Del Mar Fairgrounds officials agreed Tuesday to resume their negotiations with the city of Del Mar regarding the possibility of building state-mandated affordable housing on the fairgrounds.
Directors of the 22nd District Agricultural Association, which owns and oversees the fairgrounds, suspended the negotiations last month because of the Del Mar City Council’s request to delay construction of railroad improvements, including a bridge and special events platform that would improve passenger service to the fairgrounds.
Members of the state-appointed fair board also took offense to statements by Del Mar Mayor Terry Gaasterland, who said in news reports she favors rerouting the railroad tracks off the city’s eroding bluffs and through an inland tunnel bored beneath part of the fairgrounds. Construction of the route would likely halt or disrupt events at the fairgrounds for years.
Since then the San Diego Association of Governments, the regional planning agency leading the tunnel project, has voted to study a new set of possible train routes “that does not include an alternative detrimental to the fairgrounds,” fairgrounds CEO Carlene Moore said Tuesday.
With the dismissal of the route threatening the fairgrounds it would be mutually beneficial for the city and the fairgrounds to resume their negotiations over affordable housing, Moore said.
“This board has not and is not at this time deciding whether to build housing on the fairgrounds,” Moore said. That would be decided later based on studies of possible locations, soil conditions, traffic, environmental constraints and other issues.
Several city officials and residents supported resuming the talks, but one person asked the fair board to reconsider.
“The fact that Del Mar has failed to build even one unit of affordable housing is not your problem,” said Darren Pudgil, a representative of the Seaside Ridge project. “The city has other options.”
The 259-unit Seaside Ridge development proposed for a scenic spot called the North Bluff on the coast near the Solana Beach border would include 85 homes reserved as affordable, Pudgil said. The property owner has been at an impasse with the Del Mar planning department over local zoning laws for more than two years.
Some of the fair board members said that continuing the negotiations does not guarantee the city would be able to build housing on the fairgrounds. The deal is possible because a portion of the fairgrounds is within the Del Mar city limits.
“It’s very difficult to build affordable housing at any reasonable cost on the fairgrounds,” said Director Don Mosier, a former Del Mar City Council member and mayor. Much of the fairgrounds land is below the flood plain and could have soil problems.
Studies could show that building any housing on the fairgrounds could cost as much as $1 million per unit, Mosier said.
Other directors said their board should remember that protecting the fairgrounds is more important to them than helping Del Mar meet its state housing requirements.
City officials had been talking with the fair board for more than a year about plans to build on the ag district’s land. Affordable housing is scarce or nonexistent in Del Mar, where Zillow states the average home value is $2.3 million.
The housing dilemma is largely unrelated to the proposal by SANDAG and North County Transit District to move the railroad tracks into a tunnel.
Transit officials and planners say the tracks must be moved before the bluffs collapse, and that a tunnel beneath homes in Del Mar is the only reasonable alternative because of the area’s steep terrain.
Del Mar residents have raised many concerns about noise, vibrations, pollution, property values and the likely use of eminent domain in the tunnel project.
While the tunnel idea has been discussed since at least the 1980s, it is only at the start of a planning, permitting, and construction process that could take decades and cost more that $5 billion.
