Escondido Residents Fight Proposal To Build On Golf Course

By Alison St John / Reporter

Published May 6, 2013 at 3:00 AM PDT

This story was published more than 10 years ago.

Signature gatherers are gearing up in Escondido for a campaign to prevent a developer from turning a bankrupt golf course into a housing tract.

Golf courses are suffering from escalating water rates and diminishing membership, so Escondido Country Club’s predicament is part of a trend.

Ken Lounsbery is a local attorney for the campaign to prevent the golf greens from becoming another subdivision of single-family homes.

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"The citizens initiative measure is intended to restore an historic promise," he said. "Those historic zoning regulation require that the club and course be maintained as a green belt."

Erica Holloway is a a spokesperson for the course’s new owner, a developer appropriately named "Stuck In The Rough LLC."

"Our legal team looked into that," she said, "and there is no covenant or deed restrictions that preclude the property to be developed as it is currently zoned, which is for single-family housing."

If signature gatherers get support from 10 percent of Escondido’s population, the city council will decide whether to adopt the measure or put it on the ballot.

Residents have already raised a campaign war chest of almost $150,000, but a legal battle over the greens would likely cost much more.

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Alison St John currently serves as a general assignment reporter and occasionally co-hosts KPBS Midday Edition. She fell in love with KPBS Radio when she arrived in San Diego in 1985 and first heard NPR. She has been a voice on KPBS Radio since 1989, and has served as a news reporter for radio, TV and the web, as well as anchoring, hosting, producing and editing. Alison has reported on stories about North County and was based in the KPBS' North County Bureau. Alison covered the metro beat during the critical period of the San Diego City pension crisis, and the education beat while Alan Bersin was the controversial Superintendent of San Diego City School District. She covered health when the industry was converting to managed care and told welfare reform stories in the late 1990s when Clinton was “ending welfare as we know it.” She has covered land use issues extensively, looking at the challenges of meeting a growing population while preserving community character, and developing a better transportation system to meet environmental concerns. She has done many stories on the military in San Diego, and the series she edited on the challenges veterans face returning from active duty to civilian life won “Best of Show” from the San Diego Society of Professional Journalists. She occasionally hosts the KPBS Roundtable and KPBS Midday Edition. Alison has won awards from the San Diego Press Club, the Society of Professional Journalists, the Associated Press TV and Radio Association, and the California Golden Mike Awards. Alison was born in Tanzania, brought up in Scotland, and earned her degree in psychology and sociology from Durham University in England. Her postgraduate diploma is in student counseling. She worked in England, Nigeria, Switzerland, Belgium, India, and Japan before moving to the United States in 1981. She now lives in Oceanside and enjoys how her community is growing and changing.