Moving Forward with the La Jolla Community Plan

by Councilman Scott Peters
for the La Jolla Village News
June 2002

When I was elected to represent La Jolla, one of my top 10 goals was to complete the update to the La Jolla Community Plan, which has languished since the 1980's. The Community Plan is the conceptual guide for how development and redevelopment are to take place in our community, and La Jolla took a big step forward this week with the San Diego City Council's adoption of our Community Plan Update.

The most recent effort, the 1995 update, stalled when the California Coastal Commission and the City Council could not agree on language to protect public views. In the past two years, our community has pulled together to reach general agreement on issues that have long divided us, including the means by which we protect public views, open spaces, coastal bluffs, and sensitive hillsides.

The news from City Hall was not all good, however. Our community lost its struggle to preserve as open space "Site 653," the vacant triangular 15,000-square-foot lot near the intersection of La Jolla Shores Drive North and La Jolla Village Drive. That parcel, owned by the City, had long been designated "open space" in our previous community plans, although it was zoned for single-family residential development.

Some years ago, the Park and Recreation Department announced its lack of interest in retaining the property in public ownership, deeming it undesirable to retain as a park. Late in 2000, on an 8-1 vote, the previous City Council gave "exclusive negotiating rights" for development of the site to Hillel, a Jewish student organization with a chapter at UCSD. They did this based on the misunderstanding about the parcel's designation as open space, which the community pointed out and the City staff later admitted.

As a practical matter, the land use decision on Site 653 turned on this one development proposal. On one side was our community, united in its fervent desire to retain open space and willing to provide the funding to do just that. On many occasions, our council has embraced this goal. On the other side was Hillel, a worthy organization without a home, which claimed that Site 653 was the only possible place for that home. Mayor Murphy and Councilmember Donna Frye voted with me to support the cause of open space; later Deputy Mayor Stevens joined us when he moved to reconsider. However, the other five members voted to stay the previous Council's course and to classify the property in a way that would allow Hillel's development. Needless to say, our community's reaction combined resentment, anger and deep sadness.

I share these feelings as well, and I understand the disappointment people feel about the Council's vote. Some people have wondered whether I should have scolded the staff for their mismanagement of the previous Council's actions, or upbraided Hillel for taking undue advantage of the City. I generally don't believe that yelling and screaming is professional or useful, and it's not my usual style. In any event, tactics of presentation were not what carried the day. After a number of conversations following the vote, I am convinced that my colleagues did understand their choice, and the mistakes and missteps that led us there. I believe they saw this as a regional issue, and not strictly a district issue, and they felt a sense of urgency to help an organization with city-wide backing to find a home. They were explicit in their sympathy for Hillel in part because the last council had invited Hillel to develop the land almost two years ago.

I believe that the Council made the wrong choice on Site 653, and I believe that our community should have had the opportunity to build that park. We must hope and ensure that the tortured mismanagement of designated open space not happen again in La Jolla or elsewhere. There is a long way to go before any project is approved there, and we will all be involved in the final result.

But in the aggregate, we have much to celebrate in that we have completed a community plan update that was 20 years in the making. Once the community plan is finally approved by the Coastal Commission, we can begin implementing the plan, including preserving permanently open space in the area of the Fay Avenue bike path and redrafting our "planned district ordinances." It will allow us to move forward on long-awaited actions like closing loopholes in parking regulation in the Village and clarifying "bulk and scale" requirements in the Shores. Those things have a direct bearing on the quality of life in La Jolla.

The passage of the Community Plan lays the groundwork for good planning and preservation of the community character and precious coastal resources that make La Jolla one of the finest communities in the United States.