This Time It's a Florida Consulting Firm
Over the last two years Carlsbad residents have watched city
leaders squander more than $1 million to outsource the future of their Village
by the Sea.
They fell in love with L.A. billionaire developer Rick
Caruso's promises to transform the site of the Agua Hedionda Lagoon into a shopping
mall magnet for $2.6 million in annual tax revenue, preserve strawberry fields already
saved by Prop D, and build scenic trails, all at no cost to the city. After a
citizens-led referendum overturned the City Council's unanimous support of the project,
the Council ponied up $650,000 for a special election that allowed voters to
send Caruso packing.
In March 2014, while Caruso courted council members, the city
signed a $380,000 contract with Dover, Kohl and Partners, a Florida consulting
firm, to create the Carlsbad Village and Barrio Master Plan to update the Carlsbad
Village Master Plan and Design Manual, the one that was written by city
planners and approved in June 2013. The 2016 plan is currently under review by
the city's Planning Commission. You can find it online
for public comment.
It's important to recognize the difference between Caruso's
project and the DKP plan. His was an off-the-shelf proposal, deceptively fast-tracked
as a "citizens' initiative" to avoid the scrutiny of state and local review.
The city could not modify Caruso's project for 30 years. The DKP plan, by contrast, is
working its way through the regular Planning Commission/public review/council approval
process.
The consulting firm has been paid only to produce a 20-year
plan, which the city may do with what it pleases. Whether it's approved,
altered or trashed, KDP pockets its fee and walks away happy, already touting its
Carlsbad plan on its website as it trolls
for its next client.
What Caruso and DKP have in common is their superficial
understanding of the people whose lives will be affected by their work. Voters
made that clear to Caruso. The consulting firm reveals this in its 1.4 Economic
Analysis Overview, using outdated sources from the 2010 U.S. Census and
2008-2012 American Community Survey, when it could have checked out SANDAG data,
the best source for a current picture of Carlsbad's demographics.
While KDP breaks down housing numbers into only two types:
"family households" and "non-family households," SANDAG
provides numbers on several housing types: single-family, multiple, detached, mobile, and multiple
family. DKP lists only the median age of residents, while SANDAG gives totals within ten-year age groups.
Maybe
that explains the consulting firm's patronizing attitude in the plan's
introduction: "It's time for the village to become a town." That
assumes most Carlsbad residents, like all
developers, believe growth is always a good thing. But with a projected buildout
population of 130,000 by 2035, with 22,000 more residents, 7,000 more dwelling
units, and 1,900 additional hotel rooms over the next 20 years, there's reason
to fear the kind of growth that could bring wealth to the city at the cost of its
quality of life.
At the Planning Commission's April 13 meeting Senior Planner
Scott Donnell pointed out that the DKP plan is only a revision of the 2013
Village Master Plan to both "revitalize the Village and rejuvenate the
Barrio." He promised it did not propose changes in density from the 2013
plan, nor "significant changes to building standards."
But, like beauty, "significant changes" are in the
eyes of the beholder. Here's one I'd call "significant." The 2013
plan's building height maximum in the Village
Center p. 110 is 45', which applies to both pitched and flat-roofed
buildings. The revised plan allows mixed used buildings in the Core
District 6.2.8 to rise to 55'. Donnell told me later that the consultants
did not propose that increase. Developers met with planning staff to ask
that the plan to be revised to accommodate pitched roofs in mixed use buildings,
since ceilings on the first floor have to be higher for commercial uses.
That would allow three of the four stories to be
residential, rather than two. That makes profitability, not pitched roofs, the
real reason developers want taller buildings.
And that's the first of my two major problems with the plan.
Adding rows of 55' high buildings along State Street, Carlsbad Boulevard,
Carlsbad Village Drive and Grand Avenue will create the concrete canyons,
cutting off views of the sky and blocking the sun, that characterize big
cities. That will destroy the quaint ambience of a town, much less a village.
My second problem is with moving forward to approve the plan
before the Comprehensive Parking Study is delivered next year. The claim that
changes to the plan can be made later is easier said than done if building
permits have already been issued. Developers are most likely ready to descend on City
Hall the day the plan is signed.
There are parts of the plan I like: Connecting the Barrio
with the Village, traffic calming, more trees, a more pedestrian-friendly,
rather than car-friendly downtown, plazas, a Grand Avenue Promenade, well-designed
and toll-free parking structures, a tunnel under I-5 to connect Grand Avenue
with streets east of the village, improved beach access, roundabouts and public
art.
This is a 20-year plan, so, unlike Caruso's project, it will
be open to changes over time. Time to add a diversity of community talent to
the city council, adding elected officials less disposed to allowing developers
and out-of-town consultants to shape Carlsbad's future.
When my wife and I arrived here 20 years ago, escaping an
Indiana winter, we wanted to roll up the city's welcome mat and lock the door
to paradise. Since that's not possible, we're counting on Carlsbad to grow in a
sustainable, people-friendly way. The citizen activism that drove Caruso out of
town gives me hope.
