Just months after a fierce battle over large-scale housing in unincorporated San Diego County ended with the ballot-box defeat of the Lilac Hills Ranch project, a new fight over an even larger housing project is gearing up.

Before the end of this year the county Board of Supervisors is likely to decide whether 4S Ranch developer Newland Communities should be allowed to build 2,135 homes on mostly undeveloped land north of Escondido and San Marcos, just off Deer Springs Road and west of Interstate 15.

Like Lilac Hills, the project would require an amendment to the county General Plan, a hard-fought blueprint for future housing growth that focuses on minimizing urban sprawl and putting new homes in more densely populated areas.

It was less than seven years ago that the Merriam Mountain project, a proposal for 2,600 homes on much of the same Deer Springs Valley property, was denied by county supervisors in a narrow 3-2 vote. It’s too soon to tell how the current board will view the so-called Newland Sierra plan, but opponents aren’t taking any chances.


Many of the same groups who fought Merriam Mountain have banded together again to fight the new proposal, with major funding coming from the elite Golden Door spa, right across Deer Springs Road from where the entrance to the master-planned community would go.

“Not only is it going to change the character of the area because you’re going to put lot of people there, you’re going to change the geography of the area because you’re going to have to blow up half the mountain to be able to put it there,” said land use expert Clifton Williams, who is representing the Golden Door.

Golden Door officials and other opponents have hinted that, if the county board approves the project, a 2018 ballot initiative could be launched to overturn it.

Newland Communities has ammunition of its own, including a growing consensus that the county is in desperate need of new housing and that many buyers still want single-family homes. The developer says that unlike Lilac Hills — which would have been built roughly halfway between Escondido and Temecula — Newland Sierra is just a few miles north of Escondido, virtually right next to the freeway and across I-15 from a 3,000-home community called Hidden Meadows.


“The owners of the Golden Door are out-of-town billionaires, and they are threatening and working hard to use their wealth to block a development project because they just don’t want any neighbors, regardless of how well the project is designed,” said Rita Brandin of Newland Communities.

She said only 400 of the property’s 1,900 acres will be developed, and that 58 acres are already zoned for about 2 million square feet of office and commercial uses — the equivalent of nearly two Westfield North County shopping centers — and 99 homes.

“Given San Diego County’s housing crisis, we believe that this property would be better used for homes,” Brandin said.

The next few weeks will bring the long-awaited release of a draft environmental impact report on Newland Sierra, which begins the clock ticking toward a county Planning Commission hearing and ultimately a hearing before the supervisors. If the General Plan amendment is granted, critics fear it could be a bellweather for other large housing projects in semi-rural undeveloped areas.


“The Golden Door is coming at this from a principled point of view,” Williams said. “We’re just following what the General Plan says … We’re following the rules set up just a few years ago.”

The revised 2011 General Plan, which took a decade and roughly $18 million to develop, discourages large housing development in rural areas in favor of more housing in already urbanized areas where things such as mass transit already exist.

Stephanie Saathoff, a spokeswoman for the Golden Door, said the spa obviously doesn’t want all those homes coming into the area because of how it would affect their historic business. But she said the Golden Door is also acting as a focal point for the entire Deer Spring Community, which will fight the plans as long as is necessary.

“It would pretty much destroy what the people who moved there expected to find,” she said. “Not by a few times over but by 20 times.”


Tony Eason is a retired physician who lives in a 32-unit, 55+ mobile home park near the intersection of Deer Springs Road and the freeway.

He said it’s wrong for Newland to suggest the Golden Door is selfishly pushing its own agenda.

“There are a lot of little people out there who don’t have deep pockets that are going to be affected by this tremendous, humongous project,” Eason said.

“My mobile home park is going to be pretty much wiped out by this thing if you consider the environmental effects, the traffic effects, the fire danger and all that stuff.”


Should the project be approved, Saathoff said, opponents are already preparing to launch a signature drive to place an initiative on the 2018 ballot that would overturn the decision.

“The community is already gearing up,” she said.

Newland responded with something close to outrage.

“It’s telling that the billionaire owners of the Golden Door are now threatening to spend millions on a countywide referendum when we haven’t yet even circulated an environmental impact report,” Brandin said. “They are essential rejecting the established review process, rejecting the process of public hearings and review… and saying to the public `We reject the rules that apply to everybody else. We will use our money to buy a process more to our liking.`”


The release of the environmental report, which will trigger a 45-day comment period, is expected within the next month.

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jharry.jones@sduniontribune.com; 760/529-4931; Twitter: @jharryjones