Opinion: The Fairbanks field follies are one more city land-use botch

The latest chapter in the city of San Diego’s woeful public lands playbook would be farcical if it wasn’t so tragically misguided by the latest failure to properly manage the city’s open space in the San Dieguito River Valley basin for the public’s benefit.

The plot twist delivered in October centers on the City Council’s approval of a new exclusive lease concocted by the city attorney worth millions to a private nonprofit sports club, paving the way for commercial development and restricted access to 114 acres in the Fairbanks Ranch floodplain.

That decision was the culmination of a decades-long sorry saga harking back to 1982, a chronicle of missed opportunities that turned once-planned open space available for all in the San Dieguito River Valley into grass fields and parking lots on land known to locals as the polo fields.

To make way for the development of Fairbanks Ranch, the land, city owned by virtue of a grant deed limiting uses to passive recreation, equestrian and hiking activities, was upzoned and subsequently leased in 1986 to the now-defunct San Diego Polo Club. The lease came with its own restrictions meant to mitigate impacts to natural resources and the community.

No one save the current exclusive lessee, the private nonprofit Surf Club Sports, is applauding the City Council’s latest decision to remove even those weakly monitored and unenforced lease restrictions.

Certainly not the families who cannot afford participation and $20 parking fees. And not the neighbors whose emergency evacuation routes are clogged with traffic. Nor environmental groups who worry about pollution in the River Valley floodplain from toxic runoff and invasive plants.

Now the subject of a Sierra Club lawsuit challenging the city of San Diego’s ill-advised removal of any lease restrictions on the property at the corner of two semi-rural roads, the land should have always been dedicated open space open to all rather than an opportunity for commercial development under the control of a private organization.

So controversial was the original Fairbanks Ranch Specific Plan Amendment for a private country club in the River Valley and an upzoned polo field, it sparked a successful ballot measure in 1985 (Proposition A) that required voter approval for land-use changes like this one on 12,000 acres in what is now Carmel Valley and Pacific Highlands Ranch.

Unfortunately, Proposition A’s passage was too late to conserve this swath of land in the San Dieguito River Valley and subsequent lessees failed to live up to promises to complete a required public trail, control traffic and provide environmental protections for the riparian habitat, including control of the fast-spreading invasive grass that requires fertilization and consistent mowing.

Pam Heatherington, a well-known local advocate for the California Public Trust Doctrine, which guarantees access for all and proper stewardship of public lands, has spoken out about the proposed lease changes, emphasizing that the land was intended to serve the broader public and saying, “It was never meant for exclusive private or commercial exploitation.”

The Sierra Club agrees, as do the cities of Del Mar and Solana Beach, the Friends of the San Dieguito River Valley, the Carmel Valley Planning Board and the Environmental Center of San Diego, among many other community and environmental groups.

The Sierra Club lawsuit cites both the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) and state law (Senate Bill 1169)  in insisting that the land be used purely for park and passive recreational activities open to the public and that eliminating or loosening lease restrictions requires a thorough environmental analysis.

The city of San Diego, as party to the San Dieguito River Valley Joint Powers Authority responsible for creating and protecting the 55-acre natural open space park stretching from the ocean to Julian, is an especially bad actor in this 40-year sad comedy of errors.

Every child deserves access to publicly owned open space, trails and passive recreational opportunities, not just those who play organized sports or families who can afford the price of admission.

Ross is a writer and chair of the Sierra Club San Diego Chapter. She lives in Del Mar Mesa.