A controversial 453-unit housing development has been unanimously approved by the San Diego County Planning Commission in Harmony Grove, an unincorporated rural residential area in North County sandwiched between Escondido and San Marcos.
Several neighbors spoke out at the meeting over the controversial proposal because it does not include a secondary access road to escape wildfires.
They fear entrapment if a wildfire came from the direction of the single dead-end road.
Winding approval
The project, Harmony Grove Village South, had been before the commission in 2018 and later approved by the Board of Supervisors.
However, CEQA litigation from the Sierra Club, residents and other parties had delayed construction.
The board rescinded approval in 2022 after a trial court sided with residents. However, a state appellate court then found all but one aspect of the project complied with CEQA.
The same project as in 2018 is now headed back before the board for the third time, with solar panels and deed-restricted affordable housing added. Project manager David Kovach expects to bring the proposal to the Board of Supervisors on Oct. 1.
Kovach, representing the developer, and housing advocates at the hearing said Harmony Grove Village South will address San Diego’s housing crisis by adding stock to the missing middle.
The development includes single- and multi-family units. The developer has also won support from Local 89 by promising to use union labor for construction.
Current residents of Harmony Grove noted that living in the car-dependent area will still be pricey, even for those in the designated affordable housing. Many are not able to get fire insurance outside of the notoriously expensive California FAIR Plan due to being in a CAL FIRE mapped high-risk fire zone.
Summer Light, whose house was the only one to survive in the historic Harmony Grove Spiritualist Association during the Cocos Fire, warned new residents to budget $10,000 per year for fire insurance.
Fire trap
Residents concerned about future fires and evacuations on the dead-end road the development is located on say that they hope the elected supervisors will be more thoughtful about their decision.
They wanted the developer to put in a secondary access road so residents would have more than one route to leave depending on the direction a fire travels.
People who will live past the development on the dead-end road fear that big money will steamroll their concerns about fire safety.
“The reality is that that this community doesn’t have a very expansive road network. It’s just one main road,” said Elfin Forest Harmony Grove Town Council vice chair JP Theberge in a phone call.
In the 2014 Cocos Fire, which destroyed 30 homes in Harmony Grove, that 1.5 mile road to Escondido was gridlocked for more than an hour during the evacuation. Residents work together on brush abatement but are surrounded by 15,000 acres of open space.
Hundreds more cars would need to use that road to evacuate if the development is finished. A consultant hired by residents, Tom Cova, a leader in the nascent fire evacuation sciences, estimated it would take more than seven hours for all residents to evacuate once the development is occupied.
The appellate court ruled the fire safety and evacuation plans in the 2018 environmental impact report were adequate. County staff consulted with the Rancho Santa Fe fire department and sheriff on fire evacuation plans. No further changes were made to the project proposal.
Rancho Santa Fe Fire Chief Dave McQuead said at the hearing that in the evacuation plan, a third lane on Country Club Drive could be substituted for the secondary egress. In that plan, two lanes of the dead-end road would be used by evacuees while the third would be used by emergency vehicles.
McQuead also stated that evacuation methods have improved since 2014 due to evacuating zones instead of squares, as well as using the Genasys app, which came to prominence during this year’s Palisades Fire, to communicate with residents.
The Cocos Fire was not the first fire to hit the 110-year-old community, nor do residents believe it will be the last.
“This community wouldn’t exist without a very intense focus on our fire safety,” Theberge said.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by PostX News and is published from a syndicated feed.)
