Many Roadblocks in Path of San Dieguito Park Plans : Property Owners Are Blind Spot in Grand Vision of River Valley

If there is to be a San Dieguito River Valley regional park, its supporters will first have to contend with the likes of Hugh Oberg.

Oberg is a born-and-bred cowboy who lives in Coronado, wears string ties and manages what he characterizes as “old and quiet” money--bankrolled by people who like to spend their afternoons at the Los Angeles Country Club. These investors own 90 acres of the San Dieguito River Valley, on the southeast corner of Via de la Valle and Interstate 5 in Del Mar, across the freeway from the Del Mar Fairgrounds.

Because of its prime location and freeway exposure, it is arguably some of the most valuable undeveloped land in San Diego County today--even if some of it lies in a flood plain and parts of it may one day be turned into a lagoon.

For those same reasons--its prime location and natural aesthetics--the 90 acres managed by Oberg are generally targeted as a priority parcel for inclusion in the San Dieguito River Valley regional park.

Oberg would like to oblige, he says, if it weren’t for a little matter of economics.

He wants to build a country club on that site. A private one, where horses, not golf, would be the attraction. He calls it Horseworld Country Club and says it would be the first of its type in the country. He already has the permits to build it.

So any notion that Oberg and his group might walk away from their 9-month-old investment and altruistically turn the land over to a regional park is about as likely as members of Horseworld Country Club mucking out their own stalls. He needs all 90 acres, he says, and will consider a role in helping develop the park only if he gets something in return. That something is a matter for negotiation.

“Most of the people (supporting the regional park concept) aren’t looking at the economics of the situation. . . . They want the land for nothing. When they talk about what they want to do, they don’t ask who’s going to pay for it,” Oberg said.

Sense of Urgency

“This valley is 43 miles long. It’s worth hundreds of millions of dollars. Maybe a billion. This park won’t be built without the cooperation of landowners.”

It is the very pressures for development of the land that have generated a sense of urgency for the park, which would be the region’s most ambitious effort to stay the sprawl that threatens to merge the metropolitan area with North County. The park, advocates say, would serve not only as an aesthetic greenbelt swath and wildlife preserve across North County but would provide more traditional park offerings.

So winning the support of landowners like Oberg may be the greatest challenge in the development of a park that would link the Pacific Ocean at Del Mar to the lemon groves beneath Lake Hodges to the vineyards in the San Pasqual Valley to the live oaks of Ramona to the sagebrush of Santa Ysabel.

The most coveted area for parkland, that from Lake Hodges to the ocean, is privately owned by about 200 persons, each with his own private agenda. The possibility that their individual visions of private development might be stymied by a grander vision in the name of public good has created a sense of anxiety in some, a sense of incredulity in others.

Some say they are worried about the specter of eminent domain, of government declaring their land is needed for public use and will be taken from them for a price they fear will be less than fair.

Others say they will cooperate with the park’s two primary proponents--the city and county of San Diego--in dedicating land to park use, as long as they get something in return. Just how far that cooperation will extend will depend on how much they stand to gain or lose in the bartering.

And a few people, like Oberg and neighboring property owner Roger Revelle, suggest they aren’t exactly going to roll over at their own expense for the public good, and resent any notions they should.

Revelle Is Adamant

Revelle, a world renowned oceanographer and founding father of UC San Diego, is speaking in this context as one of several partners in the San Dieguito Trust. The trust represents a handful of partners--some of them longtime property owners in the valley, others professors at UCSD--who own about 350 acres in the river valley, from bluff to bluff, just east of I-5 and west of El Camino Real. They estimate the value of the land at more than $30 million today.

Revelle says the park proponents have failed to address the “realities of economics” in their quest for ideals, and he doesn’t mince words in saying he won’t play patsy to anyone who might suggest that, because of his stature in the community, he should play the role of philanthropist in helping meld the park dream.

Revelle says he’s willing to dedicate half his property to the park in exchange for increased development rights on the rest of the land.

Offers like Revelle’s are being extended by other property owners up and down the San Dieguito River Valley below Lake Hodges. This creates a dilemma of sorts to park planners who want the best of both worlds: private property dedicated to park use, at no cost to the public, but without having to offer trade-offs that will allow higher densities along the fringe of the park. Park proponents are hoping for an undeveloped greenbelt with development alongside it no greater than is permitted by existing zoning. But owners say the city and county may be expecting too much.

“Property owners throughout the valley have made investments in land, and less than full considerations are being given to those investments,” complains Roy Collins, project manager for the trust property. “They feel threatened (by the city), and maybe rightfully so.”

Interjected Revelle, “Who says ‘maybe’?”

Collins said few owners will likely want to sell their property directly to a government agency for use as parkland, and would rather negotiate for development trade-offs. “We do not wish to sell our land to a public agency,” Collins said. “People invest in land with higher expectations than that. And, why should we be penalized for not having yet developed our land, land we’ve held for 30 years?”

Sam Langberg holds a somewhat different perspective as a general partner of Del Mar ‘88, which owns 109 acres, most of it between I-5 and the ocean, alongside the Del Mar Fairground.

A tour of the property shows huge concrete anchors used by blimps during World War II, abandoned runways from when the site was utilized later as a small airfield, and concrete slabs from when electronics firms operated at the site. The land lost its pristine qualities decades ago, he argues.

Soundly Thrashed

In recent years Langberg has proposed building a resort alongside lagoons on his property--a notion that was soundly thrashed at a public hearing--and offered to turn his land over to the fairgrounds in exchange for the right to lease some of it for commercial resort uses, a proposal that also was struck down.

Langberg says he endorses the river park concept and thinks a resort development alongside the park would be compatible, especially given the site’s history of previous development. “I’m an environmentalist, but I believe very fundamentally that the environment is not only for animals but for man as well. I think nice hotels would blend in very well there. That’s still my vision.”

But Langberg’s dream is stalled because the Port of Long Beach is considering enhancing the lagoon on his property to offset the environmental impact of the district’s landfilling at its own port. (Such coastline projects supervised by the state are not unusual. The Port of Los Angeles is now doing enhancement at the Batiquitos Lagoon.) Any Long Beach enhancement of the lagoon at the base of the San Dieguito River Valley would fit nicely with city and county’s hopes for park development. Langberg says he’s not sure what will ultimately come of his property. “You just have to hang on to the property until you can do with it what you can,” he said, resigned.

In fact, park plans are too premature for city and county officials to sit down with property owners to discuss what kinds of exchanges and trade-offs can be made in order to get leverage for parkland dedications. Indeed, there is uncertainty over what the eventual park boundaries will be, and many landowners are assuming that, when the final version of the boundary is drawn, they will not be affected directly by the regional park but simply be able to benefit by the ambiance of a regional park near them.

Some property owners didn’t even realize until contacted by a reporter that their land was being included within the broadly defined study area for the park.

Lack of Contact

“I wish they’d make some contact with us,” said a bewildered Mike Madigan, senior vice president of the Pardee Construction Co. which owns about 420 acres of land in Gonzales Canyon, one of several major canyons that were included within the park study area because they contribute to either its view-shed or watershed, or because they might link the San Dieguito park to smaller, neighborhood parks.

“We as a company are supportive of the regional open space system, and that includes a regional park in the San Dieguito River Valley,” Madigan said. “But it’s hard to conceive we’d have that much acreage that would be of interest to them for park purposes.”

Another major landholding included in the park study, at least for now, is the 3,600-acre 4-S Ranch, situated on the south side of Lake Hodges, alongside the La Jolla Valley west of Interstate 15.

About 500 acres of the ranch property falls within the study boundary area.

“They’ve drawn pie-in-the-sky boundary lines,” said Tom Ralphs, whose family owns the property. “They need to be more realistic in just how far up these different canyons they’re going to go. Going this far up the La Jolla Valley is a little on the ridiculous side.”

The largest single landholding within the boundaries of the park study area is in the La Jolla Valley and was purchased in May by Potomac Investment Associates (PIA), a private company that specializes in upper-end, low-density residential projects alongside golf courses that lend themselves to the professional golf tour.

PIA’s land was previously owned by University Development, which had planned to build a private, Christian-oriented university in the valley.

Tim Smith, a general partner in PIA’s western division office at Westlake Village near Los Angeles, said the company is open to the suggestion of contributing to the park project and noted that, in other PIA projects, the firm has donated hundreds of acres of its holdings for regional parks.

“I couldn’t tell you without more study whether (the park) would be a great idea for us or a terrible idea,” he said. “But it’s the kind of thing we’ve looked at favorably before--a contribution to a regional park. We expect to talk about the idea here, but we just haven’t gotten that far yet in our own planning process.”

117 Land Owners

The La Jolla Valley feeds into the Santa Fe Valley, the name given to the San Dieguito River Valley as it fans out from the gorge beneath Lake Hodges and dissolves into 3,500 acres of rolling hills east of Rancho Santa Fe.

There are 117 land owners within the Santa Fe Valley--offering a nightmarish specter to public park planners who will need their cooperation in planning the park. Several years ago the property owners had banded together, at the urging of county Supervisor Susan Golding, to discuss how best to develop a master plan for the property while, at the same time, being sensitive to plans for the river park.

The owners paid for a feasibility study to determine whether they could afford to develop their land in estate-size residential lots and still pay for the requisite public improvements to serve the area: roads, sewers, sidewalks, bridges and the like.

The results of the feasibility study, completed in July, were bleak: The only way the landowners could pay for all the public works to serve their developments would be to increase the density of the developments--that is, to develop more, and smaller, lots. The valley, however, prides itself on estate-size lots of 2 acres and up, and the thought of tract houses on city-size lots was not only unattractive to planning agencies but to the landowners themselves.

So for now, there are no plans to develop the Santa Fe Valley, and the prospect of a regional park meandering through it doesn’t much phase the area’s land owners one way or the other.

Mike Flynn, a property owner who for a time served as spokesman for the so-called Santa Fe Valley Working Group, said there are too many unanswered questions about the park for owners to start talking seriously about what role they might play in it.

“What is a regional park? What will its uses be? What are we trying to achieve with it?” Flynn asks. “I’d like to see open spaces along the river, to keep it in its pristine setting. But it has to be reasonable. And we don’t have enough information yet to make any decisions. Sandag (the San Diego Assn. of Governments, a regional planning agency that is coordinating the park plans) doesn’t even know what the park boundaries are, or how to pay for the park.

“I don’t think any landowners are adamantly opposed to participating in the park system. It’s just that nobody has decided yet what or where the park will be.”

Ed Nissan owns 100 acres within the Santa Fe Valley and is a partner in another 100-acre parcel, and he says he is keeping his options open.

“I’m very pragmatic, and I’m very receptive to trade-offs. I’m willing to sell some of my land, maybe 30 acres, and keep the other 70 acres,” he said. But, like others, Nissan said he would want to increase the density on the remaining acreage.

The single largest parcel of land in the Santa Fe Valley totals 950 acres, and is known as the Ranch and Harris property. It is a partnership between Ed McCrink, who owns the lion’s share of the property, and Roger Revelle. The land is now planted in lemon trees, and straddles both sides of the river.

McCrink himself wouldn’t talk to The Times, but his land planner, Tony Lettieri, said his client “hopes the park is a reality and comes to fruition because it’ll be one heck of a positive aspect to development in the valley.”

Is that to suggest that McCrink and Revelle are willing to contribute to the parkland? “If we could get off the dime on the feasibility study, we’d be more than happy to work with the county on the park,” Lettieri said. “There isn’t a better area in the county for something like this, because of the river, the topography, the beauty, the climate. It will be an asset to the public and also to the owners.”

But, echoing the sentiments of other property owners along the river valley who are unsure what their role will be in cooperating or promoting the park, Lettieri added:

“The question is one of timing and economics.”