Residents of Poway Enclave Rejoice Over Vote to Delete Road

It was Christmas in July for residents of Poway’s Los Lomas Estates when the Poway City Council gave them back their quiet community.

Council members voted unanimously Tuesday night to follow City Manager Jim Bowersox’s recommendation to delete a major roadway through the enclave of half-million-dollar homes south of Poway Road.

Bowersox said a traffic study shows that the road, a southern extension of Midland Road into the proposed south Poway industrial park area, is not needed to serve the new commercial area.

Situated on Cul-de-Sac

So Los Lomas Estates will remain an exclusive community at the end of Gate Drive.

“My 5-year-old son has been praying for the road not to go through for months now,” said Roger Boysel, a Los Lomas spokesman. “I don’t know that it helped, but it certainly didn’t hurt.”

The 19 Los Lomas property owners have built or are building expensive homes in the secluded valley, safe in the knowledge that they were on a cul-de-sac that protected them from through traffic. But Poway’s community plan and the south Poway development plan call for Gate Drive to become part of Midland Road, a north-south connector carrying 8,000 to 12,000 cars a day between busy Poway Road and future South Poway Parkway.

Last August, when Los Lomas residents found out that Gate Drive was to become Midland Road, they petitioned the city to find another route, detouring around their home sites.

A traffic study recently completed by an Orange County traffic consulting firm set the added costs for rerouting Midland at $1.8 million to $9.3 million, but determined that deletion of the Midland connection would have little or no effect on traffic flows between the industrial area and the city of Poway to the north.

Four other connector roads will link the two major east-west roads, Poway Road and South Poway Parkway.

Savings Diversion

Poway Partners, a consortium planning to develop a section of the city’s new industrial acreage, had committed to build the Midland Road extension through Los Lomas. With the road being eliminated, Bowersox said, the estimated $2.9-million savings to Parkway Partners should be used to construct other road improvements in the industrial park area.

Councilman Jan Goldsmith said the funds would best be used to extend Poway Parkway east to a connection with California 67, forming a new east-west connection between the Ramona-to-Lakeside highway and Interstate 15. Congested Poway Road is now the only direct connection between the two major highways.

Boysel, as spokesman for the Los Lomas homeowners, also asked council members to return the excess right-of-way along Gate Drive to Los Lomas property owners so that the road could never be developed into an 80-foot-wide, four-lane road.

Bowersox said the 80-foot right of way was granted the city as an irrevocable offer of dedication through the Los Lomas subdivision, but agreed to look into the issue.