Hunts Employ Soft Touch for Hard Sell : Once-Skeptical Opponents of Carlsbad Project Won Over by Open-Door Style

When Debbie Davis first heard a few years ago about a massive, 1,000-acre resort and housing development slated for the pristine hills rising from Batiquitos Lagoon in Carlsbad, she was more than a bit worried.

The project, planned by the billionaire Hunt brothers of Dallas, promised to crowd the virgin terrain with thousands of condominiums and houses, a scenario that had nearby residents like Davis concerned about everything from traffic impacts to the effect on home prices.

These days, however, Davis and a whole lot of other folks in Carlsbad are die-hard fans of the Hunts’ project. While their fears have been allayed in large part by sharp reductions in the density of the development, a sizable share have been won over by far less tangible factors.

Since the project was first unveiled in the early 1980s, the Hunt brothers’ firm has launched a potent public relations blitzkrieg, a calculated campaign meant to capture the hearts and minds of residents, to make them stop worrying and learn to love development.

‘Been Up Front’

“Instead of hiding in the woodwork like a lot of developers, they’ve been up front,” Davis said. “It doesn’t matter what product is being sold. If they’re more open with you, you’re going to have a better opinion than if it’s slam, bam and let’s get this thing through.”

Aided by some of the best talent in San Diego public relations circles, Hunt Properties Inc. has littered the community with tens of thousands of slick, mass-mailed brochures while holding dozens of neighborhood receptions and open houses to familiarize the public with the proposed Pacific Rim Country Club and Resort.

The firm has also produced a flashy, seven-minute video--telecast by the local public-access cable television channel--extolling the virtues of the project and pointing out the key roads and other public facilities that will be built.

Eager to prove that theirs is a development company that wears a white hat, the Hunts have sponsored community events and donated money to local charities. Last month, for instance, the firm gave a set of encyclopedias to a Carlsbad elementary school that recently opened in an existing neighborhood near the Pacific Rim site.

“In the past, the building industry has made a mistake by failing to become fully involved with the community,” said Larry Clemens, a vice president serving as the development firm’s West Coast representative and point man for the project. “It doesn’t work that way any longer. Any property owner intending to build something in this day and age won’t get anywhere unless they make an effort to reach the community.”

PR Pays Off

Although some critics brand the firm’s efforts as little more than slick salesmanship, the public relations barrage has paid off. Clemens said the company now maintains a list of more than 2,000 residents who support the development.

Next Thursday, Hunt Properties plans a wine-and-cheese reception for its backers at a local hotel, a fete designed to say thank-you while rallying the troops in anticipation of a hearing Nov. 4 before the Carlsbad Planning Commission.

Such steps are unprecedented in North County, where most builders lack the financial clout to undertake a full-scale public relations offensive. Instead, the tactic of developers has typically revolved around selling a city’s planners and council on the project, leaving the public essentially in the dark.

Not so with the Hunts. When residents wander by a weekend open house at the firm’s La Costa headquarters, they can study one of the scale models of the project on display or get an opportunity to fire questions at Clemens.

“Carlsbad has a very sophisticated citizenry,” said Clemens, a longtime San Diego County resident who joined the Hunts in 1984. “They want specifics, they want to be able to get answers to questions they have one-on-one.

“At the open houses, people are able to really ask what they have on their mind. That satisfied the concerns of a lot of them.”

But opponents remain, chief among them slow-growth advocates who banded together last year to push for checks on the rate of development in the community.

“Let’s face it, the Hunts are at the top of the heap in the development community,” said Tom Smith, co-chairman of Concerned Citizens, the city’s most prominent slow-growth organization. “They’re bigger, smarter and have better public relations.

Avoid Conflict

“But I notice they haven’t made a single presentation to a watchdog group. They seem to avoid anyone who would ask hard questions. All they want is to talk to people who they can put in their bag.”

Smith said the development firm’s strategy “has been effective” in wooing support within the community, but fails to address problems associated with even the highest quality construction project.

In particular, he said, the Hunts’ public relations presentations have glossed over the project’s overall impact on traffic, the loss of visually pleasing open space and the potentially devastating effect of having homes practically on the shores of environmentally sensitive Batiquitos Lagoon.

“If I looked just at their literature, I’d say, ‘Hell yes, put it in there.’ ” Smith said. “But as a responsible person I have to look beyond the brochures and the videos and say, ‘Mr. Clemens, what are you really giving us?’ ”

Hunt officials like Clemens say such concerns are unfounded, noting that the project has been sharply reworked since billionaires Herbert and Nelson Bunker Hunt revealed their plans several years ago at a Texas-style barbecue on their property.

Originally projected to include a mix of 5,400 dwelling units, the project has been scaled back dramatically, largely as a result of a growth management law approved by voters last year. Plans now call for 2,836 units, about 60% of them detached homes ranging in price from $300,000 to $500,000.

The firm’s blueprint for the country club and resort have remained virtually unchanged. Designed for both executive conferences and resort vacations, the facility will include a 254-room hotel overlooking the lagoon, an 18-hole golf course designed by Arnold Palmer, extensive banquet and meeting facilities as well as a major athletic complex with 12 tennis courts, Olympic-size pool and health club.

The entire project has a current estimated value of $1 billion.

Among the aspects of the project often ballyhooed by Hunt Properties executives are the public improvements that are a part of the deal: a 13-acre school site, a $12-million east-west highway designed to reduce traffic on busy La Costa Boulevard, park sites and a public sports center.

Indeed, since the property was purchased by the Hunt brothers, best known for their reputed attempt to corner the world silver market in 1980, the development firm has jumped through more bureaucratic hoops than its executives thought imaginable.

‘Under a Microscope’

“We’ve been under a microscope, literally,” Clemens said. “I can’t imagine what hasn’t been looked at. We’ve done everything from biology to bus stops.”

Still, the project has to win approval from the Planning Commission next month, then go before the City Council, probably in December. After that, the state Coastal Commission will review the plans, a process Clemens hopes will be concluded by next April.

If all goes according to plan, grading work and construction could begin soon after that, with development of the entire project stretching well over a decade.

“It’s just great development as I see it,” said Jim Popovich, president of the La Costa Town Council. “I think it will be a tremendous plus for the community.”

Such sentiments were rarely heard just a few years ago. Debbie Davis recalled a meeting Clemens held with a local community group to explain the project. The reception was, at best, frosty.

“I thought he was going to be hung,” Davis said. “I’m surprised the man was able to escape, it was that hostile a group.”

Davis said the climate--as reflected in her change of attitude--has changed considerably.

“I hear people with much more positive opinions of the project now,” she said. “And I think it’s been the developer’s approach that’s helped. They seem willing to listen to the people.”

Changes Made

Indeed, several key changes in the project, such as altering the route of roads that affected existing neighborhoods, sprang from the open houses or community meetings, Clemens said. “I’m on a first-name basis with all the homeowners association presidents in the area,” Clemens said. “They have input. You have to have that kind of relationship, otherwise you have the black-hat syndrome.”

While such good deeds have proven effective with the public, the Carlsbad council is more intent on seeing the project conform with facility standards and other rules mandated by the city’s growth management plan, Councilwoman Ann Kulchin said.

“I don’t care how many newsletters they send out or how many books they give to the school library, they aren’t going to get by us unless the numbers are there--the numbers in terms of density, acres of parks and roads,” Kulchin said. “Does it help to go to the community? Sure. We always want citizen input. But if the numbers don’t mesh out, then it doesn’t go through.”

Clemens and other Hunt executives are confident the Pacific Rim project exceeds those sorts of hurdles and will win approval. And, as residents like Popovich see it, the sooner homes begin sprouting from the hills on the north shore of Batiquitos, the better.

“I think in the beginning people were skeptical about the project,” Popovich said. “They felt these two Texas billionaires were going to come into town and take over and tell us what we want.

“But that’s not the way it’s been handled at all . . . They’ve answered a lot of questions that people had before they became problems. They took care of the questions.”