Park Agency Buys Wetlands for $2 Million : Outdoors: The 89-acre parcel near the Del Mar Fairgrounds will remain a habitat for four endangered species. The land purchase is the first step toward a new regional park.

After 1 1/2 years of struggling infancy, the regional park agency that wants to develop a 55-mile-long wildlife and park corridor from Del Mar to the foothills of Julian announced Friday that it has taken its first step: the purchase of 89 acres of wetlands alongside the Del Mar Fairgrounds.

The property, once proposed as the site of a commercial resort complex that raised the hackles of coastal residents, will be preserved as wetlands and the home of four endangered species, officials said.

Cost of the property was $2 million, and will be financed by $1.3 million from the city of San Diego’s wetlands acquisition fund and $700,000 from state open-space bond funds approved in 1988.

The purchase was hailed by officials as signaling the park, which has been on some political agendas for more than 15 years, will become a reality.

“A lot of people who were getting discouraged by the bureaucracy--and that it’s taken so much time to actually acquire property--should be heartened,” said Diane Coombs, executive director of the San Dieguito River Valley Regional Open Space Park joint-powers authority, which was established in June, 1989, to develop the park.

“People should now realize that this park is really going to happen,” she said.

Because of the sensitive nature of the wetlands, Coombs said, it will remain off-limits to park visitors--who will be able to view it from various points--and it will remain a protected habitat for the belding Savanah sparrow, the light-footed clapper, the brown pelican and the least tern.

“This property’s value is in aesthetics, the environment and in scientific terms,” she said. “It’s not only a habitat for endangered species, but is on the Pacific Flyway for migrating birds and is a valued fishery.

“This was considered the single most important piece of parkland to acquire,” she said. “And it’s an early Christmas for us.”

The property was bought from a partnership known as Del Mar 88, which had controlled the land since 1978. At one time, the owners included the Birtcher Co., which proposed developing a hotel resort and commercial complex alongside the San Dieguito Lagoon. After Birtcher, which held the mortgage on the land, dropped its active interest in the property because of public opposition to commercial development, Del Mar 88 proposed development of a dozen 4-acre “ranchette” home sites.

The owners went into Chapter 11 protective bankruptcy last year because of an overdue $1-million mortgage note owed to Birtcher, and the managing partner of the group said Friday that he feels “passive” about now selling it for the park agency.

“The congratulations should go to the other side,” said Sam Langberg. “I didn’t do so well. It’s like watching my mother-in-law go over the side of a cliff in my uninsured Cadillac.”

Negotiations hinged on the price of the property. Langberg’s group had conducted several appraisals showing its worth at significantly more than $2 million--but only if it could be developed commercially.

But the park agency’s own appraisal, which called for its preservation as wildlife wetlands, came in at less than $2 million, Coombs said. The price was then negotiated over the past five months, and the pact was struck Thursday.

On Friday, a bankruptcy judge in Los Angeles approved the sale.

Langberg said final credit for the property’s sale should go to Coombs. “I have never met anyone in the political arena who was as honest, truthful and non-pushy as she was,” he said. “There was never really any question of whether the property would remain as a lagoon, but just a question of its fair market value.”

The park agency’s board of directors--representing the cities of Del Mar, Solana Beach, Escondido, Poway, San Diego and the county of San Diego--must now formalize the agreement in January, as well as the county Board of Supervisors, which most formally release the $700,000 in open-space funds that are under their local control.

Langberg said that, if the deal is not consummated by Jan. 31, it is off.

He said he was also maintaining ownership of an adjoining 12-acre parcel on the north side of the San Dieguito River, which he said he hopes to ultimately sell to the 22nd Agricultural District, which owns the Del Mar Fairgrounds, and an 8-acre parcel of river bottom on the east side of Interstate 5.

Coombs said lagoon improvements will likely be carried out by public and private agencies who will need to mitigate, or offset, the environmental damage they are causing with other projects elsewhere along the coast. Enhancements at San Dieguito Lagoon would be used as a trade-off for damage at those other projects.

The park agency is studying the purchase of several hundred acres along Via de la Valle, between El Camino Real and I-5, and of the 1,500-acre Boden Canyon near Ramona.

Land Purchase Acquistion for San Dieguito Regional Park