Condo Plan OKd as Final Touch to Rancho Bernardo

Developers won the right Tuesday to put in the last piece of the puzzle to complete Rancho Bernardo’s 25-year-old development plan--an 886-unit condominium complex on the shores of Lake Hodges--despite filibustering by San Diego City Councilwoman Abbe Wolfsheimer and opposition from environmental groups.

The project, Bernardo Vista del Lago, will be built by Avco Community Developers on a 144-acre site at the foot of Battle Mountain east of Interstate 15.

Approval of the condo complex came on a 5-2 vote of the City Council, and overturned an appeal of the Sierra Club and Friends of the San Dieguito River Valley. Mayor Maureen O’Connor and Councilman Ron Roberts were absent; Wolfsheimer and Councilman Bob Filner were opposed.

Although the project won a 14-1 vote approval from the Rancho Bernardo Planning Group, it was opposed by the environmental groups because it was approved without a full environmental review to determine if it would pollute Lake Hodges, affect wildlife habitat or cause major traffic problems along Pomerado Road and its I-15 interchanges.

Called ‘Sugarcoated’

Under the development proposal approved Tuesday, Avco would deed slopes of the twin-peaked Battle Mountain to the city of San Diego as open space and would improve Pomerado Road and the I-15 interchange to ease traffic congestion in the area.

Emily Durbin, spokeswoman for the Sierra Club, criticized city officials for producing “sugar-coated” traffic engineering reports that failed to address the problem of existing congestion at the I-15-Pomerado Road interchange. The congestion that would be eased with the proposed road improvements by the developers would be adversely affected by the 8,800 or more daily auto trips from the project, she said.

Pomerado Road could become “another Rancho Penasquitos Boulevard,” Durbin said, referring to the congested I-15 interchange to the south, where commuting motorists must wait up to 45 minutes to get onto I-15.

No buffers are planned to preserve the habitat of the black-tailed gnat-catcher, a bird that now inhabits the Battle Mountain area, Durbin charged. Instead, she said, a “ring of urbanization” around the mountain would isolate them and endanger their existence.

David Mulliken, a San Diego attorney representing the developers, called Vista del Lago the “last piece of the puzzle” in the 6,000-acre Rancho Bernardo master plan begun a quarter century ago by Avco and now “the finest community in America’s finest city.”

Mulliken pointed out that the condominium development conforms to the Rancho Bernardo community plan approved 10 years ago and would “dramatically enhance” the traffic situation at the I-15-Pomerado Road interchange.

‘Carefully Monitored’

Water quality in Lake Hodges has been carefully monitored for 25 years, Mulliken said, and nearby development has had no measurable effect on it. He said the Vista del Lago residential area represents only 144 acres of the 190,000-acre watershed of Lake Hodges.

But Durbin criticized the city for allowing the high-density development without further study of the effect on Lake Hodges, a city reservoir that will be connected to the Miramar Filtration Plant in 1992.

In a region where water is scarce, “we can’t afford to throw away reservoirs,” Durbin said, predicting that the development will cause pollution of the lake during heavy rains, overloading storm drains and precipitating a sheet flow of water into the reservoir.

Wolfsheimer said she was not attempting to kill the project, but argued that not enough study had been done on the traffic and environmental problems to assure that no problems would arise.

“I’m appalled at your data that shows traffic going downward by hundreds of thousands of trips,” the councilwoman told the developers. “Nowhere on the I-15 corridor will traffic go down.”

‘Taking Chances’

City planner Allen Holden told Wolfsheimer that she was interpreting the traffic data incorrectly and that the traffic counts in the study increased rather than decreased.

Wolfsheimer also attacked the density of the condo development and the lack of study on protection of the Lake Hodges reservoir, charging that the city is “taking chances with the quality and quantity” of the water supply which may someday be needed to serve the area north of Interstate 8.

No Rancho Bernardo residents or civic groups showed up Tuesday to oppose the Vista del Lago plan, in contrast to the opposition the community demonstrated to an earlier commercial proposal by E. F. Hutton for a million-square-foot office development on the same site. That project was quietly dropped in mid-1985.