Suit Aims to Put Brake on Auto Park Plan
Vista’s proposed North County Square, with its 45 acres of auto sales lots, has the blessing of the Vista City Council but still faces the opposition of neighbors and competitors in the Escondido Auto Park.
Escondido car dealers and a handful of Vista residents have filed suit in Vista Superior Court in an attempt to halt the proposed commercial development at Sycamore Avenue and California 78, contending that the center would bring noise, traffic, environmental damage and intrusion into the rural residential lifestyle of the neighborhood.
In addition, the suit alleges that the environmental analysis fails to consider the economic damage the proposed 102-acre commercial center would cause other businesses within a 10-mile radius, including the Escondido Auto Park.
Frank G. Tiesen, attorney for the Escondido car dealers’ association and six Vista neighbors, said there is legal precedent and California Environmental Quality Act language requiring the consideration of negative economic impacts of a project in an environmental review.
The 102-acre North County Square would also include commercial, office buildings, theaters and restaurants on the site spanning Sycamore Avenue north of the east-west freeway, but most of the lawsuit’s opposition to the project focuses on the expected eight car dealerships that will occupy the hillside freeway frontage near the National University campus.
Tiesen said that there are two appellate court cases that give precedent to his claim that the state’s environmental laws require developers to address regional economic impacts along with local environmental impacts before gaining approval of a development.
Auto sales, locally and nationally, have been on a down trend, Tiesen said, and “1989 was the worst sales year since 1982” for automobiles. To add a major new auto center in an area already served by two auto parks in Carlsbad and Escondido is an issue that should have been addressed and mitigated, Tiesen contends.
Escondido Auto Park, a major auto sales center in the western part of Escondido, is about 8 miles from the proposed North County Center. Car Country Carlsbad, a multi-dealership strip along Interstate 5 on the coast is about 10 miles distant from the proposed new auto park.
Morris Vance, Vista city manager, said the city is backing the North County Center project because it will bring jobs and “a tremendous amount of sales tax revenue” into the North County city.
Vance said no city redevelopment funds have gone into the project because litigation has tied up that segment of the city’s redevelopment program, but staff time has been expended in preparation of the development approvals.
Vance said that many of the original opponents to the plan were satisfied with the changes that the developer--Newport National Corp. of Carlsbad--had made in the plan, adding buffer zones to the boundaries where residences are situated and relocating the businesses to prevent excessive night noise or lighting next to residential areas.
North County Square, which is nearly an equal distance from Escondido or Oceanside, will serve areas to the north of Vista and cause major traffic congestion along Vista’s winding two-lane road system, Tiesen contended in his suit.
He is seeking a stop order on the project until the matter is heard in the courts, but said he believes that “the matter will be resolved in negotiations” expected to begin in the next few weeks.
Vance said the issue of auto dealership competition should be resolved through the state Department of Motor Vehicles, which has an established appeals system to determine if auto dealers are unfairly taking part of another dealers’ territory, “and not through the courts.”
