REGION: Many questions, few answers on Rancho Guejito development Community planning group gets first briefing on backcountry housing plan
By: Mark Walker

The first public airing in what could be years of wrangling over a proposal to built thousands of homes adjacent to the historic Rancho Guejito Mexican land grant in the Pauma Valley backcountry generated a little heat, a lot of questions and few clear answers Tuesday evening.

About three dozen people peppered Rikki Schroeder of RMA Consultants about the proposal from the Rodney Co.

The company's plan is to set aside the original 13,000-acre ranch and 3,000 surrounding acres in exchange for development rights to build as many as 10,000 homes on 6,000 acres south of the ranch.

"We are here to suggest a large conservation proposal," Schroeder responded, and she repeatedly invoked that phrase to frame the issue. "We think this could benefit the public and the landowner."

Residents attending the informational meeting coordinated by the Pala/Pauma Sponsor Group, a land-use advisory panel the county supervisors, questioned Schroeder repeatedly about the number of homes being considered and how those homes would obtain water, sewer and related public services.

Schroeder had no definitive answers.

"We are at the very beginning of a very long process that will take years," she said.

The Rodney Co. is a trust established by Benjamin Coates, a shipping magnate who bought the property in 1974 and passed away in 2004. The trust is now controlled by his daughter, Theo, a New York City artist. Rancho Guejito was created in 1848 when Mexican Gov. Pio Pico granted the property to Justice of the Peace Jose Maria Orozco.

It remains the only Mexican land grant in the state that has never been divided or developed and is home to wide array of native plants and animals as well as important wildlife corridors.

Questioners were uniformly skeptical of building homes so far from existing services on land widely considered environmentally sensitive and important.

"It would be a disaster," said Rick Landavaz, president of the Friends of Hellhole Canyon Open Space Preserve. "It's excessive, and we certainly don't need 10,000 new homes."

Representatives of several Indian tribes in the area, including Bennae Calac of the Pauma Band of Mission Indians and James Trujillo of the La Jolla Band of Mission Indians, said any proposal has to seriously consider historic Native American cultural resources.

"We haven't even been consulted," Trujillo told Schroeder during the hour-long meeting at the Pauma Valley Community Center.

Asked if the Rodney Co. would first agree to preserve Rancho Guejito before moving ahead with any housing proposal, Schroeder said that wasn't going to happen.

"The plans have to proceed together," she said, later adding that it "has to make sense economically for the owner and for the community."

Marlene Beard of the group Good Planning Now pointed out that the county would require an amendment to its general plan, a document that guides development in the unincorporated area and does not now allow the housing density being envisioned.

"You're trying to bring urban type development into a rural area and it's something we are going to fight against," Beard said.

Schroeder repeatedly stressed there was no formal proposal to refer to and that her primary goal was that she was gathering comments from the community.

That nonetheless frustrated many of those in attendance, including Richard Halsey, president of Escondido's California Chaparral Institute.

"You've done a good job of not answering any questions," he told Schroeder.

When someone suggested the Rodney Co. was really engaged in an effort to drive up the value of the land for a potential government purchase, Schroeder curtly answered: "Thank you for your speculation."