Growth Debate Divides Rural Valley Center : Development: Newcomers foil plans to fill town’s core with higher-density housing and a commercial district.

Valley Center has no center. It is a doughnut with a gaping hole where its town center should be.

But the rustic community north of Escondido is arguing about how to fill that hole.

Property owners there want a true town center, with higher-density housing and a bustling commercial area. Two-thirds of them recently signed a petition to have the county form an assessment district to raise funds for a sewer that would help them realize their plan.

But they say they are being thwarted by newcomers--young professionals--who live in the hilly ring around the center and are pushing for minimum 2-acre lots and, perhaps, a trendy restaurant or two.

The slow-growth newcomers, who now make up a voting majority, claim the town center property owners are trying to change the rural valley into an Escondido suburb.

“Most of the slow-growth people are recent arrivals,” said attorney Michael Lennie, who has at least one town business owner as a client. “They arrived two years ago from Los Angeles and said, ‘I’m aboard, so pull up the ladder.’ ”

The Valley Center Planning Group, which is charged with charting the future of the community, finds itself in the middle of the turf war over what, if anything, should be built in the town center.

The hole in the doughnut came about after the county Health Department in 1980 imposed a building moratorium on the town center because of potential health hazards posed by high ground-water levels and contamination from septic systems.

Lennie is leading the drive to obtain sewers for the center, signing up owners of about 65% of the property in the 3,265-acre area now frozen by the moratorium. He plans to ask the county to form an assessment district to raise funds to build the system.

Lennie’s office is in what was planned as Valley Center’s “country town”--a 5.5-square-mile area now zoned for up to 10,000 population, with four to seven homes per acre, some multifamily housing and a few commercial sites.

He also wants the County Board of Supervisors, who have the final vote on land-use matters in the unincorporated valley, to zone Valley Center to allow a greater range of housing in the town center, including affordable housing.

“They don’t want affordable housing in the valley,” he said of the upscale residents who live in the surrounding hills. “They want to keep their view of greenery.

“I think that’s part of their plan, to keep Valley Center exclusive.”

Lennie does not yet have estimates on what the proposed sewer system would cost property owners. Engineers are working on the figures now. But, during an earlier attempt to bring sewers--and development--to the center, the Valley Center Municipal Water District estimated the cost at $10 million to $13 million and received a $7.3-million federal grant for the project.

However, that effort ended on March 22, 1988, when voters in the 100-square-mile water district voted against the project by a 3-to-2 margin. Voters also required the water district to get the approval of residents before a project of more than $1 million could be built.

That election issue showed how sharply divided Valley Center residents are on the growth issue. Landowners voted for the sewer; outlying residents voted against it.

It might seem a simple task for Lennie to recruit property owners to form their own assessment district and pay for their own sewer. But, in order to make the sewer economically feasible, higher-density developments are needed in the town center. And the Valley Center Planning Group, which is dominated by slow-growth forces who want the area zoned for two-acre estates, must approve project densities.

Michael Johnson, a leader in defeating the 1988 sewer project, sees a compromise that would put upscale development in Valley Center’s doughnut hole.

“Let’s turn this place into the Emerald Valley. Let’s put in a couple of small sewer systems with enough capacity to support a nice dinner house or two and a farmer’s market,” he suggested. “Maybe a fish market and a public park. Let’s turn Valley Center into an upscale rural village similar to Rancho Santa Fe.

“We need good commercial development in Valley Center, but we don’t need more mini-marts or Jack in the Box-type development. We don’t need condos. If people want to live in condos, fine. They can go down the road eight miles to Escondido, where there are plenty of them.”

The planning group agrees that Valley Center needs to grow only a little bit. The majority favors two-acre zoning for most of the moratorium area, with a small sewer system that would support that development and a small commercial core.

Kevin Mahan, a planning group member, suggests putting the two-acre zoning to a vote of area residents--the same residents who voted down the 1988 sewer system and elected a majority of slow-growth advocates to the Valley Center Planning Group for the first time in the group’s history.

Johnson is concerned that a sewer district, which would be formed by the 300 or so property owners in the moratorium area, would not reflect the interests of the majority of valley residents.

“It would be the same as letting owners of a little area of the valley vote in an assessment district to build a rendering plant. It wouldn’t be fair to let a small group tell everybody else what to do,” Johnson said.

“I say, let the majority rule.”