Work Start Angers Foes of Canyon Preserve Road

Environmentalists, angry at a trick purportedly played on them by City Hall and a land developer, are opposing plans to connect Sorrento Valley and Mira Mesa by snaking a four-lane road through a verdant part of Los Penasquitos Canyon Preserve.

Although experts hired by the developer disagree, Geoffrey Smith, chairman of the San Diego County chapter of the Sierra Club, said the 3.5-mile road will permanently damage the wildlife and wetlands habitat at the mouth of the preserve.

Leo Wilson, president of Friends of Los Penasquitos Canyon Preserve, predicts that construction of the road could radicalize the public into supporting a slow-growth initiative on the November ballot because it provides protection for steep and environmentally sensitive terrain.

Ironically, Wilson does not support the initiative because he feels it is too restrictive.

Smith and Wilson are angry because they believed, apparently

mistakenly, that environmentalists would have one final shot at persuading the City Council not to allow construction of the road, to be called Calle Cristobal.

The pair thought no construction would begin until the council considered the developer’s request to form an assessment district among property owners to pay the cost.

Two weeks ago, however, bulldozers began grading work for the 90-foot-wide road, which will extend Sorrento Valley Boulevard eastward, past the historic Ruiz-Alvarado Adobe, and along Lopez Ridge to a 1,302-unit, 228-acre housing project planned for an area that separates Los Penasquitos and Lopez canyons.

“The visual aesthetics of the canyon will be lost once the road comes through,” Smith said. “The erosion and siltation caused by this much grading will end up first in Penasquitos Creek and then the lagoon. The animals and birds will disappear, and the sense of wilderness will be destroyed.”

The road has been on the drawing boards since a 1979 deal was struck between the city and Genstar Southwest Development (now called Newland California).

Land for Preserve

Under the deal, the city got 1,800 acres of open space and the developer got permission to build just outside the canyon and to build a key east-west access road. The gift formed the largest chunk of Los Penasquitos Canyon Preserve, now more than 2,500 acres.

Brian Laidlaw, senior vice president of Newland, notes that the road has been approved by the city, the California Coastal Commission and the state Department of Fish & Game. The road will enhance enjoyment of Los Penasquitos Canyon Preserve rather than destroy it, he said.

“I firmly believe that far more people will enjoy the preserve because of the road than enjoy it today,” Laidlaw said. “A lot more people will be able to get to the preserve, park their cars and walk with their families.”

Smith and Laidlaw, in separate interviews, both used San Clemente Canyon and California 52 to prove their opposing points.

“I see this road as making the preserve accessible for the public, like 52 did through the other canyon,” Laidlaw said. He said the road will include bike paths and an adjacent parking lot.

“Once it’s built, it’ll be like San Clemente Canyon,” Smith said. “It will be a very pretty drive, but the wilderness will be gone. We need wilderness to survive.”

The Smith-Laidlaw dispute mirrors a similar split between the two City Council members most closely involved with the Calle Cristobal controversy: Ed Struiksma and Abbe Wolfsheimer.

Struiksma, whose district includes the housing project, supports the road.

“The people who are against the road were also against the (housing) project,” said Struiksma aide Ellen Capozzoli. “The road is needed to relieve congestion on Mira Mesa Boulevard.”

But Wolfsheimer’s staff is researching to see if grounds exist to request an emergency ordinance blocking all grading until further study.

Wolfsheimer’s district includes Sorrento Valley and most of Los Penasquitos Canyon Preserve; she was the lone vote on Feb. 29 against a series of actions involving the Lopez Ridge housing development, including granting the grading permit for the road.

Wolfsheimer aide Linda Bernhardt, who is also a board member of Friends of Los Penasquitos Canyon Preserve, said she is checking to see if the grading conforms to the conditions set down in the Coastal Commission permit.

Laidlaw said his company is still requesting a hearing on an assessment district to spread the cost among several landowners involved in the housing project. But nothing requires the firm to wait until the assessment district is formed to begin work, he said.

The environmentalists thought otherwise and were shocked to see bulldozers looming along Lopez Ridge.

“We had been waiting for a hearing, and then the bulldozers showed up,” said Smith, a computer programmer and analyst with Logicon, one of several businesses along Sorrento Valley Boulevard that will feel the impact of the road. “We looked up, and the vegetation was being scraped off, and the whole area was surveyed and staked out.”

Called Preemptive Strike

Wilson, an attorney, said he believes Newland is attempting a preemptive first-strike so that the road will be virtually finished before the council hearing on the assessment district.

“They’re trying to defuse the opposition to the road,” Wilson said. “They want, at all cost, to avoid a public hearing where we can express our concerns.”

Not so, retorted Laidlaw. He said the firm has gone ahead with grading because of uncertainty over when the council hearing will be held and because its Coastal Commission permit only allows grading between April and October.

Calle Cristobal would provide an alternative way for people working in Sorrento Valley to get to Mira Mesa other than by Interstate 805 and the already-clogged Mira Mesa Boulevard. It would also provide a way for prospective Lopez Ridge residents to get to Interstates 5 or 805 other than via Mira Mesa Boulevard.

Sorrento Valley Boulevard, home to a dozen research-and-development firms, would be widened to four lanes by the removal of the grassy median strip.

The new road would skirt the ruin of the Ruiz-Alvardo Adobe, built in 1824 by Capt. Francisco Maria Ruiz, military commandant of the San Diego Presidio from 1806 to 1827. Only two walls remain, protected by a newly constructed roof and fence.

The western part of the preserve is now popular with hang-gliding enthusiasts and joggers. Rabbits and deer are common.

Rattlesnakes await in the brush, and birds nest in the tall grass along Penasquitos Creek, which flows westward into Penasquitos Lagoon. Jets from nearby Miramar Naval Air Station scream overhead.

Calle Cristobal, which is projected to handle up to 16,000 cars a day, is one of three main proposed roads designed to handle traffic from the Lopez Ridge development. The proposed Camino Santa Fe would connect directly to Mira Mesa Boulevard; costs for Calle Cristobal and Camino Santa Fe have been put at more than $20 million.

Contacted Attorney

Once grading for Calle Cristobal began, the Friends of Los Penasquitos Canyon Preserve contacted attorney Dwight Worden, a veteran of many environmental battles including Del Mar’s losing fight against North City West, about possible legal action.

One possible contention is that the Coastal Commission grading permit violates the city’s own Local Coastal Program because it allows grading on the north side of Lopez Ridge, which separates Los Penasquitos Canyon from the smaller and less-known Lopez Canyon, also known as Cuervo Canyon.

However, a spokesman for Mayor Maureen O’Connor said that, since the furor erupted over the grading, the mayor’s land-use specialist was assigned to check the permits and found nothing improper.