Carlsbad council OKs 414-acre industrial park

| Tuesday, October 8, 2002 10:00 PM PDT ∞

TIM MAYER
Staff Writer

CARLSBAD ---- The City Council on Tuesday unanimously approved a 414-acre industrial park project that will help pay for construction of two roads that city officials say are key to solving regional traffic problems.

The project known as Carlsbad Oaks North is the last of three projects expected to finance the extension of Melrose Drive from the Vista city limits to Palomar Airport Road, as well as finish the extension of Faraday Avenue east from El Camino Real to Melrose Drive.

The two other projects include the Carlsbad Raceway and Palomar Forum industrial parks previously approved by the council. Palomar Oaks North is northeast of Palomar Airport Road and El Camino Real and east of the Carlsbad Safety Center.

More than half the Oaks property, about 219.5 acres, will be preserved in open space to protect critical wildlife habitat, including La Mirada Creek, a tributary of Agua Hedionda Creek.

Developers are being required to fund construction of a 1.3-mile section of Faraday Avenue from where it now ends at Orion Street eastward to link with Melrose Drive at the Vista city limits.

City officials say completion of Faraday will provide an east-west link to El Camino Real and is essential to prevent traffic tangles at Melrose Drive and Palomar Airport Road when the Melrose extension is completed.

The Oaks project is also required to pay for construction of a 2,800-foot section of El Fuerte Street from just north of Loker Avenue to the Faraday Avenue extension.

The council went along with a change in the project proposed by a local environmental organization, Preserve Calavera, to eliminate a sewer line which would have cut northwest through the property to El Camino Real. It and a related 12-foot-wide maintenance road would increase the destruction of habitat and encourage intrusion by off-roaders and hikers into the area, environmentalists said.

The city's Planning Commission had also recommended elimination of the line, replacing it with one that will follow the route of the Faraday Avenue extension and use a pump station to force the sewage flow up hill to the main line in El Camino Real.

The council did not go along with requests from environmentalists that the industrial project be delayed, that more steps be taken to preserve native oaks, and that a bridge rather than culverts be constructed to allow wildlife to more easily cross Faraday.

Biologist Keith Merkel, a consultant for the developer, said wildlife will use the culverts to cross the roadway and that construction of a bridge will actually cause the destruction of more wetlands habitat than the culverts.

Consultants for the developer said that about 19 oaks out of more than 600 may be destroyed to make way for Faraday Avenue, but efforts will be made to transplant some of the mature oaks. Each tree lost will be replaced with 10 oak saplings to be planted on the property.

The council did not respond to requests by representatives from the city of Vista that the Oaks North developer be required to help pay for more than $500,000 worth of improvements at two Melrose Drive intersections in Vista they said will be impacted by the project.

Mayor Bud Lewis said he would first want Carlsbad and Vista officials to meet and discuss the traffic impact issues.

And Lewis said he was bothered by the fact that for years Carlsbad has been responsible for improving major, regional thoroughfares such as Palomar Airport Road "and nobody's been helping us."

Contact staff writer Tim Mayer at (760) 901-4043 or tmayer@nctimes.com.

10/9/02

First name only. Comments including last names, contact addresses, email addresses or phone numbers will be deleted. All comments are screened before they appear online, so please keep them brief. Comments reflect the views of those commenting and not necessarily those of the North County Times or its staff writers. Click here to view additional comment policies.