The CV Planning Board will hear more information on the proposed One Paseo development this Thursday, March 28, 2013 from 6:30 to 9:30 PM at the Ocean Air Elementary School, 11444 Canter Heights Drive, San Diego, CA 92130 (NOTE: Special time AND location!) This meeting will focus exclusively on traffic impacts. Please attend to show your opposition to this massive, urban project!

The Carmel Valley Planning Board's February One Paseo Special Meeting has been CANCELED for the moment, and will be rescheduled for a date in the future. No information on the reason for the change, but everyone can take the week off -- treat yourself to a night out, or something! Note that the Planning Board will hold a February meeting, but One Paseo will NOT be on the agenda. The regular meeting will be on Thursday, February 28, 2013 from 7:00 to 10:00 pm at the Carmel Valley Library, 3919 Townsgate Drive. For additional information, see This Post on the Meeting, or visit the CV Planning Board Page.

Supervisor Dave Roberts echos our beliefs when he says, "I am not against development. I am against overdevelopment." That's the basic premise of WhatPriceMainStreet; that a reasonable, appropriate development would be supported by the local residents. Read Dave's entire commentary at the UT, "One Paseo project violates law of the land."

Yes, Kilroy has reduced the size of One Paseo, but it's still out-of-scale with the surrounding community, and the change barely puts a dent in the traffic created by the project (now it's "only" 23,000 additional cars!) Sure, they've added a Trader Joe's (hey, we want a Trader Joe's, too!), but that's not the point. Trader Joe's would still work in a much smaller project, something that would fit in Carmel Valley.

If you're concerned, the project will be presented to the Carmel Valley Planning Board on Thursday, Jan 24 at 7:00 PM at the Canyon Crest Academy, Auditorium, 5951 Village Center Loop Road, San Diego, CA 92130. Additionally, I've heard that Kilroy is presenting a One Paseo Open House on Thursday, January 10 from 4:00-7:00 PM at the Kilroy Centre Del Mar Campus, 3579 Valley Centre Drive, Suite 150, San Diego, CA 92130. If you have a minute, show up and tell them that the project is still too big.

Stacy Silverwood, a retired Captain of the San Diego Fire Rescue Department, sent the following letter to Councilmember Sherri Lightner. The letter expresses his concerns about response times if a large project is built at the One Paseo site. This certainly makes me wonder about adding 23,000 additional cars to our already congested roads! Here's the letter: Read more...

It's funny, this video was made for the "old" project, but it's still holds true. Sure, the traffic counts are down a bit (Kilroy has not released numbers, but we estimate that it's still 23,000 to 24,000 additional trips per day!) Remember, while One Paseo claims a 30% reduction in project size, that does NOT hold for reduction in traffic counts. Think about the "smaller" project this way: starting from the DEIR values (the only project we have numbers for), the total office space drops about 10% and the total retail space drops about 9%. The hotel is entirely removed, but the hotel didn't generate much traffic in the first place. And, while the residential units are SMALLER, the number of units has NOT changed! That is, there will still be the same number of people, causing the same impact on our schools, streets, parks, etc. It's also interesting to note that Kilroy's 30% reduction relies on the total figures from some mythical initial project submission, one that was never really studied by the community and where traffic figures were never released. So, it's hard for us to compare anything to their starting point. We chose to use the DEIR values as a starting point, as we have more information on that project. Anyway, from a traffic standpoint, the reduction is more like 10 or 12%, leaving, by our estimate, an additional 23,000 or 24,000 cars on our roads every day.

The fair brought us days of backups, and now the Horse Racing season starts to back things up for the rest of the summer. See the article from the North County Times on Del Mar racing season to add to I-5 commuter woes. Everyone should especially beware the weekends of July 28-30 and August 4-6, when the Surf Cup soccer tournament comes to the Polo Fields (El Camino Real at Via de la Valle.) I've heard about 120,000 total attendance over the two weekends, which is about 20,000 people per day. Looking at the Surf Cup website (www.surfcup.com), there will be nearly 400 teams competing, which is something like 5,000 to 6,000 kids, and their parents! So, don't think El Camino Real might be a good shortcut to bypass the horse racing traffic! And, just to make things more exciting, there are horse shows scheduled both weekends at the Del Mar Horsepark, across the street from the Polo Fields!

The SR-56 Connector DEIR is out with thousands more pages of information on impacts to Carmel Valley and Torrey Pines... One interesting point: It appears the One Paseo DEIR Traffic analysis relied on the best case version, the Direct Connectors. If any other option is picked for the SR-56 connectors, traffic on Del Mar Heights Road will increase by 4,000 to 9,000 trips per day, making the One Paseo gridlock even worse!

One Paseo's significant impacts to our community will not be corrected by improvements One Paseo makes to the area. Traffic gridlock will not be corrected by street improvements, no additional parks will be added for 1,666 new residents, schools might be impacted but the issue wasn't even studied! Read on to learn more...