Health & Fitness
Where Will Encinitas Grow According the Draft of General Plan Update?
Where will Encinitas grow according to the Draft to the General Plan Update?
The year 2012 will see a lot of challenges in Encinitas with the General Plan Update (GPU) being pushed through by the Encinitas City Planning Department. How will the different commissions feel about the plan? How will the City Council feel about the plan? More importantly, how will the residents feel about the plan? Then, there is the city council election in November which will be closely connected to how Encinitas residents respond to the General Plan Update. Yes, it will be an interesting year for our communities.
It's important to get familiar with the Update to the General Plan. Much is at stake, but most important is the planning department's vision in our city's growth.
The city planners have concentrated growth in three areas that represent less than 5% of the city. By allowing re-zoning from Commercial to Mixed Used Residential, the city and the developers will be able to plan for the construction of roughly 2,300 multi-family housing units. In plain English, this means apartments and condos. The proposed design is to have businesses on the ground floor and two levels of apartments on top.
Find out what's happening in Encinitaswith free, real-time updates from Patch.
The El Camino Real corridor is allotted the royal share of the growth with 1,255 units planned along a 1/2 mile area stretching from Sprouts to the south of Encinitas Boulevard to the Big Lots mall to the north. Encinitas Boulevard, from Westlake Drive to the Petco mall West of I-5, will receive another 847 apartments. The Santa Fe Drive/I-5 connector area will garner 280 apartments, mostly on the commercial area right across from Scripps hospital.
The table attached to this blog post is extracted from from the draft GPU (Sites Inventory in Change Area). It lists all the sites that are targeted by the plan. To make it easier for the reader, landmarks have been added.
Find out what's happening in Encinitaswith free, real-time updates from Patch.
Such a dense urbanization of three small areas of our city is worrisome, especially since these three areas already represent traffic bottleneck areas for commuters. Increased traffic congestion, school overcrowding, pollution, and decreased property values for those living near these areas are serious concerns for everyone in Encinitas.
To read more on the subject, you can, with a lot of patience, read the 1,000 pages that are on the Draft. Reading this document will put you to sleep really fast. A quicker option is to visit the website (www.newencinitasresidents.com) where different elements of the plan are summarized. On this website there is aslo a place to sign a petition that will bring the attention to City Council that the draft is not what a lot of the residents of Encinitas want.
Stay alert and get involved. A lot is at stake for our city. The draft will be presented to City Council on April 18, 2012. Before that date the city will conduct an outreach effort to the different communities with New Encinitas being the primary target. More news to follow about dates and locations of these workshops.
