Once more, big development projects fail at the ballot box
When big development proposals in San Diego County go before voters, they lose.
That’s been the reality in recent years and was reconfirmed in Tuesday’s election. All rules have exceptions, but here they are rare and only tend to happen when there are unusual circumstances.
Local residents vote against big projects when given the chance, as they did with a ocean-bluff resort proposed in Del Mar and a suburban-style development just north of Escondido.
But while anti-development sentiment has long been part of San Diego’s political DNA, there is a wrinkle. Voters may regularly defeat specific projects, but they’re not necessarily inclined to back broad limits on development conceptually. That seeming contradiction also played out in this week’s primary election.
County voters overwhelmingly defeated Measure B, an initiative that would have given the green light to a 2,135-home project in North County just east of Interstate 15.
In Del Mar, voters rejected
Measure G, defeating the Marisol project. The proposal called for up to 65 hotel rooms, 31 villas, a spa, restaurant, cafe and gardens above Dog Beach at the north end of the city.
But another countywide initiative aimed at making it more difficult to build large developments in rural and semi-rural areas was trailing narrowly, with hundreds of thousands of ballots still to be
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tallied. Measure A did not target a particular project, but would require voter approval of any future amendment to the county general plan that would have allowed one.
These are familiar trends. In 2016, county voters rejected the Lilac Hills development, which proposed 1,746 homes near Valley Center. That same year, Carlsbad voters defeated a shopping mall and open space plan near Agua Hedionda Lagoon.
A similar drama is taking place in Oceanside over the 585-home North River Farms project planned for Morro Hills. The City Council approved the development on a 3-2 vote, sparking a referendum to overturn the decision. One of the council members who supported the project, Christopher Rodriguez, has been served with a recall notice.
Less than two years ago, Oceanside voters rejected Measure Y, which would have required a public vote before the City Council could allow open space and agricultural land to be turned over for development.
While this year’s Measure A did not target a singular project, it was a response to a handful of them. Three years ago, county supervisors approved several amendments to the general plan calling for some 7,000 homes. Those projects have not yet moved forward, amid legal and procedural wrangling.
If those developments ultimately fall by the wayside, it won’t be because of Measure A, if it ultimately passes. The initiative is not retroactive.
The debate over whether urban sprawl is appropriate has been going on for decades. On the one hand, such developments provide the kind of housing and lifestyle many people want: single-family homes in quiet neighborhoods. But they’re often removed from job centers, exacerbating commuter congestion.
More recently, concern about not just pollution from automobiles, but the climate-changing greenhouse gases they emit has become prominent in opposition arguments. Also, much of the remaining undeveloped open land is in high-risk fire zones, raising questions about the wisdom of moving a large population into harm’s way.
Proponents of some of these developments contend the projects improve public safety because they are designed with wildfire defenses in mind and thus will act as a buffer for existing neighborhoods. Predictably, there are skeptics.
Similarly, the notion that increasing the housing stock will lower the cost of market-rate housing is disputed. Besides, a lot of people who already have homes probably don’t care if it does. If they do, it may be more likely they are worried that new development will decrease the value of their homes.
But all of that really is secondary to existing residents wanting to preserve their quality of life. Those residents largely don’t buy claims by proponents that the development will provide benefits and its impacts will be mitigated: by parks, entertainment venues, improved roads and more revenue for municipal coffers to pay for increased services.
The alternative, bulking up development along transit corridors, isn’t easy. Infill development tends to occur where infrastructure already exists and can upgrade urbanized areas. But improving and expanding that infrastructure — along with getting rid of existing buildings — is expensive, and gentrification can threaten to price existing residents out of their neighborhoods.
One notable exception to the trend of voters vetoing developments is the San Diego State University Mission Valley plan. The proposal to build housing, offices, educational facilities and a new stadium at the site of SDCCU Stadium was strongly supported by city voters in 2018.
But the university imprimatur is something other projects don’t have and the proposal was competing with another ballot measure for a more intense, private development. Who knows whether anything would have been approved had it been two private developments going head-to-head.
Another development survived a potential ballot-box challenge but, again, the situation was rare.
A residential-commercial project called One Paseo proposed for Carmel Valley just east of Interstate 5 was approved by the San Diego City Council in 2016. Opponents gave a familiar litany of grievances — it’s too dense, will create too much traffic, etc. — and a referendum was launched.
Rather than risk the project being scuttled by voters, the council rescinded its decision and the developers negotiated with city officials and residents. They all agreed to a scaled-back project, and One Paseo moved ahead without an election.
In other words, a compromise was reached. These days, that’s something unique.
michael.smolens@sduniontribune.com