City Council to Ponder Builder OKs

With slow-growth initiatives on this fall’s ballot threatening to change the rules of the city’s development game, a divided San Diego City Council on Tuesday set next Monday as judgment day for builders seeking approval of 11 large residential projects and four smaller ones.

On that day, the council will begin reviewing the merits of the 15 projects, and decide whether to award coveted “development agreements” to the builders of each one.

The agreements are contracts between the builders and the city in which the developer agrees to trade construction of schools, parks, roads and other public facilities for the guaranteed right to build homes over an extended period.

Would Allow Building

Obtaining an agreement would allow a developer to build homes even if voters approve either of the two slow-growth plans on the ballot this fall, although the number of homes allowed each year would be limited by the terms of a voter-approved measure.

A council-sponsored plan would cap development at 7,590 homes annually for at least the next three years. An initiative backed by a citizens group would restrict construction to 7,000 to 9,000 homes next year and as few as 4,000 homes annually beginning in 1991.

The problem confronting the council is that, when added to the average of 2,400 homes annually that already have building guarantees, the 15 projects would create a backlog far greater than the 3,990 set aside for large projects in the city’s northern “urbanizing” tier under the slow-growth plan written by the council.

The overall totals would be 5,800 homes in 1989, 5,300 in 1990, 4,300 in 1991 and 3,900 in 1992, according to statistics from the city’s Planning Department. The council must choose some of the projects and delay others, offering them a more tenuous future because either slow-growth plan would scale back home building citywide.

“The only way we’ll get out of a lawsuit is if both (ballot measures) fail, and that’s not going to happen,” said Mayor Maureen O’Connor. “One of them will pass, and we’re going to be sued.”

A Defeat for O’Connor

The 5-4 council vote to review all 15 pending development agreements was a defeat for O’Connor, who has for months said that the council has a moral obligation to just six projects: Miramar Ranch North, Scripps Eastview, Sunburst Scripps, Tierra Santa Norte, Regency Hill and River Walk. Builders of those projects have been delayed for up to two years while the city was attempting to write a policy governing the agreements.

But council members Abbe Wolfsheimer, Gloria McColl, Ed Struiksma, Bruce Henderson and Judy McCarty voted to consider all 15 pending agreements beginning Monday.

O’Connor pointed out the irony of Wolfsheimer’s crucial vote to hear all the development agreements, because Wolfsheimer is the only council member backing the stricter citizens growth plan over the city-sponsored measure.

But Wolfsheimer defended her vote, noting benefits that developers of a project might offer to a community in return for a building guarantee.