Enormous Impacts to Torrey Hills

By Paula Abney, Torrey Hills

E-MAIL STORY

Monday, May 12, 2008 | I am responding to the article in voiceofsandiego.org. I am the vice president of the THCC and one of the original organizers of the group. The THCC has successfully won lawsuits against this developer and so has the Delmar Union School District. The issue was in litigation for almost three years and the Planning Board Subcommittee was involved in meetings with this developer for over two years.

Our position has always been to have 350,000 square feet of development on the four lots with 20,000 square feet of retail. Thomas Blake of Coast Income Properties also promised many street improvements to the intersection at Calle Mar de Mariposa and W. Ocean Air as well as street improvements around the school. I was the chair of the Torrey Hills Community Planning Board at the time Mr. Blake came before the Planning Board requesting to do a Community Plan Amendment to do residential multi-family homes on the site with a retail component. At that time, Mr. Blake stated that his project would only use 2800 ADTs (Average Daily Trips) and that additional ADTs that he purchased from Homewood Suites would be eliminated. This was agreeable to the Planning Board since 1725 ADTs were already used by Santarus in this Traffic Analysis Zone (TAZ). This would keep the ADTs in line with our community plan and would not increase traffic around the homes and school. Since that original meeting, Mr. Blake has proposed a project that is more than twice his original proposal and he now plans to transfer ADTs from the Homewood Suites site (950) to this location. This will be the largest project that has ever come before the Planning Board.

There are some board members who are not interested in the impacts to the community but are interested in the developer impact fees that the community will get for allowing this development to be approved in order to build a YMCA or a Boys and Girls Club. What they fail to realize is that the same residents who are impacted by the four lots will also be greatly impacted by the YMCA/Boys and Girls Club. This project will impact more than half of the community. Our Community Plan is predominantly low density residential and this project is completely out of scale with the rest of the community and will have enormous impacts around our elementary school.

1 Comments so far on this story...

Many of us still labor under the mistaken idea that Community Plans are soverign but Ms Abney's letter points out that frequently they fall prey to the mercenary machinations of developers whose primary interest is in profit rather than the welfare of the communities they eventually impact.Developer fees often provide incentives that take a good project to an outstanding level but can also be mis-applied.They are seductive. If the history of Rhodes project in Rcho Penasquitos,a 10+ year struggle,is any indication of things to come I'd suggest the Gentle-Lady put on her womanly armor and gird her loins for she's in for a long and expensive struggle.I wish I could say that the City's Planning Commission,if approached in an appropriate manner,would be a venue of healthy re-dress,however,the history in such cases doesn't inspire confidence,although, they do seem to sustain exisiting Community plans when backed by unanimous votes of community Planning Boards.

Posted by Jack Griffiths | reply to this comment
May 12, 2008 6:36 am

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