S.D. Growth Slowing as Economy Weakens, Report Says

After an explosive four-year boom, a slumping economy is slowing San Diego County’s employment, population and housing growth, said the author of a San Diego Assn. of Governments report released Friday.

“The indications are there that the robust growth of the last four years is certainly slowing,” said Jeff Tayman, author of the report and a demographer with the association, known as Sandag.

But, said Tayman, “we’re just at the beginning of the slowdown. The impact has really not been determined yet.”

The report was a follow-up to an earlier Sandag study based on 1986 information. Friday’s report said that several factors--including defense spending cuts, an overall aging of the region’s population, and stricter growth management policies--will also contribute to the change.

North County growth will continue to outpace that of other areas, Tayman said, though it will slow.

Tayman said the slowdown comes after “the largest peacetime economic expansion” San Diego has ever had.

The earlier study’s estimate of population and housing increases from 1986 to 1990 was 6.2% and 5% below what the figures actually turned out to be, the report said.

Sandag forecasts are used by municipalities to help in the planning of school, water and sewer systems, in addition to a city’s infrastructure.

Meanwhile, other growth-watchers are not sure if San Diego is slowing at all.

“San Diego doesn’t follow or conform to national trends,” said Peter Navarro, chairman of Prevent Los Angelization Now, a growth-management group.

“It’s well within the realm of possibility that, even in a mild recession, the local economy could remain at least as or more robust than any place in the country,” said Navarro.

“There’s no question that there’s been a temporary slowdown, but the big factor driving that and the Southwest is the S&L; crisis. After the market adjusts to that, we’ll resume the kind of trends we have been experiencing,” he said.

San Diego’s population is still likely to grow unless the country goes into a deep recession, said Bob Morris, executive vice president of the Building Industry Assn. of San Diego County.

“My expectation is that we will probably expect to see fairly significant numbers for population gains,” he said, adding that, “from what I have heard, job formation still appears to be fairly solid.”

Many things have contributed to the county’s huge growth--since 1970, the population has increased 85%--and most agree that the local economy has accounted for most of that, including both the defense-aerospace industry and the military.

In the past five years, the county has added, on average, 85,000 residents and 45,000 jobs annually.

Also, the report said the total number of foreign immigrants to the county--including those here illegally--rose 12% since 1985.

Births since 1986 have averaged 44,000 a year, or 7,000 per year more than predicted.

One manifestation of population trends is traffic growth.

In the county, the number of miles driven by motorists on the average weekday has grown from 36 million in 1980 to 59.3 million in 1989, said Bill McFarlane, a senior transportation planner with Sandag.

He said predictions show that number will grow to 70 million a day in five years, 78 million by 2000 and 96.8 million by 2010.

In a related area, the number of days San Diego exceeded the state clean air standard of 84 on the smog index--because of locally generated pollution--grew from 69 in 1986 to 96 in 1989, said Bob Goggin, spokesman for the Air Pollution Control District of San Diego County.

According to the report, the county’s population has grown annually an average of 3.76% from 1986 to 1990, which means a total increase of 344,225, bringing the current population to just more than 2.5 million.

In the same period, San Diego had a 2.83% average annual increase, or a 118,620-person jump to 1.12 million.

Meanwhile, North County cities far outpaced the rest of the county.

San Marcos averaged slightly more than a 10% annual population increase from 1986 to 1990, growing from 20,875 to 30,610. Vista was close behind at 9.41%, growing from 46,581 to 66,741. And Carlsbad, Escondido and Oceanside averaged 6.5% or more in yearly growth.

North County also led the growth in occupied housing units, with those five cities increasing on average by more than 6.5% a year from 1986 to 1990.

Again, San Marcos was far ahead of the rest, growing an average of more than 12% per year.

The number of San Diego housing units increased an average of 3.3% over that time, and the number in the entire county increased slightly more than 4% each year.

The report chronicled the history of growth in the county during the last four decades.

There was rapid development during the Korea and Vietnam conflicts as well as in the early 1960s, when the space race sparked a boom in the aerospace industry.

It was slower in years when military commitments declined and also when the aerospace industry sagged in the mid-’60s.

Growth rates climbed again in the mid-’70s, only to sink with the poor economy of the early ‘80s.

But that drop was short-lived, as the county is only now beginning to back off from the growth explosion that dominated the last four years, Tayman said.