Encinitas Joins the Battle Over How to Beat Blight

In the 16 years he has owned a small, 14-unit motel at the northern end of Old Highway 101 in Encinitas, Jerry O’Brien says he’s seen the coastal business strip go from bad to worse.

“It’s gone downhill,” laments O’Brien. “The character today in this area is a lot of crime, a lot of drugs, a lot of prostitution. Stroll along 101 after dark. It’s not a healthy environment.”

As O’Brien sees it, the private sector has failed to revitalize the area, so it’s time to turn elsewhere for help. His answer? Redevelopment.

Just down the street, Robert Brent hardly agrees.

When Brent, a professional artist, got wind more than a year ago that the city was hatching plans for a redevelopment agency, he shuddered. He could just see his quaint little artist studio being razed to make way for some grandiose shopping complex.

Although city officials have since agreed to refrain from using such powers to seize property if a redevelopment agency is formed, Brent remains unsure whether the concept makes much sense.

“Personally, I think many of the things redevelopment promises are going to happen on their own in five years anyway,” Brent said. “There’s just too much of a dynamic in this area for it not to.”

It’s been fought in city after city across the nation, and now the redevelopment battle has come to Encinitas.

Spurred by troubled business owners such as O’Brien, city officials embarked in early 1988 on a campaign to form a redevelopment agency and started down the road of addressing some of the problems plaguing the newly incorporated city.

So far, however, the effort has made only minimal headway. A tenacious band of merchants and residents concerned that redevelopment could do more harm than good to the cultivated beach-town charm of Encinitas have dogged the project every step of the way.

These critics contend that the recipe for redevelopment seems half-baked at best, with all the ingredients for financial disaster, broken promises and corruption.

No one really denies that some sections of the city need sprucing up, in particular the Old Highway 101 corridor through the northwestern quadrant known as Leucadia.

That downtrodden strip is spotted mostly by aging storefronts and lined by broken-down guardrails that hark back to the days when 101 was the major link between San Diego and Los Angeles. Lacking storm drains, the curbs are sometimes flooded by standing water, even on sunny days.

Boosters say redevelopment is needed to cure just those sorts of deficiencies. They also see a redevelopment agency as a vehicle for rehabilitating infrastructure problems throughout the city, to make up for the years of benign neglect under county rule that ended with incorporation of Encinitas in 1986.

“We have a need for it in so many areas,” said Councilwoman Marjorie Gaines, a redevelopment supporter. “Redevelopment doesn’t mean we’re going to tear down everything and rebuild. It can simply mean making improvements such as curbs, sidewalks and sewers.”

Indeed, as now envisioned, the plan calls for no direct intervention into the marketplace with large-scale projects involving assembling land for commercial development. Instead, money diverted from local property taxes would go for a variety of public improvements: widening and repaving streets, providing parking lots, landscaping median strips, building storm drains, lining bike paths, putting utilities underground and building community parks.

City officials also say funds could be made available for commercial rehabilitation loans, low-income housing assistance, improved beach access and anti-erosion efforts along the coast, public library expansion and perhaps even construction of a new civic center.

Ambitious Boundaries

To do that, officials have etched out an ambitious set of redevelopment-area boundaries that zigzag across the city--encompassing most of the major commercial thoroughfares and the residential neighborhoods that straddle them, including El Camino Real, Encinitas Boulevard and Santa Fe Drive.

By providing plush, landscaped streets and efficient traffic systems, redevelopment can act as a catalyst for private renewal of areas such as Old Highway 101 in Leucadia and ensure continued success elsewhere in the city, according to Carlos Flores, a city management analyst shepherding the project.

“Somewhere along the line, Encinitas is going to have to face up to the economic realities of life,” said Harold Hakken, chairman of the eight-member redevelopment project area committee. “Basically, we have problems that need to be corrected in our community. The city by itself would find it very, very difficult without the taxing advantages of redevelopment to be able to tackle these blight and infrastructure problems.”

Redevelopment has been hammered by criticism, however, ever since the council voted in February, 1988, to go forward with the effort. At first, opponents focused most of their attention on the eminent domain issue, raising the specter that private homes and businesses would be bulldozed to make way for large shopping centers.

The council defused that issue in March, voting to prohibit the agency from using condemnation powers. Since then, however, critics have continued to blast redevelopment at every turn.

Although a final decision by the council on redevelopment was expected this month, critics on the project-area committee managed to block any chance of a vote until later in the year, meaning the city will miss out on garnering tax revenues from the coming 1990 fiscal year.

Some redevelopment boosters contend that the nay-sayers are mostly former opponents of incorporation who are opposed not so much to redevelopment as to the fact that it is being pushed by incorporation standard-bearers such as Gaines.

“I don’t know if their objection is to redevelopment as much as it is to anything this council would do,” Hakken said.

Opponents say such claims are ridiculous and divert attention from the real issue: What’s wrong with redevelopment. And they see plenty that is.

Critics say city officials have glossed over important details and pushed a “wish list” of projects instead of hammering out a definitive and realistic slate of improvements to be accomplished.

They also suggest that the project’s ambitious boundaries should be scaled back. As now envisioned, they say, the project encompasses several commercial and residential zones that hardly qualify as blighted, among them the beehive of shopping centers along El Camino Real and ocean bluff-top neighborhoods that feature some of the most expensive homes in Encinitas.

What About Later?

Moreover, they argue that money diverted for redevelopment could erode the quality of services provided by other agencies, such as the fire or water districts, that depend on a cut of the property-tax pie.

The well-financed redevelopment agency itself, meanwhile, would be in the hands of a select handful of bureaucrats, critics say. And who knows what a future council would do? Current leaders may not choose to use the power of eminent domain to buy a home to create a beach parking lot, but there are few guarantees for the future, they say.

Finally, some foes grouse that stringent requirements for low-income housing in redevelopment areas would only help perpetuate the pockets of poverty that now exist, or force the council to adopt tough measures such as a citywide rent-control law.

“Essentially, what the agency has asked for is a blank check,” said artist Brent, one of the most outspoken critics of the program. “There’s too much power left to wheel and deal.”

Supporters of redevelopment, meanwhile, offer a laundry list of arguments countering those allegations.

Scaling back the project boundaries so they include only commercial streets would cut potential revenue from $589 million during the life of the project to $229 million. In the meantime, much of the work that has already been accomplished, such as financial studies and environmental reviews, would have to be redone, city officials say.

Even Rich Would Benefit

They also contend that the boundaries are justified. Even pricey neighborhoods would benefit from redevelopment projects that take place nearby, supporters say, and, although some commercial streets don’t appear blighted, they have traffic problems that could go uncorrected for years without redevelopment money.

Officials say other agencies would not go begging for funds diverted to redevelopment, noting that most of these service districts are in negotiation with the city to hammer out agreements specifying what percentage of property taxes they will get.

Hakken argues that redevelopment is flush with checks and balances that allow for public participation and comment as the process unfolds.

“It isn’t a blank check by any means,” he said. “If there is a change, it is returned for reexamination and renegotiation.”

According to Mayor Anne Omsted, the participation of property owners in the project is strictly voluntary, and eminent domain could be used only to complete public projects such as roads, drainage systems and park improvements.

Instead of suffering, she said, property owners would benefit through redevelopment from street and drainage improvements without new taxes being levied.

Moreover, the city would retain great latitude in providing low- or moderate-income housing, officials said. Instead of rent control, the city would probably provide rental subsidies or interest-rate reductions for prospective home buyers.

O’Brien, for one, would like to see the program get started soon. For months he has been trying to get a loan to rebuild and expand his aging motel, but lenders refuse to take a chance in his section of town. Redevelopment, he figures, would change all that.

“We need this program, we really do,” O’Brien said. “You put the spark of redevelopment in the area . . . and we’ll really see something happen.”