What a revoltin’ development this turned out to be




From the VC ‘Life of Riley’ Department

Between iconic rocks, dangerous roads and a developer’s blind spot, it’s tough to get past the 1940s and 1950s when considering the latest 2015 developments around VC. We’ve got quite a popular culture kind of mix around here development-wise what with Indian tribes, Taco Bell, shady leapfrogs, and a crazy quilt conflation of which came first: development eggs or developers seeking golden eggs. It was a classic and pretty much forgotten today radio-then-TV show, “Life of Riley,” starring William Bendix as wing riveter Chester A. Riley, who taglined in outrage “What a revoltin’ development this is,” when life , as it always seemed to on that venerable show, went wrong. It happened every week back then and it’s happening again around Valley Center.

Some development is good and even warranted. Steve Flynn, son-in-law of the late Glen Bell of Taco Bell fame, and his group, are looking to develop some of Bell’s property into a modern-day shopping center complete with a national tractor supply company as anchor. This is a first -class development, one which we applaud.

Several other developments are beyond the drawing board and proceeding at what passes for lightning speed along the VC Road corridor. Many of these have good points. Some of these are controversial. Time will tell who actually breaks out of the pack and gets something done.

While the ultimate community hang-up may come from quantity, and not quality, for most of these new developments look good on paper; the process and debate will continue for a while. The fact is a lot of the projects would be great should they be the only project in town. That’s not the case, though, so the entire development glut looks like piling on and that’s too much of a good thing. Again, the VC Road development projects will work themselves out one way or the other. Whatever happens at least it’s an an area where development long has been accepted and codified as part of the future equation. More power to everyone involved in the process. That’s not even our focus today.

Poster child for developers gone wild

Where it comes to the “Life of Riley” and what a revoltin’ development this is, we have a poster child in — and you know where this is going — the big, bad, bogeyman, otherwise known as Lilac Hills Ranch.

I am not a Randy Goodson and his Accretive Group hater in principle. In fact, his San Elijo Hills project is by all accounts excellent, even visionary and popular. I covered this project, as it was being built, for the North County Times. While personally, I don’t like the way San Elijo Hills sucked up beautiful open space and my favorite secret route through Elfin Forest to Carlsbad, I also acknowledge it’s very well done and popular with the people who live there and the local governments encompassing it.

San Elijo Hills is no Lilac Hills, however, even though Lilac Hills is a total knock-off, albeit one-third the size. Lilac Hills might be a good-to-go development should it be placed in a more urban area like San Marcos or south Escondido.

But it’s not.

Location, location, location and this beast simply is the wrong size and in the wrong place. We’ve heard a lot lately about leapfrog development and how Lilac hills Ranch not only is inappropriate for rural VC, it violates community standards and even circumvents the costly and long thought-out General Plan. More than that ever, this beast represents a clear, and present, public danger.

A dangerous road

It’s true. Anybody who has driven around Goodson’s proposed Lilac Hills area knows how dangerous and just plain dumb this project would be in that landscape. The winding two-lane roads with limited sight-lines, and no plans for widening either at developer or county expense, barely supports existing traffic.

Throw in 1,700-plus homes and thousands of people and you get a disaster waiting to happen.

The area has witnessed several full-scale conflagrations already this century with drought and climate change further compounding future issues. Evacuations already have proved problematic. During one fire, Valley Center Road and Lilac Road backed up and couldn’t take the large number of evacuees. In another fire event, the roads were closed and offered no room for escape.

It’s easy to see why Goodson doesn’t care. He’s got a nice project on paper and aims to put it precisely on the expanding commuter corridor between Temecula and Escondido where people want to live and more housing indubitably is needed.

That doesn’t make it right.

When projects are executed, Goodson picks up his chips and moves on to the next development game. The people left behind suffer the consequences. Should Lilac Hills Ranch be built, Goodson will be nowhere to be found while Valley Center, Bonsall and Pauma Valley residents must weather the change and the consequences.

The first-time disaster strikes around a developed Lilac Hills Ranch will be the worst time. It will happen as sure as death and taxes and it won’t be a pretty sight.

Strange brew

It’s baffling and troubling that despite almost universal community and community planning objections, the beast has a pathway to approval. Latching on to tangential, and puzzling, green development features of the project as a factor that they said overrode General Plan prohibition against leapfrog development in rural area like Valley Center, county planning staff suddenly, and surreptitiously, approved the project recently.

The full-blown San Diego County Planning Commission has held a public hearing following a closed door-session to consider almost inevitable litigation over the project. County planning commissioners toured the area for a second time last week and plan a Sept. 11 — interesting date there — public hearing before voting on the project and passing it along to the County Board of Supervisors to go yea or nay on the project.

If supervisors actually care about their constituents and Valley Center, they’ll shove this development to a place where the sun don’t shine.

However, we’ve seen this group in the past ignore community and local sentiment for whatever reason, and don’t have a lot of faith in them and the process. Long story short, and with due regard to William Bendix and Chester A. Riley, Lilac Hills is a revoltin’ development. We urge supervisors to do the right thing and send it packing to somewhere other than our backyards. Otherwise, get ready to lawyer up and take this beast to state appellate court.



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