Land Seized in Drug Case Is Sought for Regional Park

Land seized by federal authorities in 1988 as the result of a drug case may become part of the sprawling North County regional park now under development.

The San Dieguito River Valley Regional Open Space Park Authority last week offered to buy the 124 acres near Lake Sutherland from the U.S. Marshal’s Service for $118,250.

The park agency wants to add the land to the recreational park and wildlife refuge along a 55-mile stretch of river valley that runs from the beach at Del Mar to the foothills of the Volcan Mountains near Julian.

The land was seized in March, 1988, because it had been bought with proceeds from drug dealing, according to Greg Doss, Deputy U.S. Marshal in San Diego. Other than that, officials from the various agencies had few details of the criminal case.

But those specifics matter little to Diane Coombs, the park authority’s executive director, who said the watershed property would add valuable space for hiking and horseback riding trails, rustic campgrounds and wildlife habitat preservation. “We’d never thought about this (drug and property seizures) as a means of implementing the park,” Coombs said.

A biological study of the site has not yet been done, but Coombs said she and other park officials hiked over the site recently. “It looks to me as if there’s a possibility of rare plants and animals there,” including at least two bald eagles, an endangered species, that she herself saw.

“I’d never seen a bald eagle before. To see two of them at the same time was really exciting,” she said.

The park agency wants to create that kind of excitement by keeping various ecosystems intact throughout the wide swathe of land.

“Starting at the ocean to north of Julian you go through every conceivable environment, from urban to extremely rustic,” Coombs said.

An anonymous donor has agreed to put up half the purchase price of the 124 acres, Coombs said.

The park’s Joint Powers Authority, formed in 1989, is made up of representatives from San Diego County and the cities of San Diego, Del Mar, Escondido, Poway and Solana Beach.

Earlier this month the authority voted to place the two parcels on its wish list.

The City of San Diego already owns much of the land between Lake Hodges and Lake Sutherland that would become part of the open park space, Coombs said.

The park authority, funded through park bond funds and donations, is also looking into buying land in the Poway and Anza-Borrego State Park areas, she added.

The current purchase involves two adjacent parcels along the eastern arm of Lake Sutherland, where Santa Ysabel Creek feeds into the lake. Its neighbors are a private cattle ranch and watershed land owned by the City of San Diego Water Utilities Department.

The property had been on the market with no takers, and was listed again in March, 1991, for $580,000, Doss said.

That appraised price differed by more than $400,000 from the appraisal obtained by the city water utility, which offered $118,250 last year, he said. The offer was rejected and the utility had to back out anyway for budget reasons, said Doss and Stan Smith, president of South Coast Equities, the San Diego real estate company that disposes of seized property for the Marshal’s Service.

Smith said the $118,250 is more in line than the original asking price because the only access is through city or private property.

Doss said he hoped the final price could be more of a compromise, particularly since the federal government has incurred administrative costs in holding the property.

Those costs, as well as the interests of other law enforcement agencies involved in the seizure, prevented the Marshal’s office from donating the land outright to the city, worthy though the cause may be, Doss said.

If a favorable deal could be struck, he added, it would be an added benefit to have property once involved in drugs go to the park. “If we can turn it into public use we have no problem with that,” he said.