Carlsbad's two ballot items had their start last summer

CARLSBAD -- Roughly a year ago, a Carlsbad businessman who wanted to start growing grapes and other produce tried to buy agricultural land along Cannon Road.

Bernard Goldstein's efforts were rebuffed -- the 26 acres he wanted were already being purchased by someone else, he was told. Not one to quietly go away, Goldstein began investigating who the potential land purchaser might be, he recalled this week.

His efforts, which grew to involve his friends, ultimately started a city controversy over the future of the Cannon Road region, an area south of Agua Hedionda Lagoon and immediately east of Interstate 5 that's now mostly known for a large U-pick strawberry stand.

In recent months, the debate over what should happen to the region's more than 300 acres of privately owned farmland has led to the creation of two proposed citizens ballot initiatives and a city-sponsored ballot measure. Only one initiative and the city ballot measure eventually qualified for the Nov. 7 ballot.

The issue has easily cost the city more than $100,000 in direct cash outlays, including roughly $55,000 for meeting facilitators, electric equipment and other items for a 30-member city committee, and about $50,000 for an economic report/legal analysis of the citizens initiative that qualified for the ballot, City Manager Ray Patchett said Friday.

The city's $100,000 figure doesn't include the hundreds of hours city employees have spent on the topic.

"It's been a broad spectrum of people involved," Patchett said, listing everyone from city engineers to attorneys.

The topic also has kept attorneys for the private property owners busy for months. Litigation has been repeatedly threatened. And, there are still more than two months to go before the election.

"I think, looking over the last six months, it's been a very interesting process," Councilman Matt Hall said Thursday.

Moving into the spotlight

When Goldstein's friend Ron Alvarez announced he was organizing a group to fight development plans for the Cannon Road region a year ago, it wasn't a hot topic around town. There had been mutterings for months that developer Lennar Corp. -- the creator of Carlsbad's Bressi Ranch project -- was purchasing more than 300 acres in the Cannon Road region, but the main controversy in the summer of 2005 was somewhere else in Carlsbad.

At that time, neighbors, surfers and local environmental activists were joining forces to fight the city's draft planning document calling for development in the south Carlsbad beachfront region known as Ponto. Plans called for a resort complex, two hotels, condominiums, retail shops and other structures.

After dozens of people turned out for a series of public meetings, the City Council agreed to pay for a full-scale environmental report on the Ponto plan. That process is now under way.

Meanwhile, the Concerned Citizens group that Alvarez organized moved into the center spotlight after it filed a state Public Records Act request in late 2005, aiming to learn how much the city knew about Lennar's development plans for the Cannon Road region.

The pile of paperwork that the city produced in response early this year stunned Alvarez and others, they said at the time. Within the paperwork was the news that Lennar might want to put as many as 900 homes in the region.


