Rancho Guejito a development challenge

By: QUINN EASTMAN - Staff Writer | Sunday, January 28, 2007 8:02 PM PST ∞

ESCONDIDO ---- Building homes and businesses on the Rancho Guejito, a huge, mostly pristine 21,000-acre property east of Escondido, would be a lengthy and complex venture, planning officials say.

Representatives of the Rodney Co., the Rancho's owner, have recently started to discuss its annexation and development with Escondido officials, and have proposed building a medical research campus.

To find something comparable, one must look south, to the hills east of Chula Vista.

"In the county's recent history, the most similar proposal is Otay Ranch," said Mike Ott, executive director of San Diego County's Local Agency Formation Commission, the panel charged by the state with overseeing annexations.

A driver on Chula Vista's Olympic Parkway through Otay Ranch now passes thousands of homes, new schools and a mall, complete with a department stores and movie theater. Fifteen years ago, that road didn't exist and the land was used for cattle ranching and growing barley.

The estate of the Birch family, who owned 23,000-acre Otay Ranch, first approached San Diego County to plan development there in 1984.

It took five years for the city of Chula Vista and San Diego County to work out a plan for handling the area. Environmental negotiations that city officials reportedly called "four years of hell" led to a pledge to set aside 11,000 acres of open space.

Along the way, the Baldwin company that bought the ranch in 1988 for $150 million went bankrupt and broke up the property. The first homes weren't sold until 1998, according to Chula Vista planner Rick Rosaler.

A group of firms such as The Corky McMillin Cos., HomeFed and Baldwin successor Otay Ranch Co. eventually shared its development.

The Rodney Co. may face even more challenges than the developers of Otay Ranch, including skeptical county officials, a relative lack of infrastructure and environmentalists determined to make a last stand.

In a community forum in last week's North County Times, county Supervisor Bill Horn, not usually considered an environmentalist, wrote that he was "baffled" by the annexation proposal and that he hoped the property could be preserved.

Opportunity cited by attorney

To Escondido, the Rodney Co. offers transformation.

"Rather than simply becoming a bedroom community for San Diego-bound commuters, Escondido could develop its own reputation as a center of higher learning and medical research," a letter from Rodney Co. attorney Hank Rupp to city officials states.

Rupp said last week that he hadn't had specific discussions with any partner institution.

Escondido City Council members have publicly lamented their city's relatively low average income, and the idea of a prestigious project could prove tempting.

"It is an opportunity," said Mayor Lori Holt Pfeiler on Thursday. "It is a huge and beautiful property. We need to have more of a community conversation about how this might unfold."

Early on, Chula Vista also set aside land for a university campus close to Lower Otay Lake. The city competed for a University of California campus, losing out to Merced in the Central Valley.

City planner Rosaler said that two decades later, Chula Vista is in the process of making arrangements with High Tech High, San Diego State, Southwestern College and two Mexican universities to have a presence there.

Economically, Chula Vista's development of Otay Ranch has brought in prosperous families whose average income is more than 50 percent higher than those living west of Interstate 805, according to regional planners.

"Our City Council is well aware of that gap," Rosaler said.

Challenge lies in infrastructure

Even before Otay Ranch began to be developed, it had infrastructure advantages Rancho Guejito does not.

The project's 1992 environmental impact report shows that the western third of the Otay Ranch property was already crisscrossed by water and sewer lines and dotted with reservoirs. Highway 125, or the South Bay Expressway, that will bisect the area and is supposed to be completed this year, had been planned since the 1950s.

Most of Rancho Guejito lies outside the San Diego County Water Authority's service limit and is far from highways.

City and regional planning officials say they have only begun to figure out how to tackle Rancho Guejito.

"You have to know what you're studying first," said the city's planning director, Jonathan Brindle. "We've just now started looking at it."

Ott, the Local Agency Formation Commission director, said that the first step would need to be a "sphere of influence" review.

Only properties that are already within a city's sphere of influence can be annexed, he said.

In this kind of study, surrounding government agencies are consulted on which one is best suited to provide basic services such as utilities, fire and police protection.

"(Rancho Guejito) raises an number of jurisdictional issues that are red flags," Ott said.

For example, it appears that Escondido would also need to annex land around Lake Wohlford, so that Rancho Guejito could be joined with the city.

Opposing strategy

Conservation advocates are already planning countermoves.

For example, San Dieguito River Park officials are expected to propose adding Rancho Guejito to the park's "focused planning area" in February.

This designation may have few teeth beyond allowing park officials to write grant applications. But it does confront elected officials on the River Park's governing board, such as Escondido Councilman Ed Gallo, with a choice.

"It really comes down to a decision on what do we need open space for," said Escondido ecologist Rick Halsey, a board member of the San Dieguito River Valley Conservancy, the river park's nonprofit counterpart.

In addition, long-term plans of local conservation groups to acquire land around Lake Wohlford and Bottle Peak, directly east of Escondido, may allow them to have a voice in any future annexation plans.

Contact staff writer Quinn Eastman at (760) 740-5412 or qeastman@nctimes.com. Comment at nctimes.com.

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