New Road, More Traffic May End Poway Enclave’s Tranquility

What’s in a name? Ask 19 Poway families and they will tell you that a name has robbed them of their peace of mind, their lifetime investment in half-million-dollar homes and their faith in city government.

All of them bought lots along Gate Drive and built custom homes in a quiet little valley about a mile from downtown Poway.

A few may have wondered at the oversized width of Gate Drive as it wound down to the cluster of estate homes, then ended abruptly at a barricade. But until a year ago, no one realized that the meandering street would soon become an arterial--Midland Road--linking a massive industrial park now in the building stages to the booming city of Poway.

Now the 50 or so residents of Los Lomas Estates must face the prospect of 10,000 to 12,000 cars a day going past their quiet hideaway homes where now the howl of a coyote is more common than the hum of tires.

Roger Boysel, president of the Los Lomas Homeowners Assn., admits that when he moved in a year and a half ago, he was informed that Gate Drive “would be no more” at sometime in the future and that the road which now dead-ends at Los Lomas would be extended southward as Midland Drive.

But continuation of the meandering road past his home held no threat for him. The creation of a four-lane connector road between the area’s two major east-west highways was another matter.

Boysel estimates that about 200 cars now use Gate Drive daily, and predicts that number “will be cut in half” when construction workers building the final homes in the upscale subdivision pack up their pickups and leave.

Now all the Los Lomas residents know the bad news that their driveways will open into a busy street connecting the 2,000-acre South Poway Industrial Park to Poway Road.

“There is vacant land all around us,” Boysel said. “We are hoping that the city will reroute Midland Road around us. It would probably mean more grading, more fill, more expense but it would save our rural life style and our homes, probably the biggest expenditure we will make during our lifetimes.”

What can 50 residents do against the city government and the will of more than 42,000 Poway residents? Poway needs more roads and more jobs. The South Poway industrial park offers both.

Boysel said the group has contacted city officials, spoken one-on-one with Poway City Council members, attended council sessions and traffic planning meetings and tried to get the word of their plight out to the people who have the power to resolve it.

Faith Mohling, the 76-year-old building contractor who bought the property in 1970, sold the Los Lomas acreages to the present owners and built her own home and a number of others there over the past 3 1/2 years, remembers when the realization of the Midland Road impact hit her new neighbors.

“They were very angry. At me,” she said. “They thought that I had deceived them and that I knew about it.”

Mohling said that despite the fact that she had been building projects in Poway since 1967 and had served for six years on a city-county planning group before the city incorporated in 1980, she had no inkling of the fate of Los Lomas.

‘Blob on the Map’

The industrial park was “just a blob on the map,” impossible to locate exactly because it had no identifying landmarks, only future building sites. She knew that Gate Drive would be extended south, she said, but had no idea that it would become a major access road to the industrial park.

“People here are devastated about the road,” she said. She has joined with other Los Lomas residents in their efforts to detour the route into an unpopulated area.

In recent months, Los Lomas residents have reached out to other nearby neighborhoods affected by the future Midland Road, informing them of the city’s plans and handing out bumper stickers proclaiming: “Say No to Midland Road Extension.”

Signs with the same slogan puzzled Poway drivers when they were posted by the road opponents along busy Poway thoroughfares. City officials ordered them taken down.

“They didn’t take down other people’s signs. Just ours,” complained Bea Reuel. “I don’t think it’s fair.” Reuel said that the Audubon Society has been recruited to aid in the anti-road campaign.

Bird watchers have identified several dozen species of feathered residents near the community, including a black-footed gnat-catcher which is on the “threatened species” list. That’s not as good a roadblock as the endangered least Bell’s vireo or least tern, she admits, but the gnat-catcher was key in preserving Blue Sky Ranch near Lake Poway from development and might turn the trick for Los Lomas Estates.

Jim Bowersox, Poway city manager, defends the city’s stance and methods as proper, but admits that the “unsuspecting buyers” in Los Lomas have legitimate concerns.

The South Poway Planned Community (the industrial area) was proposed and planned before Los Lomas residents moved in. The Midland Road extension to join with the South Poway Parkway--a major east-west arterial serving the industrial park and linking with Interstate 15--was in the specific plans for the area adopted by the City Council in 1985, he said.

It is a four-lane undivided roadway for which developer Mohling dedicated the necessary right-of-way through Los Lomas, he said. It is planned as a major artery to Poway Road from the park and is now under study for possible revision or deletion.

“If the study shows we don’t need the road, we won’t build the road,” Bowersox said. “The city is not in the business of spending money on things that are not needed.”

Shrinking Road or Rerouting

Other possible alternatives are scaling Midland Road extension down to a two-lane size or rerouting it to the east or west of Los Lomas Estates, he said.

The plan, with the city’s recommendation, will be presented to the homeowners’ group before Friday and will probably be up for a City Council decision in July.

Councilman Jan Goldsmith has wrestled with the Midland Road extension both as a council member and as chairman of the city’s transportation task force. He has heard all the arguments and has come out for deletion of the road if the traffic study, now in the hands of outside consultants, indicates that deletion is possible.

South Poway Parkway is meant as a major future road linking California 67 to Interstate 15, he explained, and should have as few cross streets as possible because intersections reduce road capacity and slow traffic.

Goldsmith sees South Poway Parkway as an alternative that will ease traffic on Poway Road, now heavily congested with local traffic and with inland commuters headed for I-15 and San Diego. In the future, it will link with California 125, which starts at the border on Otay Mesa and swings through the Santee-Lakeside area before heading north to Poway and beyond.

But Los Lomas residents fear that the road will go through eventually, if not by 1992 as planned. They would like to see Midland Road built someplace else so that in the future the bulldozers don’t come over the hill and start creating a roadbed where Gate Drive ends.

Also discouraging as they await the city’s decision is the offhand remark of a city staffer that “it’s 98% sure” the road will stay just where it is.