Making a Molehill Out of Bernardo Mountain? : Growth: Neighbors say that’s what will happen if a developer’s long-sought plan goes through. The builder promises they will like what they see.

Have you ever settled yourself to perfection in a hammock, everything you need for a restful afternoon within easy reach and a soft spring breeze riffling the leaves above your head--and then the phone rings?

That’s how the folks who live around Bernardo Mountain feel when the issue of Herb Turner’s residential development plan comes up. For the umpteenth time in the past dozen years, the telephone has rung and the battle over Bernardo Mountain has reignited tempers in the neighborhood.

The mountain--at least the Southern California version of a mountain--looms 1,150 feet over the waters of Lake Hodges on the southern fringes of Escondido. To the east are clusters of new subdivisions on contoured hills, the busy North County Fair shopping center and the even busier Interstate 15 freeway. That is the city of Escondido.

To the west and north lie county islands of land where narrow country roads wind through citrus groves, and scattered residences are served with septic tanks, not sewers. That is the county of San Diego.

In the midst of this mixed milieu, Bernardo Mountain rises in dark silhouette, unmarred by roads or homes or radio towers. It is home to mule deer, golden eagles, mountain lilac and Indian artifacts, but not to people. At least not yet.

“Talk about building houses on the mountain has come and gone over the years,” said Donald Hegerle, who lives on Quiet Place in Quiet Hills Farm. “I’ve lived here nearly 30 years, and there’s always talk of development. It never seems to come to anything.”

But Del Mar architect and builder Turner owns Bernardo Mountain, and Turner is a patient man. For more than a decade, he has worked to gain the needed permits and services to build a very exclusive enclave of homes on its slopes.

As far back as 1983, the Escondido City Council approved a development plan on Turner’s 232-acre property that contained no requirement for open space. In 1987, the council approved a tentative subdivision map for an 82-unit development on 48 acres of Bernardo Mountain, adding a condition that 75% of the remaining 184 acres remain in permanent open space.

Then, just a few days before the June, 1988, election, when the majority vote on the council changed from pro-growth to slow-growth, the original 1983 agreement that made no open-space requirement was reapproved.

Jerry Harmon, who heads the three-vote council majority attempting to rein in development to a rate at which city services are able to keep up, explained the new slow-growth council’s dilemma:

If the council denied Turner his subdivision map approval, the developer would still have the right to build his 82-home project on Bernardo Mountain, but without the requirement of dedicating 134 acres to open space.

Harmon, who has been on the council since 1974, often as the lone environmentalist vote to save the mountain, is convinced that the new majority made the right choice last year when it again approved Turner’s subdivision with only a couple of relatively minor new requirements.

Half a mountain is better than no mountain at all, he believes.

To Ted Kilman and his adult children, Jennifer and Matt, the issue was not all that clear. As the most active members of the Friends of Bernardo Mountain, the Kilmans marshaled Sierra Club activists, the San Diego Archeological Society, the Audubon Society, the state Department of Fish and Game and half a dozen other groups to testify a year ago that Bernardo Mountain is a unique landmark, the last of its kind in the growing inland North County, where mountains have given way to freeway off-ramps, industrial parks and housing pads.

Endangered species of flora and fauna and the last traces of ancient Indian cultures should remain undisturbed on Bernardo Mountain was the message of the environmental and wildlife groups. But their reasoning and their pleas did not sway the council majority. Turner owned the mountain, and Turner had prior city approval to develop it, they decided.

Ted Kilman recently reactivated the Friends of Bernardo Mountain in one last effort to halt the invasion of bulldozers on the mountain, which he called “a pristine landmark, not just a another piece of land.”

This time, he said, many newcomers will swell the ranks of the old-timer corps because homeowners in the newer community of Lomas Serenas to the east and the proliferating country estates to the west “bought their homes for the view of the mountain.”

When the council decides May 9 to consider whether Turner has met the final requirements for developing his subdivision, Friends of Bernardo Mountain will be there to voice its protest.

Yolanda Fleet, a longtime resident whose family has owned property around the mountain for decades, had a tinge of sadness in her voice as she talked about the battle.

“There are so many wonderful things on that hill,” Fleet said. “It should be saved. It’s the only open mountain that we have left around here. The rest have been graded down to silt.”

She feels that the City Council, slow-growth or pro-growth, “has taken advantage of us in the county, have pushed us around.”

Bernardo Mountain should be acquired and made a part of the San Dieguito River Valley Regional Park, Fleet said.

“Councilman Harmon has said that it had been looked into, but I’m not sure that it has,” she said. “They listen to us and nod their heads, and then do something else. I think that they are afraid of another lawsuit by another developer.”

Herb Turner, who concedes that he has wondered many times during the 12 1/2 years he has been planning his Bernardo Mountain development whether it was worth the time and effort, believes that, when the community is built, these doubting neighbors will nod in approval.

“Eleven years ago, I thought I had it done,” Turner said, “but then I found out it was only the beginning.”

Now he again thinks he has reached the end of the outcry and the beginning of the building of “a development I can be proud of.”

His homes, or, more fairly, estates, will be designed to fit into the contours and blend in with the colors of nature. He plans to invite other California architects of note to design some of the 82 homes to come up with what he hopes will “establish a style of architecture for San Diego County.”

Above all, he plans to preserve the looming, dark profile of the mountain that its neighbors so admire.

“I know that, until I start, this is just an exercise in words,” Turner said. But someday, perhaps not far in the future, he’s convinced that the neighbors will be bragging about living next to the community he built in the same way they talk about living near Bernardo Mountain.

“It’s a great piece of dirt,” Turner said, “and, if this works out, it’s worth all the time and trouble.”