Escondido creating buyer-friendly Web site

| Friday, December 27, 2002 10:00 PM PST ∞

ERIN MASSEY
Staff Writer

ESCONDIDO ---- To encourage new businesses to come to Escondido, the city is putting together a Web site that will give buyers everything they need to know about any property in the city.

The $35,000 Internet site, which was unanimously approved for funding by the City Council last month, is currently under construction and scheduled to go public by June. It promises to offer everything from a list of available properties, to city zoning and special development requirements, to U.S. Census figures on the area's demographics.

"This is a 24-hour, seven-days-a-week service to the public," said Lyn Dedmon, an economic development analyst with the city. "We want to empower people with this type of information."

The idea came about when Dedmon was researching ways to improve economic development and noticed that cities like Honolulu had Web sites showing available properties. The sites also offer a list of neighbors' names, addresses and types of businesses.

Dedmon talked with Lisa Lubeley, Escondido's Geographic Information Systems manager and after coming up with a plan, they requested the council hire Berkeley-based GIS Planning to tailor a Web site specifically for Escondido's needs. The city will maintain the site.

"It has been a year-long process so far," Lubeley said. "The idea of (real estate agents) adding information to the server is a very powerful thing. It allows you to get the information or application out there. I think we can do that."

But unlike Hawaii, Escondido will include a link to the city's zoning and special use information for any parcel within its boundaries.

"The site will look simple, but it is complicated because it has to hit about six different databases to access all of the information," Dedmon said.

Bill Effinger, a real estate agent, said it would help him and other brokers immensely to have access to such a site.

"All commercial and industrial real estate agents would find it invaluable," Effinger said. "Anyone looking for raw land to develop would have to go to several different sources to get all that information."

His brother Jim, who sells commercial real estate for Hanson Realty, a Corky McMillan Company, said the Web site would be particularly useful for zoning information, which is difficult to obtain from busy city staff members.

"The zoning aspect would be extremely helpful," Effinger said. "If you call any city with a zoning question, the person takes a note and has somebody get back to you. They usually do call you back eventually, but it takes time and you really need the information quickly. This would be 100 times easier."

But Jim Effinger added that the listing of available properties will not be as useful. There are several, private sites available that offer similar information but are often out of date, he said.

"The problem the city will run into is that we salesmen, being the way we are, will put the listing on there," Jim Effinger said. "But when we sell it, we probably won't take the property back off. The sales information becomes outdated and will become a problem for the city to maintain."

Dedmon said officials from Honolulu mentioned the same problem, so Escondido is working on ways to keep the information fresh. Dedmon added that city staff may have to monitor the sales information, but the Web site eases the workload in other ways.

"This frees us staff up from answering questions about properties," Dedmon said. "This allows people to look up property for themselves so that we at the city can work on other things."

Contact staff writer Erin Massey at (760) 740-5416 or emassey@nctimes.com.

12/28/02

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