With News, Vista Can Get Down to Business

It was a long time coming, but when good news finally reigned in Vista City Hall this week, it poured on several fronts.

On one, the city learned it had finally prevailed in five years of litigation by former maverick councilman Lloyd von Haden challenging the validity of the city’s redevelopment plans.

With the announcement by the state Supreme Court on Wednesday that it would not hear von Haden’s last appeal in his efforts to block redevelopment, the city was given permission to move ahead unhampered in its plans to renovate its stagnant downtown.

And, on Thursday, Vans Inc., an Orange County-based manufacturer of casual shoes, announced it would accommodate its surge in business by expanding into Vista with a new manufacturing plant that will open up 600 jobs.

Meanwhile, Home Base, a warehouse-type home-improvement store formerly known as the Home Club, has announced it will open a 100,000-square-foot store along California 78 near Emerald Drive, near the stalled Gateway Project.

And Procare, a manufacturer of orthopedic braces and other medical devices, has plans to build a 110,000-square-foot production facility in Vista, moving there from neighboring San Marcos and adding 80 new jobs to its employment roster.

Earlier this year, the mass-advertising publication Pennysaver moved its corporate headquarters from Laguna Niguel in Orange County to Vista, and consolidated in that location other business operations formerly conducted in San Marcos and Chula Vista.

“Finally, the economy is moving forward in Vista,” proclaimed an ecstatic Bob Campbell, the city’s economic development director.

There are even more deals cooking on his stove that Campbell can’t yet announce--”a whole whole sequence of retail announcements,” he says, like about how a large electronics and appliance retailer is expected to move into the Gateway project at the city’s western entrance.

For its immediate effect, the best news for Vista is that Vans will expand into a 90,000-square-foot facility in the city’s industrial park, creating 600 jobs in the city, Campbell said. The operation will run around the clock and become the city’s largest commercial employer.

The manufacturer will also open a factory-outlet retail store in Vista, which is expected to do $500,000 a year in business.

“I took my tie off, and I’m wearing my Vans shoes today,” Campbell said.

If the creation of new jobs is highest on Campbell’s priority list, an increase in the city’s sales tax revenue is a close second. And to that, he talks excitedly of the arrival of the Home Base store, which is under construction and expected to open in July.

The store is expected to ring up $20 million in sales, if not more, in the first year, Campbell said, and the next-door electronics-appliance retailer is expected to sell $15 million in merchandise.

The Home Base store will become the city’s larger generator of sales tax revenue, Campbell said.

For the long-term, city officials Thursday were relishing most the news that nothing more stands in the way of their redevelopment plans, which had been contested by Von Haden for five years.

Von Haden, who championed slow growth during his two terms on the City Council from 1978 to 1986, single-handedly tried to side-track the city’s redevelopment efforts.

He argued that the city was using state redevelopment laws as a manipulative device to use property tax revenue to fund city improvements for the benefit of private developers, thereby encouraging the continued growth of Vista.

Von Haden contended that, although redevelopment is meant to eradicate blight, the areas targeted by Vista City Hall for redevelopment weren’t blighted.

His complex lawsuit was heard before various courts, and, although the city generally prevailed every step of the way, it wasn’t until Wednesday--when the Supreme Court declined to hear von Haden’s complaints--that it won its case.

“He finally came to the end of his rope,” said Vista Mayor Gloria McClellan. “We had been told that what we were doing was proper and right, but we had just this one person who would challenge us all the way. Well, he ran out of courts, and now the city can do what it’s supposed to do.

“I’ve watched communities around us, and what they’ve done through redevelopment, and it’s been heartbreaking to me to see what the delays have cost us in Vista,” she said. “Now we can get on with the job.”

With redevelopment, areas of the city are defined as “blighted” in a visual, social or economic sense, and the property values in those target areas are frozen in a base year. Then, as property values increase in those areas in subsequent years, the increases in property taxes are earmarked for the redevelopment agency to finance further public improvements.

Typically, cities will use the expectation of so-called tax increments to issue bonds to finance construction projects and repay those bonds over the life of the project. In Vista’s case, the city hopes to generate $400 million over 40 years to finance improvements. No new projects will be undertaken after the 25th year, and the final 15 years’ worth of property tax revenue that reflect the area’s increased property values will repay the bonds.

Vista officials are using redevelopment funds to help pay for the widening of California 78 through the city and to build new interchanges that will improve traffic flow across the highway that bisects the city.

Other funds will pay for renovation projects downtown, and 20% of the redevelopment agency’s income will be earmarked for low- and moderate-income housing projects.

For his part, Von Haden said he’ll now give up his visits to the county Law Library for research and instead spend more time pursuing his personal passions: tuning pianos and working in his grove and garden, where he grows “cherimoyas, pistachios, peaches, prunes, pears, every fruit and nut you can think of.”

“I’ve been called a pain, a negative thinker, but I don’t pay attention to that,” he said of the criticism thrown his way for trying to block redevelopment plans in Vista.

“I’m sorry I had to go this far (in courts), but not in the sense that I lost. I think I really won. I’ve gained the satisfaction that I did something worthwhile. While these hypocrites at City Hall may feel they’re on top of the world, they know in their hearts that they’re not using redevelopment to cure blight, but to get more financing to pay for rapid growth so they won’t have to ask developers for money.”

Von Haden says he’s got one last challenge: to complete a book on redevelopment, “Boon or Boondoggle?” which he wants to offer to communities that are grappling with the issue.

“There’s nothing else quite like it available,” he said.