109 Prime Acres : San Dieguito Wetlands an Elusive Prize

On paper, it is perhaps the most coveted privately owned piece of undeveloped property in North County: a 109-acre parcel between Interstate 5 and the Del Mar Fairgrounds, where the lush San Dieguito River Valley dissolves into wetlands at the Pacific. Tens of thousands of motorists drive by it daily, and who’s to say how many wonder why it is just sitting there, stagnant.

In another era--long before the time of environmental constraints and government-dictated land-use guidelines--the freeway frontage property seemingly would have lent itself to, say, a hotel resort, a shopping mall or a colony of time-share condominiums within walking distance of the race track and the beach beyond.

But today, almost everyone believes this land is good for only one thing: open space. And at least five government agencies want to get their hands on it, just so they can keep it the way it is.

‘Makes Me Want to Weep’

It’s a land rush to buy river bottom, but it’s a rush with a stutter start, with one agency looking to another to move first.

“Everyone wants it, but nobody’s acquired it yet,” bemoans Brooke Eisenberg, mayor of Del Mar. “It makes me want to weep.”

Among the agencies coveting the property are:

- The San Dieguito River Valley Regional Park Joint Powers Authority, which wants to develop a 43-mile-long park and wildlife preserve stretching from the river’s mouth at Del Mar to the foothills of Julian.

Because of its freeway frontage location, the land would be the western gateway to the park, a showcase of the region’s efforts to preserve open space for both wildlife, aesthetic and recreational purposes.

- The city of San Diego, which has several million dollars set aside for the acquisition of wetlands properties. Two-thirds of the parcel is situated within the city’s jurisdiction; the other third is in Del Mar.

If the city bought the land, it would turn it over to the regional park as public, open space.

- The county of San Diego, which received $10 million last year in state bond revenue for the acquisition of open space and parkland within the San Dieguito River Valley.

Like the city, the county would turn the land over to the park agency.

- The Del Mar Fair Board, which tried unsuccessfully 10 days ago to get control of the entire 109-acre parcel and says it will try now to acquire just 12 acres to use as seasonal, overflow parking for the fairgrounds. A state review board nixed the fair board’s plans to buy the entire parcel, for a variety of reasons.

Had it succeeded in buying the entire parcel, the fair board said, it might have turned over most of the 97-acre balance to the park agency.

- The Ports of Long Beach and Los Angeles, which have talked of buying, or at least of restoring, the wetlands so they could receive so-called “mitigation credits” to offset the environmental harm they will cause when they expand their joint harbor facilities in San Pedro.

If the ports ultimately get the OK to restore the lagoon so they can get Brownie points for their expansion up north, they would effectively be creating the very cornerstone of the park that local officials want--at no cost to the local agencies.

With so much interest on the part of public agencies to buy the land, why then isn’t it in public hands by now? Simply, most observers say, because the current landowner thinks the land is worth more than river bottom prices, and he’s holding on to it for the right one. None of the public agencies, meanwhile, wants to try to condemn the land for public use, out of fear that such an action would substantially drive up the price of the land.

Two appraisals of the property’s value--one made at the request of the city of Del Mar, the other by the Los Angeles and Long Beach port districts--estimated its value at about $1.1 million, or slightly more than $10,000 an acre. Coastal property that can be developed is worth far more than that, but the appraisers rationalized that this particular piece of land, plunk in the middle of a flood way, cannot be developed for commercial or residential uses and is valuable only as an open-space wildlife preserve.

Others Are Watching

The property is owned by an investment group called Del Mar 88. Of the 109 acres, 8 are along the eastern shoulder of I-5. The balance straddle the San Dieguito River--a sometimes overflowing waterway, a sometimes bare trickle--that empties into the San Dieguito Lagoon to the south of the fairgrounds.

Any number of other public and private agencies are watching in the wings, not prepared to buy the land on their own but hoping it will be preserved by someone--anyone--as open space.

“Coastal wetland resources are extremely scarce and are continuing to decline,” said Nancy Gilbert, a wildlife biologist for the U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service who is familiar in detail with the Del Mar 88 land.

“California has lost 91% of its wetland resources. When you talk of endangered species, you’re really talking about endangered habitats, and that’s why this piece of property is so important to everyone,” she said.

This particular wetland habitat, she said, is home to at least four endangered species: the California least tern, the light-footed clapper rail, the belding-Savannah sparrow and the brown pelican. Further, she said, the San Dieguito wetlands are an important link in the coastal chain of resting and foraging areas for migratory birds along the Pacific Flyway.

“If you remove that link in the chain, you can upset the whole migratory system,” she said.

Tremendous Potential

The land is not unscathed. During World War II, it was the site of a military blimp base and a small airstrip. Small industrial buildings, used by electronics firms, were situated there for a time, as well.

But Gilbert said the wetland holds tremendous potential because most of it can be restored to its natural state--one of only a few such sites along the coastline with that potential.

The central issue over the property is what it is destined to become. Several years ago, the private owners proposed a large, commercial, office and hotel development on the site. The idea was soundly thrashed by critics and turned down as environmentally insensitive without much further ado by the San Diego City Council.

Samuel Langberg, who lives in Los Angeles’ Century City and is the managing partner of the 15-member investment group, concedes today that Del Mar 88 will probably never have a chance to develop the property.

“There’s no question in my mind that I’d like to develop it, but I don’t think I’d ever be permitted,” he said. “As a result, we’ll consider selling it at a fair and reasonable price.”

How fair and reasonable? “It’s worth substantially more than $10 million,” Langberg insisted, scorning any notions that it’s worth only a tenth of that.

‘Extremely Unreasonable’

“The restrictions on that property were placed on it by the very authorities that now insist on buying it for a lower price because of all the restrictions on it,” he said.

“Certainly, reasonable restrictions should be placed on the property, for the good of all. But when they’re extremely unreasonable ones that result in condemning the land based on the fact that no one can do anything with it, they’ve forced me unfairly to give up my right to develop the property.”

Even with the constraints on the land, Langberg--whose partners bought the land 11 years ago in a distress sale from another investment group--insists it is worth far more than a mere million.

“If they need this property because they say it will be the mouth of their park, how can they say it’s not worth a lot of money to them?” he asked.

“I’ll be a cooperative seller,” he said. “I’ve offered over 22 different ways of how the city (of San Diego) can get it, and the fair board, and no one can claim I’ve been uncooperative or uncreative in coming up with ideas on how they can buy it in terms that will be satisfactory to everyone. And I’m still willing to talk to them, day or night or weekends.”

The bureaucrats who want Langberg’s land say it was other governments, not their own, that placed restrictions on the land to make it virtually undevelopable. Among the agencies that have some sort of control over the land’s use are the California Coastal Commission, the state Lands Commission, the Fish and Wildlife Service, the U. S. Army Corps of Engineers and the federal Environmental Protection Agency.

Economics Involved

“I don’t know that development on that site is impossible, but it might be so difficult, depending on the constraints, that it wouldn’t be economically feasible,” said Alan Scott, a land agent for the State Lands Commission, an autonomous government entity that manages state-owned tidal and submerged lands, including the San Dieguito River and Lagoon.

Fish and Wildlife’s Gilbert was even less optimistic.

“Any sort of development at that site would adversely affect the existing value of the lagoon as it exists today and permanently remove any opportunity to enhance one of the most restorable sections of the lagoon,” she said.

A developer would have to prove there was no alternative site in the region to accommodate whatever was planned on the Del Mar 88 property, she explained. “But there are other sites in the region that could accommodate, for instance, a hotel. That’s not the only site where a hotel can be built.”

Even if a hotel or other commercial project could be built there, she said, the developer would have to offset the environmental harm he would do by making trade-off environmental improvements elsewhere along the coastline.

“But that would be very difficult to do because there are very few other sites along the coast that have tidal influences,” Gilbert said. “That’s why the Ports of Long Beach and Los Angeles have had to come down this far--to San Diego--to find a place where they can do mitigation work.”

Who Will Step Up?

So, then, which public agency will step forward to try to buy the Del Mar 88 property?

The various San Diego County public agencies would love for the Ports of Long Beach and Los Angeles to buy the land, so the relatively few dollars available locally for open space purchases in San Diego can be saved for other expensive parcels in the San Dieguito Valley.

But the Coastal Commission nixed that notion several months ago when it balked at the ports’ plans to enhance the San Dieguito wetlands. Critics of the ports’ plan suggested that they look closer to Los Angeles to do environmental work--or, on the other hand, to at least look at other sites in San Diego County, including in Chula Vista.

Joe Chesler, assistant director of planning for the Long Beach Port District, said he won’t discuss what the ports are now considering, although they will return to the Coastal Commission next month to discuss the problem further.

“Whether we’re still a future player or not in San Dieguito is up to speculation,” Chesler said. The possibility exists, he said, that while the ports would not outright buy the Del Mar 88 property, they could still make lagoon enhancements there once another public agency buys it.

The Del Mar Fair Board had hoped to get control, at least temporarily, of all 109 acres in a deal that called for it to buy the 12-acre parking parcel for $425,000, then pay $1.3 million for the right to buy the 97-acre balance in three years, for just an additional $10,000. Either side would have had the right to cancel the option, and if Del Mar 88 pulled the plug on the option, it would have repaid the fair board $1.3 million plus interest.

Mortgage Payment Due

The option agreement was written so Del Mar 88 could receive $1.3 million up front--money it needed, Langberg said, for a balloon payment due on the mortgage on the property.

The state’s public works board killed the deal, saying there were financial and environmental concerns about the agreement.

Jan Anton, vice chairman of the fair’s board of directors, said the fair board has been reluctant to simply condemn the 12-acre parcel it most wants because such a court proceeding would likely drive up the price of the land. It would have been cheaper, Anton contended, for the fair to have succeeded in the purchase-option agreement.

“The price that the other agencies are offering Langberg is far from what he’s willing to accept,” Anton said. “They’re never going to make a deal. I don’t think anyone will get the property for even $1.3 million.”

Anton said Langberg would have allowed the fair board to buy all 109 acres for $1.7 million--$425,000 for the parking parcel and the $1.3 million option for the balance--if Del Mar 88 would have been allowed to lease other land already owned by the fair board, for commercial development. The fair board owns 43 acres of land along Jimmy Durante Boulevard that it leases to another developer for a golf driving range, a pitch-and-putt golf course and similar uses, and Anton said Langberg wanted a piece of that parcel for his own commercial uses.

“We already have something that no one else has: property that someone can do something with commercially,” Anton said, and Langberg was willing to sell his 109 acres in exchange for a lease on some of the 43-acre, developable parcel.

‘Win-Win Situation’

“It would have been a win-win situation for everyone,” Anton said. “We probably would have turned that 97 acres into open space so the park could have had it, at no expense to them, and Langberg would have gotten land he could work on, and we would have received income on that lease as well as have earned mitigation credits, for our own sake, on the 97 acres of open space.”

But Del Mar Fair Board critics, including Mayor Eisenberg, said they were skeptical of the fair board’s promise, since a fairgrounds master plan makes reference to possible parking on the 97-acre parcel.

With the fair board and the port districts in Los Angeles now at least temporarily out of the picture in terms of buying all 109 acres of Del Mar 88 property, all eyes turn to the city and county of San Diego, and the San Dieguito River Valley Joint Powers Authority--which is made up of both the city and county of San Diego as well as the cities of Del Mar, Solana Beach, Escondido and Poway, through whose jurisdictions the regional park would run.

The park agency technically has no money to buy any parkland, but is counting on at least part, if not all, of the $10 million the county controls, earmarked by last year’s statewide Proposition 70 for park purchases in the San Dieguito Valley.

The park agency’s executive board already has voted to put the Del Mar 88 property first on its acquisitions list, as soon as money is available.

San Diego City Councilwoman Abbe Wolfsheimer, who co-chairs the park agency with county Supervisor Susan Golding, said the Del Mar 88 property could be purchased by a mix of city and Proposition 70 funds.

‘Appropriate Money’

“We are all jointly interested in the same property,” Wolfsheimer said. “It’s a question of everyone paying their fair share. We (the city of San Diego) will be expected to contribute to the purchase price, and Del Mar would be expected to pay their fair share, and there’s the Prop. 70 money. The object isn’t necessarily to find the money to buy the land, but to find the most appropriate money.”

Golding says a fair deal is for both the county and the city of San Diego to split the cost of the Del Mar 88 property--and that her fellow board members are probably ready to open up the Proposition 70 purse as soon as Wolfsheimer’s colleagues do the same with their wetlands fund.

“I know that Abbe is all for that, but for whatever reason, the city just hasn’t moved forward on it yet,” Golding said.

San Diego Deputy City Manager Coleman Conrad said the city made an offer for the Del Mar 88 property last year, but the bid was rejected. There have been no negotiations since, he said.

If the county and city of San Diego agree on their fare shares of the purchase price, which then would be the lead agency to take the offer to Del Mar 88? That too is unclear.

The logical choice, most officials say, would be the park agency, on which both the city and county are represented. But the park agency has no staff, no attorney, no executive director.

Mike Gotch, a former San Diego councilman who now serves as chairman of the park agency’s finance committee, said he suspects the county will ultimately take the lead in buying the property, with the hope that it will be reimbursed by the city of San Diego.

And as soon as the local agencies coordinate their plan, Gotch said, the ball will be back in Langberg’s court.

“Sam Langberg has the opportunity to really set the tone for all future acquisitions within the river valley park by engaging in a true spirit of cooperation, in the public’s interest,” Gotch said.

“Mr. Langberg figures the odds are that the various government groups won’t be successful in setting up a river park,” Gotch said. “But we will be successful. We’ll be very successful. But we want the cooperation of the property owners.”