, whenever possible.”

The city and county governments and the San Diego Assn. of Governments have all expressed interest in saving at least part of the San Dieguito Valley as open space.

The effort has fallen short when cooperation between various agencies was needed and even shorter when money was sought to study the problem, let alone begin to buy land.

“Whenever you get disagreement between the city and county on a major issue, it’s highly unlikely we’ll get something done,” said Sandag planner Stuart Schaffer. Sandag would like to cut through the city-county rivalry by taking the lead in the San Dieguito River Valley regional park study.

Meanwhile, golf courses are doing quite well where it counts most, investment money and political support, and there appears little change in the offing.

A $50-Million Project

The value of the 214-acre Rancho Santa Fe Farms project--being developed in cooperation with Del Rayo and Gardiner’s tennis resort--is an estimated $50 million.

Outside the river valley, east of Rancho Santa Fe, the supervisors have approved the 205-home Canyon Creek community, to be developed by New Horizons of Rancho Santa Fe. The project will include a golf course.

Still awaiting approval is the largest golf course-and-homes project of all, also east of Rancho Santa Fe, the 775-home Rancho Cielo, with golf course and private helipad.

Beyond the environmental and political questions, two facts seem undebatable in the Lower San Dieguito River Valley: the views and rural, ritzy atmosphere afforded to the lucky few will be spectacular, and the sports facilities are being designed by the nation’s top designers of such things.

The 18-hole, par-72 Farms course is being designed by the Dyes, whose 64 courses include championship links in Carmel Valley and La Quinta. The country club, done in hacienda style, is designed by Robert Altevers, who was the architect for the clubs in La Quinta and Rancho Mirage.

Among the partners developing the Farms are Zable, founder and board chairman of Cubic Corp., the San Diego defense electronics firm, and his son, Walter C. Zable, the firm’s vice chairman.

John Gardiner, developing the 60-acre tennis resort in partnership with San Diego developer Harry Collins, has well-known resorts in Carmel Valley in Northern California and Scottsdale and Sedona, Ariz., and tennis clinics in Sun Valley, Ida., and Jackson, Wyo.

A weeklong tennis “package” at Scottsdale, meals included, is $1,595 per person, based on double occupancy in a suite.

Seeking ‘Intimate Atmosphere’

“We’re striving for an intimate atmosphere, where guests will meet each other and enjoy tennis and fine food, and maybe golf--elegance but in a subdued setting,” said Don Williams, vice president for Collins’ La Jolla Development Co. Among Collins’ other properties: the La Valencia Hotel on trendy Prospect Street in La Jolla.

Advertising for the homes has been low-key, a few full-page ads in high-gloss magazines and a lot of word of mouth. The sales push for Del Rayo Downs, with 65 sites, and Del Rayo Estates, with 23 sites, will begin with a gala opening in November.

“Our market is the active couple, interested in a secure, locked-gate community, with polo, tennis, golf and the Del Mar track just minutes away,” Reid said. “The views will be of the golf course, the thoroughbred farms, the deep valley, with the breeze from the ocean just three miles away to keep things cool.”

Games, whose agency is handling Del Rayo Estates and Farms’ homes, said: “People have been visiting Fairbanks Ranch and clamoring for fairway homes, but there is no such thing because the course is separate from the homes. Now, with the Farms, it’s available.

“If the buyers are lucky enough to have made their money early in life, and still have kids, they can send them to the beach. If they’re older and into full-time leisure, it’s short sleeves’ golf weather 95% of the year.”

Compared to the older, more staid Rancho Santa Fe, a goodly number of younger families live in Fairbanks Ranch and presumably will be buying in the Del Rayo, Farms and Gardiner projects.

That was not envisioned when Ray A. Watt, chairman of Santa Monica-based Watt Industries, purchased the 1,240-acre Fairbanks Ranch from the estate of Douglas Fairbanks Sr. and his wife, actress Mary Pickford, in 1978.

A year ago, a survey of 121 owners in Fairbanks found two-thirds under the age of 45, and nine under the age of 30. An elementary school is planned soon for the area.

“People have been shocked at the youth of people in Fairbanks, and the number of school-age kids,” said Chesivoir, the planning group chairman. “I call them the golden yuppies, the 32 to 35 set, the doctors, professionals, lawyers, accountants, the high-tech types suddenly making $100,000 a year and looking to live the good life.

“This is the place for them.”