City Will Create a Comprehensive Plan for 12,000-Acre Urban Reserve

Hoping to avoid piecemeal development, the San Diego City Council on Monday agreed to create a comprehensive plan for one of the city’s last remaining undeveloped tracts, the 12,000-acre urban reserve on the city’s northern tier.

The council, in adopting the report of a task force on the future of the 20-square-mile swath between Carmel Valley and Rancho Bernardo, agreed to outline the environmentally sensitive lands to be preserved, transportation corridors and areas suitable for development.

The yearlong planning effort will allow the city to “evolve that open-space system in a way unlike anything that’s been done in this county, or any other county here in California,” said Councilman Ron Roberts.

The council postponed until September a decision on whether to extend a construction moratorium for the area during the year it will take to develop a “framework plan” for the land. A separate one-year moratorium, imposed while city planners map and analyze the area’s topography, will expire Dec. 10.

The urban reserve became the site of renewed conflict between developers and growth-control advocates last November when the council reaffirmed in a 5-4 vote its intention to open the area to large, luxury homes while securing promises that builders will donate chunks of open space and build more affordable housing.

City voters gave the urban reserve special protection from development in 1985 when they approved Proposition A after a hard-fought election battle between slow-growth groups and builders. The ballot measure requires developers to seek public approval for construction of more than one home per 10 acres of land.

But a little-known city policy on the books since 1981 allows construction of one home per 4 acres under certain conditions. As land and housing prices have escalated, it has become economically feasible for some builders to bring forward proposals to build under the one-home-per-4-acres limit, a move that growth-control advocates have opposed.

According to city records, some landowners have proposed construction of 3,220 homes on 8,339 acres of the reserve.

Included is Potomac Investment Associates’ proposal to build 1,000 luxury homes and two 18-hole golf courses that would serve as the permanent home of the Professional Golf Assn.’s tournament. The planned San Dieguito River Valley Regional Park also extends into the area.

In December, the council created a task force of environmentalists, landowners, planners and community leaders to determine whether the urban reserve should be formally planned. The panel Monday called emphatically for a grand-scale plan to be developed over the next 12 months, followed by “sub-area plans” to be submitted by individual developers.

In delineating its “vision” for the region, the task force asserted that “the North City’s inherent character is established by the topographical features of canyons, flood plains, steep slopes and sensitive habitat they support. . . . These are the lands which should be preserved, and which give form to the lands that are appropriate for development.”

In addition, task force members said, planning will reveal the area’s capacity for development, help outline the need for roads, schools, parks, fire stations and other public facilities, and ensure that neighboring communities do not bear the burden of development in the urban reserve.

Planners also should strive to create a community less reliant on the automobile, the task force said.

The council authorized hiring a private consultant, to be paid with $100,000 in city funds and $100,000 by property owners to help plan the area.