Industrial Park Has Estate Owners Upset

At age 75, Faith Mohling is in no mood to do battle with an array of adversaries. But, if they plan to poach on her turf, she may do just that.

Mohling, a Poway building contractor since 1970, fell in love with her most recent venture, Los Lomas Estates in the south Poway hills.

There, at the end of winding Gate Drive, she prepared 19 building sites on 47 acres nestled in a bowl of the surrounding hills. On one of the lots, she built her own home, where she and her husband plan to live out their years. On several others, she built half-million-dollar houses for like-minded people who wanted the quiet isolation of Los Lomas, “just a mile from the city.” The city of Poway, that is.

All 19 sites had been sold, several houses, including Mohling’s, were completed and landscaped, and building was well under way on a number of others when she became aware that the secluded valley was part of a planned industrial development, one of the largest in the state.

Thought It Would Be Out of Sight

Mohling, who was a member of the Poway community plan committee for six years, knew that the city had long had plans to develop a business/industrial complex to the south of her property, “but I was always told that it would be over the hill, that we wouldn’t be able to see a thing from here.”

Her stint as a community planner gave Mohling a secure feeling that the city’s General Plan protected her upscale development from “incompatible adjacent uses.” An industrial park, no matter how beautiful its design, is no fit next-door neighbor to $500,000 homes, she complained.

J. L. Henriques and her husband, Tony Glad, bought their Los Lomas site in December after weeks of searching for the perfect spot.

“We have all our money tied up in this,” Henriques said. “We don’t want to build our dream home and find out that we are going to be looking out on a concrete wall of a warehouse.”

Added her husband: “Poway has always said that it was a city in the country. But it is fast becoming just another city.” He accused the City Council of “becoming partners in the abuse of south Poway.”

Roger Boysel, president of the newly formed Los Lomas Homeowners Assn., is bitter about the invasion of the valley by developers, and upset that Gate Drive, which now ends in a cul-de-sac at Los Lomas Estates, is planned as one of five major north-south roads feeding into the 2,000-acre industrial park from Poway.

“When big business appears on the scene, residents suffer,” he said.

However, city officials point out that “big business” was there first. Plans for the South Poway Planned Community Development have been around since the General Plan was formulated in 1983, and Los Lomas Estates, which is within the PCD boundaries, was approved in 1984. City land-use maps clearly show that land next to the Los Lomas housing development is zoned for light industrial uses.

Mohling, who has been a respected Poway contractor since she received her license 18 years ago, said she was aware that Midland Road would be extended to the south, displacing Gate Drive, but was not aware that

it would be a main access to the industrial area.

“I never realized, when we started grading three years ago, that anything like this would have happened,” she said.

Rex Brown, speaking for Parkway Partners, the firm that will share the valley with Los Lomas Estates, acknowledged that the homeowners have some legitimate beefs about their industrial neighbor, and offered to create a buffer zone that would move the buildings a quarter of a mile or more from the homes.

City Council members have chipped in to add more concessions. In approving Parkway Partners’ 435-acre project this week, the council ordered the developers to widen the open-space buffer between the home sites and the nearest buildings of their 5-million-square-foot business park; to screen the structures with a dense grove of eucalyptus trees; and to seek to route Midland Road away from the rural subdivision or, failing that, to ban all truck traffic through Los Lomas.

Mary Soika, another Los Lomas resident, was skeptical of the council’s largesse, pointing out that Poway’s redevelopment agency has a $16-million stake in the industrial development.

“What do we do now?” she asked. “We wait and pray and hope that they find a new route for Midland Road.”

It is strange, she said, that no Poway natives bought any of the Los Lomas Estates lots, which sold for $170,000 to $185,000 apiece.

“Everything we have is in our home,” said her husband, Emil. “We thought we had found the perfect place--rural yet near to everything a family could need. I guess we were wrong.”