Carlsbad Council Backs Plan to Create Flower Trade Center; Grant Still Needed

The Carlsbad City Council on Tuesday unanimously endorsed an ambitious plan to establish an international floral trade center.

The project was proposed by Carltas Co. of Carlsbad, with an eye toward shoring up San Diego County’s lagging flower industry.

The once-profitable industry, situated primarily in North County, has been hurt in recent years by skyrocketing land, water and energy costs, according to a staff report presented to the council. The establishment of a centralized distribution and marketing facility would increase the profits of growers, according to the city’s principal planner, Gary Wayne, who urged the council to back the plan.

Old Plant Already Being Renovated

Carltas, a subsidiary of the Paul Ecke Poinsettia Ranch, has already purchased and begun renovating an empty manufacturing plant on Avenida Encinas, which will have space for flower wholesalers as well as an auction house. The first tenants are expected to move in during the first two weeks of November, according to Carltas manager Christopher Calkins.

One Hurdle Remains

But one hurdle remains before the trade center can open for business: a $1.2-million government grant being sought from the Carlsbad Agricultural Improvements Fund.

The fund was established and is administered by the California Coastal Conservancy, which requested the city’s recommendation and will decide at its Friday meeting whether to approve the grant.

Conservancy spokesman Paul Webb said Wednesday that the agency’s staff favors funding the trade center. The money in the fund must be used to benefit agriculture in Carlsbad, and the trade center project meets that criterion, he said.

The fund was established by the Coastal Conservancy in 1981 as a way of making up for agricultural land that has been lost to development. Developers who convert such lands in the Carlsbad area to other uses are required to pay into the fund, which now totals $1.8 million, Webb said.

Carltas is proposing to put $2.6 million of its own money into the venture, but still needs the grant to get the project off the ground, according to Calkins.

“If the Coastal Conservancy says no, we can’t go forward,” he said. “The floral trade center can’t survive without the grant.”

Carltas’ request for the funding has been “well scrutinized,” said city planner Wayne. The Coastal Conservancy hired an outside consultant to review the request and determined that the grant would be justified, he said.

Part of the grant money would be used to subsidize rent on spaces leased to flower growers within the trade center, at least for the first 10 years of the center’s existence. Low rents are necessary to attract tenants, Wayne said.

“It will save the growers lots of money by consolidating the marketing, trucking and wholesaling in one location and allowing the buyers to come directly here,” he said. “It has the potential to really help the floral industry remain here and remain viable in the face of continuing development pressure.”

The local flower industry is dominated by small, family-owned businesses, according to Calkins. Many of them have had difficulty staying afloat in the face of escalating costs and an invasion of flower products from foreign countries such as Colombia, Holland and Israel, he said.

The Ecke family is the largest agricultural landowner in the Carlsbad area and the largest producer of poinsettias in the country.

Carltas and the Ecke family stand to benefit directly from the project as owners and landlords of the building.

Calkins said the tenants will also benefit and even local growers not involved directly with the center will profit because they will be assured that the agricultural services necessary to support their organizations will remain in the Carlsbad area.

Calkins said his company’s project has enjoyed strong support from all sectors of the community this time around, in contrast to a similar proposal two years ago.

In March, 1987, the Ecke family’s plan for a floral trade center was quashed by the cities of Carlsbad and Encinitas, primarily because of concerns over increased traffic near the proposed site on El Camino Real.

Calkins said that plan was also the victim of poor political timing. The center was to be built on a portion of the Ecke Ranch, in an unincorporated area of the county. But the newly incorporated city of Encinitas insisted on being allowed to annex the entire ranch in exchange for approval of the project. Carlsbad, on the other hand, was in the throes of establishing a growth-management plan and had taken a stance wary of any new development.

The new project falls clearly in the domain of Carlsbad, in a light-industrial area between Interstate 5 and the railroad tracks east of Old Highway 101.