CARLSBAD -- Eastern hillsides where hawks soar, and tiny coastal ponds packed with rare plants, have both captured spots on a nearly completed list of properties that a city-sponsored committee would like Carlsbad to buy and protect.

"It's not only a gift we can give our current citizens, but the generations after us," said Marty Montgomery, chairman of what's informally called Carlsbad's Open Space Committee.

The seven-member group, which officially goes by the title of the Proposition C Open Space and Trails Ad Hoc Citizens Committee, spent months ranking 13 privately owned parcels for habitat quality and community trail potential among other things. The group expects to meet one last time Friday, then take its list to the City Council by the end of the month.

What comes next won't be easy because the citizens committee has only reviewed the properties from an environmental standpoint, said Mike Grim, a city planner who's serving as an adviser to the committee.

Unresolved issues include whether the property owners actually want to sell, what the ultimate purchase prices might be, and how long the process will take. There is some money available -- the notoriously tight-fisted city has millions in its reserve accounts -- but how much of that will be spent on land preservation also hasn't been settled.

Permission to purchase

Voters granted the city the authority to spend money on land preservation when they approved Proposition C in 2002.

The ballot measure authorizes Carlsbad officials to spend more than $1 million on a series of projects, including a new swim complex, a city police/firefighter training facility, an extension to Cannon Road and open space/city trail projects.

The $1 million mark is just a financing technique -- any city capital project of more than $1 million needs voter approval. Each of the other Prop. C projects is expected to cost well over $1 million -- the swim complex alone is forecast to be a $22.3 million construction job.

Committee members say they have no idea how much purchasing everything on their 13-item wish list would cost. City officials such an estimate wouldn't mean much because Carlsbad isn't aiming to purchase all the properties, even if all the landowners wanted to sell.

The city can acquire preservation easements from property owners rather than making outright land purchases, Grim said. It can even accomplish its preservation goal if the land is bought and protected by other government agencies.

All this presupposes that the current owners of the parcels want to sell. The city isn't planning to use its power of eminent domain to force them to do so.

Closing the deal

Some of the owners of the 13 properties on the wish list have already said they are willing to part with their land; others aren't so keen on the idea. The 134-acre Sherman property, which tied for a second-place ranking on the preservation list, has a willing seller. The 11.5-acre Rancho Carlsbad plot, which placed far lower on the priority list, does not.

Preservation of the Sherman parcel, a mostly undeveloped plot within the Buena Creek Valley just south of Highway 78 and east of El Camino Real, has an added benefit -- it won't cost Carlsbad anything. Property owner Joseph Sherman is already working on a land purchase deal with the San Francisco-based The Trust for Public Land and the local Preserve Calavera environmental group.

In December, the trust and the environmental group announced that they had raised what they needed -- $9.5 million in grants and donations. If all goes well, they could close the sale next month, and transfer the land to the state Department of Fish & Game, they said.

But Rancho Carlsbad, a gated senior community along El Camino Real, has other plans for its 11.5-acre parcel on the preservation wish list. The community's board wants 7.5 acres for a flood control project and is selling the remaining 4 acres to a developer, homeowners association President Bill Arnold said Wednesday.

"We're not interested in selling it (to the city) unless they're going to give us a good price," he said.

Taking what's offered

Diane Nygaard, leader of Preserve Calavera and a significant contributor to the citizens committee project, said Wednesday that preservationists knew the wish list would cause some consternation.

That's why in some cases, the list includes requests for part of a given parcel rather than all of it, she said. For example, the Cannon Road area site that Carlsbad Unified School District wants for a second high school makes the wish list, but preservationists note that they'll take whatever the district will give.

"The request is really (for) that land that is excess to the school district's needs," Nygaard said.

The list may bring joy to some Carlsbad residents who've been pushing to preserve a 66-acre eucalyptus grove known as "Village H" along the south side of Carlsbad Village Drive at Victoria Street. That area tied with the Sherman property for second place based on an analysis of the property's environmental attributes, including community trail and wildlife corridor benefits.

The land is zoned for a community service facility, such a church or day care, and the company that owns the property hasn't opposed the preservation efforts.

Making the choices

However, the spot that got the first-place priority rank -- the South Coast Quarry site, immediately east of the Sherman property -- is going to be a source of conflict, city officials said.

The old rock quarry area near the recently built Wal-Mart on College Boulevard recently made the San Diego Association of Government's "smart growth" list. The agency's goal is to get San Diego cities to focus their development efforts on 200 areas included on the list. In addition, SANDAG is offering an incentive: $280 million in transportation funding starting in 2008 for communities that follow the plan's goals, officials have said. The money comes from a half-percent sales tax that voters in 2004 agreed to extend.

The quarry parcel now is undergoing reclamation work, but once that is done about 150 acres is slated to be sold to developer Corky McMillin Cos. Tentative plans call for several hundred residential units as well as some offices and/or retail shops.

Opposition to the development plans has already has begun to mount. In addition to environmentalists, the list of those opposed to the "smart growth" designation includes area tribal members and the League of Women Voters.

What happens next will be up to the City Council, Grim said. During a meeting later this month, the council is expected to simply accept the committee report. Decisions about what to do with the information will come later.

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

Open Space Committee property rankings

(in order from top-ranked to lowest)

175 points: South Coast Quarry area (just west of College Boulevard and south of Highway 78)

173 points: Sherman property (immediately west of the quarry area) and Calavera Village H site (Carlsbad Village Drive and Victoria Street)

170 points: undeveloped county airport property (northeast corner of Palomar Airport Road and El Camino Real)

168 points: Carlsbad Unified School District's new high school site (east of Cannon Road and College Boulevard intersection); the Kato property and the Mandana property (both in the Sunny Creek Road region on the eastern city limits)

156 points: Lubliner property (east of El Camino Real near the future College Boulevard extension)

145 points: Mitsuuchi property (southern city limits between El Camino Real and Tern Place

146 points: Rancho Carlsbad property (immediately east of the main Rancho Carlsbad development along El Camino Real)

143 points: Murphy Property (adjacent to the Mitsuuchi property)

102 points: Poinsettia area vernal pools (along the railroad tracks south of Camino de las Ondas)

82 points: Brodiaea native plant area (Newton Drive, just off Faraday Avenue)

Points given for having:

- certain plant and animal species of particular interest

- land that easily connects to other preserve areas

- trail expansion possibilities

- native habitat

- archeological, cultural or paleontological resources,

- land that doesn't need habitat restoration

- prospects for improving stream and lagoon water quality

For more information or copies of the city map pinpointing the potential preservation areas, contact Mike Grim at (760) 602-4623 or mgrim@ci.carlsbad.ca.us.