Poway Wins Road War Without Fight

Poway City Council members went into executive session Tuesday night determined to take off the kid gloves and put on the boxing gloves in their effort to force the city of San Diego to reopen Pomerado Road to traffic.

But when the Poway officials emerged, they were winners without striking a blow. The San Diego City Council had voted earlier Tuesday to reopen the road as soon as construction of a new Pomerado Road is finished--probably within the week.

Poway City Manager Jim Bowersox said he had received the report of the San Diego council’s action--also taken in closed session--too late to notify the Poway council members and the public. The Poway council had been expected to vote to bring suit against the bigger city over the closure.

Old Pomerado Road, a tortuous, hilly climb from the Poway valley up to the San Diego mesa where Scripps Ranch homes now stand, was closed Nov. 7, 1988, after the city of San Diego annexed an island of unincorporated and uninhabited land between the two cities.

Although the reason for closing the popular shortcut from Poway south to San Diego was to reconstruct the old stagecoach route to meet urban traffic safety standards, John Fowler, then San Diego assistant city manager, admitted that pressure from Scripps Ranch residents had had a part in the closure. He predicted that Pomerado Road would not be opened until Poway and developers completed a direct road to I-15, paralleling Poway Road to the south and taking the pressure of through traffic off Pomerado.

Poway has built part of the road--known as South Poway Parkway--but developers were less anxious to spend about $30 million to complete it through the San Diego portion linking to I-15 when the housing projects they had planned were being held up by the San Diego City Council.

But last month the standoff over development around Miramar Lake was resolved in a compromise, and major developers promised to begin immediately to build the bypass, which is expected to be completed in about a year.

“My opinion is that San Diego cannot close Pomerado Road any longer than the construction period,” said Poway City Atty. Stephen Eckis. “The city (San Diego) is obligated to open the road when it is completed.”

“I really don’t think that there is any doubt about it,” Eckis said of the illegality of keeping Pomerado closed. “It is a pretty clear-cut legal situation.”

Bren Development, which plans to build a major subdivision in the formerly unincorporated area, has a major stake in the issue. It can’t cash in on a commitment from Poway to provide sewer services to the subdivision until city of San Diego engineers certify that the road is complete.

Pomerado “was a regional road before any of us came to live in the county,” Eckis said. It was U.S. Highway 395 before the interstate (I-15) was built.”

The two cities are also collaborating on several joint projects, including a major sewer and water reclamation plant, which, several Poway city officials acknowledged, had prompted Poway to back off from any direct confrontation on the Pomerado Road issue.

But, as traffic backs up to “an impossible level” along Poway Road--the city’s main thoroughfare--as commuters from Poway and the growing backcountry town of Ramona try to reach the freeway to San Diego, Poway City Manager Jim Bowersox acknowledges, “We have to do something about Pomerado Road.”

Efforts to negotiate with San Diego over the road opening have not had much effect. Offers to restrict all truck traffic generated by the fast-expanding Poway industrial park, so that Pomerado will become no more crowded than it was before its closure, did not change the big city’s mind, Eckis said.

Bowersox said Tuesday night that the road opening is subject to conditions negotiated between officials of the two cities. He did not specify what those conditions were, but they are expected to limit truck traffic and keep traffic at the same level as it was before the closure two years ago.