At last, the final Calavera Hills section gets OK

By: BARBARA HENRY - Staff Writer | Saturday, August 9, 2003 12:09 AM PDT ∞

CARLSBAD ------ Sometimes it just takes a while to get things right.

That's the take by city officials on the roughly 1,000-acre Calavera Hills housing development, which was whittled down from 3,300 homes to 2,300 homes in the 30 years it took the project to survive gnatcatchers and more developers than anyone wants to talk about. The final "village" cleared City Council last month.

Stretching from the Oceanside city limits to the edge of the Rancho Carlsbad Mobile Home Park on El Camino Real, Calavera Hills has one of the oldest and largest continuing development plans in the city. The region is home to Skull Mountain, Lake Calavera and the several-year-old Calavera Nature Preserve.

Looking into the background of the Calavera Hills development is like viewing a small slice of the city's overall history ----- big developments proposed in the 1970s caused the city to push for growth management in the 1980s. That was followed by an economic downturn and developers going into bankruptcy in the early 1990s. New developers arrived on the scene in the late 1990s and began pursuing much smaller projects.

The area has gone through so many developers since the 1970s that it's hard for the city to list them all.

'Nice try, guys'

Originally owned by Cedric Sanders, the land was first developed by a company called Pacific Scene, but city officials worked most with a later arrival ----- Lyon Communities of Newport Beach, city Planner Eric Munoz said.

Lyon Communities, which later went bankrupt, became involved with the project just before the federal listing of the California gnatcatcher as an endangered species in 1993. The listing led to many new restrictions on developments proposed for areas with gnatcatcher habitat.

Unfortunately for Lyon, it would be hard to find a better place for the uncommon songbird than the rolling coastal hills of the Calavera area in northeastern Carlsbad. Lush coastal sage habitat blankets the region.

"It's just a really rich wildlife corridor area, and it just stayed in place for a long time," Munoz said.

While Lyon Communities completed its documents in early 1993 and awaited city approval, the federal Department of the Interior sent out nearly weekly notices saying it was on the edge of declaring the bird endangered.

"It was like musical chairs," said Munoz, who had started working in the city's planning department by that time. "Nobody knew when the music would stop and the gnatcatcher would get listed."

The city could have quickly approved Lyon's plans, allowing the developer to avoid the soon-to-arrive gnatcatcher restrictions.

It also could have waited for the federal restrictions, forcing the developer to redesign the project, Munoz said.

Instead, the planning department decided to come up with a compromise. On the request of the planners, the City Council decided the developer had to assess how many gnatcatchers lived in the area and provide protection for them, said Munoz, who worked on the project.

"We held our breath waiting for the Lyon developers to say, 'Nice try, guys,' " Munoz recalled.

But Lyon didn't fight the measure. The company did the gnatcatcher study, paid $1.4 million to purchase land for a 110-acre nature preserve and gave the city $97,000 to create a trust fund to manage the property, he said.

Just after the company made the land purchase and gave the trust fund money, it went bankrupt and the housing project languished.

Taking out the trash

Everything sat on hold until the late 1990s when the current developer, McMillin Land Development of National City, took over. The trust fund grew to $140,000, while off-road vehicles illegally used the planned nature preserve as their playground.

The arrival of McMillin set in motion the establishment of the Calavera Nature Preserve. Now owned and managed by a nonprofit organization known as The Environmental Trust, the preserve came with a lot of unwanted trash. The preserve's managers had to remove 4 to 5 tons of trash ----- everything from old cars to refrigerators, said John Burke, the group's natural resources program director.

As the organization began hauling away the illegally dumped trash, McMillin started work on the housing projects that Lyon planned to build near the Oceanside city limits.

All that construction work in what had been a long-quiet area led to the formation of the environmental group Preserve Calavera, its president, Diane Nygaard, recalled. The group monitors the project and hasn't been happy with the construction work, she added.

"We have a number of concerns about the project," Nygaard said.

Preserve members have reported what they believe to be construction permit violations, including an incident in which McMillin cut down some plants the company was not supposed to touch, Nygaard said.

An official with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Department confirmed that the company did cut brush it shouldn't have while installing a temporary fence around the construction area.

"(However), we have worked through those particular issues at this point," the Carlsbad office's public affairs chief Jane Hendron said.

Preserve Calavera says it believes that the alleged construction violations are evidence that the city and other government agencies are handling too many housing developments, too fast.

Hendron disagreed, saying the fence incident is a normal part of doing business.

"Things like this do happen with development projects periodically," she said.

City planner Munoz said the Preserve Calavera group hasn't given the city credit for what it did to protect gnatcatcher habitat back before the bird was listed as endangered.

"We had this vision of community interest 10 years ago when these groups weren't even here," he said.

Finishing the work

When the Carlsbad City Council gave its approval to the final phase of the Calavera Hills development last month, there was no celebration, just questions from council members about when the accompanying roadwork would be completed.

Carlsbad has been under the gun to get a nearly two-mile section of roadway connecting College Boulevard and Cannon Road done for several years. The connection would allow drivers to go south from Highway 78 then turn west and get on Interstate 5 without having to motor through the highly congested freeway merger.

The developer has already extended College Boulevard from the Oceanside border to Carlsbad Village Drive. Commuters can't use it, though, because the city of Carlsbad has barricaded it off until the other roadwork is done.

A McMillin senior vice president, Brian Milich, said last week he expects the roadwork to wrap up on schedule, by spring 2004. A tour of the site last week revealed rock-crushing equipment going full-tilt, while giant dump trucks moved massive piles of rock around. Part of the road bed had been laid and some storm drains were in place.

In the meantime, Carlsbad city officials are not bowing to pressure from Oceanside to open the barricaded section, Carlsbad Mayor Bud Lewis said, adding that all council votes on the issue have been unanimous.

Though the roadwork is scheduled to be done next year, the final houses in the last Calavera Hills development won't go on the market until 2006.

Contact staff writer Barbara Henry (760) 901-4072 or bhenry@hotmail.com.

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