Battle Shapes Up Over Fairground Expansion : Environment: The state-owned facility’s growing popularity is at odds with powerful factions that want to preserve what’s left of the area for a regional park.

At the Del Mar Fairgrounds, success has caused headaches.

The state-owned facility attracts 3 million people a year to the small seaside city. For the 5,200 permanent residents of Del Mar, it’s like having an elephant sit in your lap.

The fairgrounds’ increasing draw clashes with the plans of powerful environmental interests who want to preserve the San Dieguito River Valley, where the fairgrounds is situated.

With fairgrounds officials planning more than $115 million in construction--including the second largest public-works project in the county’s history--the battle has been joined.

Environmentalists concede that the state-owned fairgrounds has a mandate to become self-supporting and to serve the growing population of San Diego County, but they are arming to fight any effort to expand the profit-oriented operation into the sensitive coastal wetlands that surround it.

Roughly a million fair-goers visit the 345-acre spread each June through July 4. The Del Mar Race Track hosts an additional million or so for thoroughbred races from mid-July into September. And another million people show up for the kaleidoscope of activities--from grand prix auto races to rabbit shows--that go on every day of the year in and around the assortment of homely, barn-like buildings that carpet the flood plain at the mouth of the San Dieguito River.

John Gillies, Del Mar city councilman, went so far as to suggest a few years back that the fairgrounds should move, perhaps to El Cajon or some other inland location, taking its crowds and traffic with it.

Fair officials say that’s, well, unfair.

“Local officials around here look at us like we were out to rape and pillage, but we don’t. We try to be good neighbors. We try to get into the game,” said Roger Vitaich, general manager of the sprawling state facility.

“The game” that Vitaich and the Del Mar Fair Board are watching from the sidelines is the creation of a massive open-space park in the San Dieguito River Valley, stretching from the ocean at Del Mar to the mountains near Julian. The players include almost every environmental group and local politician in San Diego and North County.

“They are in the game,” Solana Beach Councilwoman Margaret Schlesinger counters. “They (the nine governor-appointed Fair Board directors) are major players, major property owners in the proposed park area.

“But there is a basic philosophical conflict between an organization that is basically a commercial enterprise interested in expanding, and an effort to create a major passive park in the same place.”

Schlesinger, a member of the regional park joint powers authority board that the Fair Board aspires to join, concedes that the Fair Board and Vitaich have a job to do in making the Del Mar Fairgrounds a moneymaker and that they are doing it very successfully. A bit too successfully for the park officials and surrounding residents.

“It’s a serious conflict when they want to build and grow to bring in more money, and we want to preserve the sensitive habitat and create a passive park in the same place,” she said.

Vitaich acknowledges that fair officials “have tried to buy a little cooperation” from the regional park agency’s hierarchy, purchasing a 22-acre tract between the state property and the ocean that has been dedicated as open space and public beach, and trying to buy another 109-acre tract to be turned over to the park. The Fair Board also contributes about $70,000 a year toward regional parkland acquisition, he said.

“The money didn’t get us a seat on the governing body,” Vitaich said. “It got us nothing.”

What Vitaich and Fair Board members want is a spot on the board of influential elected officials from the county and cities near the San Dieguito River Valley. Although not powerful enough to stop expansion plans on the fairgrounds, the board’s members are also members of elective bodies that are--such as city councils, county boards and regional planning groups.

The regional park leaders have expressed concern over the Fair Board’s building plans, land acquisitions in the river valley and stated intent to accommodate larger and larger crowds at the fairgrounds, Schlesinger said.

Andy Mauro, fairgrounds administrative officer, ticks off the major construction projects planned for the fairgrounds in the next few years:

* Horse show arena. An open ring where the annual Del Mar Horse Show can be held while the audience watches in shaded comfort instead of on sun-baked bleachers. This is a $6.5-million project now under construction and scheduled for completion in January, in plenty of time for the 1992 World Cup jumping competition. Fair Board members recently won a bid to host that prestigious event, an international competition and warm-up for the ’92 Olympics. Capacity in the arena would increase from 2,200 to 3,800 spectators.

* Satellite wagering facility. An off-track betting palace on two levels where fans can bet on races at any of the 11 tracks in Southern California that happen to be running, then watch via satellite feed and collect their winnings or curse their losses.

The $11.5-million, 83,000-square-foot project will go out to bid in the next couple of months and should be ready to open by June, 1991. It will replace temporary satellite wagering rooms in the grandstand and will accommodate comfortably 3,400 bettors--a fair-size weekend crowd--and expand to cope with a maximum of 8,000 for special events such as the Kentucky Derby.

* Del Mar Race Track grandstand. The $100-million-plus building is proposed for the site of the present grandstand, with construction done in stages so as not to interrupt the racing seasons or grandstand events during the three-year building period.

The new grandstand will be extended to the west, for a total length of an eighth of a mile, with seating for 15,000--double the present number. The Mission-style design will remain, but little else.

Officials hope to start work in the fall of 1991, demolishing a third of the old grandstand and erecting temporary bleachers for use by grandstand crowds while the construction progresses. No interruption in race dates is expected, Mauro said, and the new facility is scheduled to be finished by the beginning of 1994.

The eight-story structure and a beefed-up infield viewing area are expected to raise capacity at the track to well over 35,000. Present capacity is about 25,000, “and you need a shoehorn to get them all in,” said Dan Smith, spokesman for the Del Mar Thoroughbred Club.

The record crowd at the race track was 29,856 on opening day of the 1987 season. Since then, satellite wagering has skimmed off a number of Los Angeles-area fans who formerly came to Del Mar. Now they watch the Del Mar races from the air-conditioned comfort of the nearest satellite betting parlor, Smith explained.

“This is a 55-year-old building which has run its course,” Mauro said of the grandstand.

It also is an embarrassment to the state, which owns the structure that has received failing grades on meeting state health and safety codes, including earthquake standards.

Vitaich points out that the new grandstand, with a price tag of at least $105 million, will be the second-largest public works project in the county’s history, bowing only to the new San Diego Convention Center in cost and scope.

“And it will be built without a cent of taxpayer money,” he said, because profits from the track and satellite betting will be used to repay the state bonds being issued to pay for the structure.

These multimillion-dollar projects raise the blood pressure of environmentalists and the fairground’s neighbors, who view the increased density as a signal that even more traffic is destined to clog their streets and freeway arteries to reach the improved facilities.

Even so, the brunt of the opposition to the Fair Board’s expansion plans is reserved for a much more modest proposal to construct a new off-ramp and on-ramp from Interstate 5 directly into the fairgrounds parking lots.

The $2.7-million project would allow northbound motorists from San Diego to exit I-5 before reaching the Via de la Valle off-ramp--now the only direct-access route to the fairgrounds parking lots.

A single-lane on-ramp to southbound I-5 would allow exiting crowds to avoid the Via de la Valle crunch. The ramps, which would be open only on peak attendance days during fair and race season, could cut Via de la Valle gridlock by at least 50%, Vitaich said.

The seasonal ramps would descend from the elevated freeway over the river valley into sensitive wetlands, both sides concede. But, Fair Board President Jan Anton said, California Department of Transportation engineers have designed the ramps to avoid any serious environmental damage.

“I think that we have a very good chance of getting the ramps approved,” Anton said. “Caltrans has convinced me that they can be built without causing a problem.”

San Diego City Councilwoman Abbe Wolfsheimer and County Supervisor Susan Golding, the chairwoman and vice chairwoman, respectively, of the regional park’s joint powers authority board, oppose the off-ramp solution.

In a letter to the state Coastal Commission commenting on the fairgrounds expansion plans, the two recommended that the off-ramps be abandoned in favor of off-site parking lots with shuttle service to the fairgrounds, bus fare subsidies for fair-goers, improved mass transit and other solutions that shift fair- and race-goers out of their cars and off the freeways.

Vitaich counters that the Fair Board already operates several off-site parking lots and plans to run shuttle buses to and from the future Amtrak/commuter rail station.

Deborah Lee, assistant regional director for the Coastal Commission, said the Fair Board has sent a draft of its public-works plan for comment from commission staff before it goes to formal commission hearings.

If the coastal agency and the city of San Diego--under whose jurisdiction some of the targeted land falls--approve the expansion plans, Fair Board officials will be able to carry them out without further regulatory interference, environmentalists say.

“They just can’t go on expanding,” said Alice Goodkind, who heads Friends of the San Dieguito River Valley. “They have obviously outgrown their grounds, and want to put parking on sensitive coastal wetlands.”

Nancy Weare, who heads the San Dieguito Lagoon Enhancement Committee, said the state’s coastal wetlands “are a finite resource” that have been reduced to about 5% to 9% of their original size by development.

“This is not just a local issue,” Weare said. “The coastal lagoons are nurseries for the ocean fish. They are of critical importance to the state’s fishing industry.”

A fairgrounds is not dependent on the coastal environment for its success, she said, but the lagoons are. If one or the other is to be moved, she said, it should be the fairgrounds.