San Marcos Leaders Link Future to Advent of SDSU Campus

Stephen Bieri and Lee Thibadeau beamed as they stood atop a pile of chicken manure and talked about how everything is coming up roses in San Marcos.

From their hilltop perspective on the southern end of Twin Oaks Valley Road, a mile south of California 78, the two men showed where a new campus for San Diego State University will grow out of what is now an abandoned chicken ranch.

A university library and performing arts center will someday go right over there, Bieri said, pointing to his right a little. Classroom buildings will trail off to the right hugging both sides of a knoll, he said. He swept his hands to the left, showing where off-campus housing would go. Out there in front of him, he said, will be a high-tech business park. And beyond that, on the northern side of 78 at San Marcos Boulevard, a new civic center will be built.

More Expansive Campus

Bieri, a developer who makes a living putting visions onto blueprints and from there into steel and stucco, smiled. Of the 1,500 acres at issue, he and his partner, Doug Avis, own 1,000. They are selling 305 to the state of California to build a satellite campus more expansive in size than its patron campus in San Diego.

Thibadeau, the optimistic, don’t-say-can’t mayor of San Marcos, could hardly contain himself. Someday, he interjected, an elevated monorail might link the entire project--the university, the City Hall and a transit center--together, along with the existing Palomar Community College. Just like Disneyland, he said.

Indeed, if images of Disneyland are dancing in his mind, there may be some truth to the analogy, given how this city is readying itself for the 21st Century.

For just as Disneyland has its theme areas, so too has San Marcos grown up over the years--some say haphazardly--with distinctive, separate regions--a discount-price retail center anchored by the Price Club, Home Club and Levitz furniture; North County’s largest collection of sit-down restaurants; outlying, rural residential neighborhoods; a lakefront retirement community; contemporary housing tracts interspersed with dairy land, and a significant--albeit visually blighted--strip of light industrial and manufacturing along California 78 itself.

All that the city has lacked is its own Main Street, a heart, a showcase, a “there” there. Now, Thibadeau thinks, one is developing and for the first time this emerging North County community will have a focus, an identity. Maybe, just maybe, little San Marcos might forge itself into North County’s most vibrant city, Thibadeau allows.

San Diego State University is coming to town, and boy, what a difference a university can make.

Not only locally biased politicians but economists, urban planners and business leaders are discussing--virtually all in upbeat tones--the new complexion in store for San Marcos and the spin-off perks it will have for all of North County:

The prestige of being a university town, the host to the first California State University campus to be built in 20 years.

The resulting influx of new business, commerce and industry that will not only want to locate near the university but will directly serve the needs of the campus, its students, faculty and staff. Some economists predict the new businesses will ultimately generate an annual payroll of $200 million for the region.

The possibility, if not the likelihood, of attracting additional high-technology research and development firms to the region--especially out-of-county firms looking to relocate to San Diego County and favoring San Marcos over the pricier Golden Triangle and coastal regions.

And not the least, an upper-division--and probably eventually a full, four-year--university to serve the thousands of North County students now having to commute 45 minutes or more to the overcrowded mother campus in San Diego.

Whether San Marcos and the California 78 corridor emerge as a North County version of Sorrento Valley might not become evident for a decade or more, depending to a large degree on the type of curriculum to be offered by the San Marcos campus. Universities that specialize in engineering and research tend to spawn such high-tech industry--witness the type and caliber of firms that moved to Torrey Pines and the Golden Triangle to do business in the shadow of UC San Diego and to draw on its research, faculty and students.

On the other hand, the San Marcos campus might specialize in liberal arts and general education and instead attract a more pedestrian type of business community--pizza parlors, video stores, fast food joints and small retail operations--to serve the daily needs of students, faculty and staff.

In any event, it is indisputable that with the decision by theCalifornia State University system to build a satellite center in San Marcos, the North County gain will advance by a hop, skip and a jump instead of just a step.

“It will provide fuel to the fire in North County,” said State Sen. William Craven (R-Carlsbad), who spearheaded the politicking that brought the university to North County--and who served as the San Marcos city manager 18 years ago “when it was just a struggling little town.”

“This is continuing evidence of the importance of North County to the entire region,” said Max Schetter, director of economic development for the San Diego Chamber of Commerce. “This won’t mean just more people and businesses for North County, but it means greater cultural amenities, more entertainment, even more educational institutions--the entire gamut of growth, including congestion.”

San Marcos officials have already moved to set the development flavor around the site, having last week approved a new General Plan for the area that officials have labeled “The Heart of the City.” Totaling 1,570 acres, it is the largest project ever master-planned by the city.

Specific Neighborhoods

It lays out specific neighborhoods for residential, commercial, business park and industrial uses adjoining the 305-acre campus, as well as architectural guidelines to tie the area together as one, anchored at the south end by the university and at the north end by a new civic center.

The project area’s population ultimately may reach 10,400 new residents--but that is fewer than the maximum 13,211 residents that were called for under the previous General Plan sans the university campus.

On the flip side, the area’s daytime population may ultimately number an additional 30,000 or more, when the university develops a four-year curriculum and the adjoining business and commercial developments are completed.

San Diego State University first began offering courses in North County in 1979--a meager 12 classes in a junior high school in Vista. Today SDSU’s North County Center operates out of 20,000 square feet of rented facilities in San Marcos, offering more than 100 upper division and graduate courses, primarily in business, education, public administration and other liberal arts. The equivalent of 500 full-time students are enrolled in the courses.

University officials hope to begin offering classes at the new, permanent San Marcos site in the fall of 1992, and are planning for a start-up enrollment equivalent of 1,700 full-time students, said Richard Rush, dean of the San Marcos center.

“It’s a very exciting opportunity for all of us who are involved to build a university for the 21st Century,” Rush said. “And every step of the way--the site purchase, developing the physical plant master plan and the curriculum master plan, and the identification of the faculty--is a challenge in its own right.

“It will make San Marcos a university community as well as an industrial community that everyone will be pleased with,” Rush said.

Jack Smart, vice chancellor for university affairs for the California State University system, said it is too early to predict just how quickly the campus will expand and what curriculum will be represented.

“Practically speaking, with science and engineering courses you’re talking about major investments in the physical plant, and that doesn’t occur overnight. It remains to be seen as to when some of those kinds of programs would develop as part of the program in San Marcos. Those issues haven’t yet been addressed. We can’t say what will happen by the year 1995 or 2000.

“To some degree, the curriculum is a function of what kind of interest and industry there is in North County,” Smart added. “It isn’t necessarily that curriculum will precede the industry (that moves to San Marcos). It also happens the other way around, and that might more likely be the case.”

So there is the possibility that the San Marcos campus curriculum will take on a more scientific and research bent than the San Diego campus offerings, given the level of research and development firms that already have located in North County and the prospect of more such firms locating in the region, he said.

The first structure to be built on the San Marcos campus, Smart said, will be a multipurpose building offering both classrooms and a temporary library and administration office.

But a state consultant has offered conceptual plans for the ultimate campus that show a free-standing, seven-story library, a performing arts center, an administration building, a gymnasium and athletic fields, and several classroom buildings.

The San Marcos campus site, at 305 acres--240 of them buildable--is significantly larger than the San Diego campus, which has about 240 acres, of which about 150 acres are usable.

The possibility exists, Smart said, that given North County’s growth, the San Marcos campus population might someday equal that of the main San Diego campus.

San Marcos city officials are readying themselves for that potential, and for the full development of the surrounding residential, business and industrial area that will sprawl along both sides of Twin Oaks Valley Road--an area that is now a hodgepodge of industrial, agricultural, residential and land-mining uses.

New Civic Center

The “Heart of the City” incorporates long-standing plans for the city to build a new, 50-acre civic center development on the east side of Twin Oaks Valley Road, between California 78 and San Marcos Boulevard to the north. The city already owns about half the property, and the complex will eventually feature not only government buildings but private business development, including possibly a hotel.

Just north of the civic center site, a transit center is planned, alongside the existing Santa Fe railroad right-of-way used now for freight shipments and planned one day to serve as a light-rail transit for commuters between Oceanside and Escondido.

The plan also calls for the widening of Twin Oaks Valley Road, now a bare two lanes, to six lanes between 78 and the campus entrance a mile south--and for a short section of eight lanes at the junction of the highway to facilitate transitions off and on 78.

The city has also promised the state a number of other public works improvements--traffic signals, underground utilities and the like--totaling more than $2 million.

Immediately on the southern side of California 78, a 300-acre office and business park and some limited commercial development is planned on both sides of Twin Oaks Valley Road, extending to the SDSU campus on the southeast corner of Twin Oaks Valley Road and Barham Drive. All together, about a million square feet of office, retail and industrial space is planned.

Beyond the campus will sprout new residential neighborhoods, ranging from as many as 2,000 apartment units to accommodate students--about 10% of the student body is expected to live near campus--to about 1,300 single-family homes in densities ranging from quarter-acre lots to one-acre and larger.

Among the architectural guidelines for the business park are graduated height limitations--no building will be more than five stories high, and only then if it is substantially set back from the road--and a requirement that the exterior treatment of buildings not be more than 50% of the same material, such as glass.

“We don’t want flash-cube architecture,” said Paul Mallone, a City Hall administrative assistant assigned to the “Heart of the City” project. Glitzy, reflective-exterior buildings “are too high-tech and entirely inappropriate for San Marcos. We’re looking for a warmer feel, keeping in with the scale and nature of San Marcos.”

Open to Exceptions

Another city requirement--one that is open to exceptions--is that each business park building have at least one tenant occupying more than 50% of the space, to serve as an anchor business and to reduce the concern of too many small, transient mom-and-pop firms occupying the business park.

Also, while fast-food restaurants will be permitted in the project area, drive-through facilities will be banned as not only aesthetically objectionable but because they would compromise the pedestrian flow of the neighborhood the city hopes to promote.

The entire project is somewhat different than the one originally conceived by developers Bieri and Avis, who began negotiating for 600 acres of land in mid-1984 and purchased it in June, 1985, with the intention of developing residential neighborhoods and limited commercial uses.

The partners currently are developing two other residential projects in Carlsbad, totaling about 860 homes, and are looking at developing two other North County residential projects.

Heard of State Plans

Little did they know, Bieri said, that their San Marcos property was quietly being considered as a potential SDSU satellite site. In fact, Thibadeau and San Marcos City Councilman Corky Smith had gotten wind in July, 1984, of the state’s plans to consider establishing a permanent North County campus prior to its public disclosure. The two quietly instructed several staff members--without the knowledge of other council members but later with their after-the-fact approval--to prepare a sales pitch to the state on why San Marcos should be chosen, essentially putting the city months ahead of competing cities--most notably Carlsbad--in developing its campaign to win the site, Thibadeau said.

Bieri said he recalled the day he met with Thibadeau to lay out his residential project plans. “We were almost through telling them what our great plans were when Lee (Thibadeau) told us, ‘That’s nice, but you’re not going to do it. We want to put a university there.’ I could feel the sweat building on my forehead, when I realized what we had really bought ourselves.”

Recalled Thibadeau: “They became very nervous. They didn’t know quite what to do, because it called for a longer-term investment and greater risk than they anticipated. But they’ll do well, and they deserve to because of the risks they’ve taken.”

A state consultant ultimately recommended that San Marcos be chosen over Carlsbad, the only other serious competitor for the site--because of several advantages of the San Marcos parcel and because the Carlsbad site was partially beneath the landing pattern at Palomar Airport.

Began Negotiations

Bieri and Avis began negotiations with the state for the sale of 305 acres, eventually agreeing to a price of $10.4 million--several million dollars beneath the property’s market value, Bieri said. The state’s Public Works Board, the final state hurdle to be jumped for the plans to proceed, is expected to approve the purchase price when it meets on Friday.

And a residential project that originally would have been completed in five to seven years is now a more complex development that will take upward of 20 years to complete, Bieri said.

Committed to Project

Already, the partnership has spent about $15 million on the project; by the end of 1988, $25 million will have been spent on the project, even before a single building is constructed, Bieri said.

“We are held hostage by the university,” said Bieri, who is serving as the project manager. “We need them to build the campus before we get into our own large building program.”

Which isn’t to say Bieri and Avis thought about backing out of what has become a long-term project, tying up their cash significantly longer than expected. The long haul will pay off handsomely.

“We’re very excited about the opportunity to be a major part of the next university complex in California, especially since this is the first chance for a CSU campus to be built as part of a larger, master-planned community.

“It’s almost like a University of California opportunity, to help fashion a community around a university. We’re all curious if CSU is a strong-enough magnet to create the same kind of feeling around it as is a UC campus.”

The campus development will not necessarily make San Marcos the new hot spot of North County, one leasing agent said.

In Middle of County

“The hot area right now is the coast, and it will stay there no matter what, because of the ambiance and its proximity to Interstate 5 so you can serve both San Diego and Orange County from a single location,” said Norman Kerlin, an office building specialist for Grubb & Ellis. “San Marcos is still in the middle of the county, too inland and far away from I-5 for companies who want to be within a minute of the freeway.

“It will be some time in the future before San Marcos will become more attractive, as the campus grows,” he said.

Land-use analyst Sanford Goodkin disagrees somewhat with Kerlin, saying that the new campus will have an obvious synergistic effect in and around San Marcos.

“The fact that the San Marcos campus will be brand new gives it a virginity that is pretty exciting,” Goodkin said. “From an architectural and planning standpoint, I’m impressed with San Marcos’ vision. It’s do-able, a good non-fantasy business proposition. How could it go wrong?

“As companies go casting around for a place to locate, they may say the Golden Triangle and downtown is too urbanized and this represents something new and suburban,” Goodkin said.

The No. 1 cheerleader remains Thibadeau, the mayor.

“San Marcos has been a city waiting to happen, and SDSU will be the vehicle that will allow us to grow into the kind of community we deserve to be,” he said.