Is Vision of a New Vista Merely a Dream? : Redevelopment: Ambitious plans are in works to transform city’s center. Critics call them pipe dreams.

Within a decade or so, Vista’s aging downtown could be transformed into a cozy shopping village with such amenities as a micro-brewery, an aquatic park and piped-in Muzak.

In the evenings, pedestrians might meander along the banks of a babbling brook or stroll past coffeehouses and restaurants as tiny lights twinkle in the tree branches overhead.

The revitalized downtown would be anchored by a Hillcrest Uptown-style plaza with ground-floor shops and upstairs homes. Cars would glide through the city center on a revamped road system that includes a direct downtown exit from California 78.

Those are some of the details emerging for Vista’s future three months after the city prevailed in a lengthy court battle over its redevelopment plans.

Led by Bob Campbell, the city’s renaissance guru, Vista officials are trying to bring the broad vision into focus--negotiating with restaurateurs, retailers and industrialists to draw in new businesses, new jobs and new money for town coffers.

But the effort has produced decidedly mixed results to date, and some see the grand scheme for the future as a blueprint for failure.

“It looks nice and it sounds nice, but . . . it just isn’t going to happen,” contends musician Lloyd von Haden, the former city councilman who single-handedly blocked redevelopment for five years with a home-made lawsuit.

Critics predict that Vista’s downtown will continue to languish as businesses and city officials divert most of their attention to erecting a succession of tacky shopping plazas along California 78.

“They’re creating a lot of white elephants,” said Ted Cole, a candidate for City Council and party to a lawsuit aimed at killing a proposed auto-dealer park and shopping center next to the freeway.

For now, however, the momentum is with the visionaries.

“Doom and gloom is what those guys (Cole and Von Haden) are selling,” Mayor Gloria McClellan said. “Solutions are what we’re doing.”

In recent months, Vista officials have lured several large businesses to the city, many of them with redevelopment loans.

Vans Inc., an Orange County-based shoe manufacturer, is scheduled to open a local plant this fall, bringing about 600 jobs to the city.

Home Base, a warehouse store formerly known as Home Club, should be up and running later this summer alongside California 78 near Emerald Drive, Campbell said. Nearby, a Circuit City electronics-appliance store is supposed to open around Christmas.

Hebdon Electronics plans to move from Escondido to Vista’s industrial park, which is part of the city’s redevelopment zone, and Campbell said the city is negotiating to bring in an Oceanside clothing company and “a major medical-products manufacturer.”

But some of the most intriguing and ambitious proposals involve the downtown.

Last Monday, the city parks commission approved plans for an aquatic center with water slides, swimming pools, sand volleyball courts, waterfalls and barbecue pits on Recreation Drive. One of the pools on the drawing board is “just like the beach,” city parks director Jim Porter said. The water starts at 1 inch and gradually deepens as swimmers wade farther from shore.

The waveless pool would offer a safe, local and warmer alternative to the Pacific Ocean, Porter said. Also on the grounds would be a pool for competitive swimming events.

The aquatic center would cost about $3 million--to be financed from bonds and a $1-million parks department reserve account--and could bring the city an estimated $150,000 a year from admission fees and concession sales.

The plans still need City Council approval.

A micro-brewery is also likely for the downtown, either in the 1922 Union Bank Building at Vista Way and Indiana Avenue, or as part of a restaurant complex in a rebuilt Carpenters Hall, Campbell said. Two separate proposals are under city consideration, with construction likely to begin next year.

To create a soothing, outdoor-mall atmosphere in the city center, officials plan to uncover Buena Vista Creek and plant trees wired with twinkling lights and music speakers.

The resurfaced creek would flow along the southern edge of a shopping village, similar to Hillcrest’s Uptown plaza, with apartments or condominiums built directly above shops and restaurants. The village would be bordered by Broadway, South Santa Fe Avenue, Vista Way and Citrus Avenue.

To the northwest, a small “Seaport Village kind of thing” is being discussed, with construction to begin in 1993, but no details are available, Campbell said.

To the west, the city has vague plans for a restaurant row, a trolley-transit center and a new city hall that might also house administrators for the Vista Unified School District. The last two projects are some years off, Campbell said. A trolley line isn’t expected in North County until the next century, and public enthusiasm for a new civic center is low, he said.

At the other end of the downtown, on Eucalyptus Avenue near Escondido Avenue, the city plans to build a 30,000-square-foot library, at a cost of $5 million. If construction begins by 1994, the state will chip in $3 million, Campbell said.

The nearby Sycamore Creek mobile-home park will be razed after the turn of the century to make way for offices and shops.

To ensure that the public has no trouble reaching all these new businesses and buildings, Vista plans a multimillion-dollar renovation of its road system. Using a combination of state, county and redevelopment funds, the city is widening California 78, reconfiguring overpasses and off-ramps, and altering surface streets.

In 1994, work is scheduled to begin on a $25-million Vista Way freeway exit that will spill directly into downtown. Broadway, which now dead-ends at Citrus Avenue, will be pushed through to Escondido Avenue, where it will merge into a realigned and wider Vista Way-Jefferson Street.

Several new roads will be added; others--like North Santa Fe Avenue--will be widened.

Elsewhere in town, planners are working out plans to add assorted sidewalks, lights, curbs and gutters (Citrus Avenue, Los Angeles Drive, Beaumont Drive, Crest View Road); build a recreation center and a museum (Raintree and Wildwood parks, respectively), and spruce up the decaying, high-crime residential area around Nevada Avenue.

“We must get this city on its feet,” McClellan said.

Redevelopment funds, which are projected to total $500 million over 40 years, will subsidize many of the city’s plans. The money is raised by temporarily freezing the property values in certain areas of town, meaning that the county, the school district and other public agencies receiving tax revenue from that land receive no additional income as the property value increases. Instead, the money is earmarked for redevelopment. Bonds are often issued for a quick cash influx and then repaid with the increased property tax money brought in once the new projects are finished.

On July 8, city officials will convene to set priorities for spending that money during the next five to 10 years, Campbell said. Most of the early money will probably go toward projects along California 78, he said. The tax income generated by those projects will help finance the renovation of Vista’s downtown, officials said.

But critics say much of the dream will never come to pass. They point to the city’s uneven track record on getting projects off the ground and claim that a revitalized downtown is pure fantasy.

Perhaps the most glaring testament to the pitfalls of redevelopment is the roofless concrete shell of the Gateway shopping center along California 78. When the developer went belly-up, the city lost millions. The project is now mired in bankruptcy, although city officials said Price Club and Costco are interested in finishing the project when the troubles blow over.

Legal problems have also stalled the 75-acre North County Square auto park next to National University at California 78 and Sycamore Avenue. In response to a lawsuit filed by neighboring residents and auto malls in Escondido and Carlsbad, the owner of the property, Newport National, reduced the number of car dealers to six.

The revised project--which also calls for a 14-screen movie theater, a hotel, offices, restaurants, shops and several department stores (including a Walmart, Campbell said)--will be ready for City Council approval this fall, officials said. But legal challenges could cause further delays.

Also in limbo is the county courthouse expansion and accompanying proposals for a 13-building complex of law offices, restaurants and shops. Planning is under way, Campbell said, but nothing can happen until the county comes up with the $30 million needed for the new courts.

Redevelopment critics forecast similar snags for downtown redevelopment. Von Haden and Cole said investors will ignore the city core in favor of more visible and lucrative locations along busy California 78.

Downtown Vista doesn’t have the well-heeled clientele needed to support the tony boutiques and restaurants envisioned by city planners, Von Haden argued. “I would like to see (the plans happen) . . . but it’s not a viable location,” he said. “There are infinitely better locations than downtown Vista for investors to put their money.”

The proposals could be further undermined by a prolonged recession and water shortages, Von Haden said.

Cole even wonders about a few of the California 78 projects. He predicted that the new Home Base store will be run out of business by an existing Home Depot up the freeway in Oceanside, and he expects court troubles to tie up the Gateway center for years.

Mayor McClellan said Von Haden “doesn’t know what he’s talking about” and dismissed council candidate Cole’s remarks as election-year politics. “I would say that their crystal ball is 180 degrees off,” she said.

She acknowledged some missteps, such as the Gateway project, but said that, overall, the city has been remarkably successful, despite a sour economy, in creating jobs and attracting businesses.

She dismissed arguments that the downtown would be shortchanged by redevelopment, but hedged when asked how soon a renaissance might occur. “When the time is right, don’t worry, you won’t be able to keep (investors) out. . . . I can’t give you a time line.”

McClellan suggested that critics are trying to sow mistrust of City Hall among downtown merchants.

However, Campbell conceded that at least one key aspect of the downtown face lift, the Hillcrest-esque residential-retail village, seems to be going nowhere because of an inability to interest investors in such an ambitious project in Vista.

But McClellan pointed out that other downtown projects are under way, and that the redevelopment program is still in its infancy. “We just won the lawsuit. Let’s give it a chance.”