Environment

Attorneys For Guejito Ranch Attend Community Planning Meeting

By Alison St John / Reporter

Published February 2, 2010 at 3:00 AM PST

This story was published more than 14 years ago.

A small community planning group in San Diego’s backcountry will host a meeting tonight about a very large development proposal. A land owner is taking initial steps to explore options for the last remaining undeveloped Spanish land grant in California.

The Guejito Ranch covers more than 20,000 acres of pristine grass and woodland in the rolling hills west of the Cleveland National Forest.

Attorneys for the owners, the Coates family, will attend the Pala/Pauma community planning group meeting tonight to show maps of their proposals.

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Joe Chisholm, chair of the planning group, says it’s not just important to his community.

“It’s hugely important for the whole region,” he said. “It’s the last remaining Spanish land grant. It’s got this historical character and the environmental factors. It’s a lot of land, in fact I think that the community, let alone the neighbors, need to get their hands around just how big this is."

The preliminary proposal is to build 10,000 homes on about 6,000 acres at the south end of the property, north of the Wild Animal Park. The rest would be preserved.

San Diego County’s General Plan calls for a few hundred homes in that area.

The Pala/Pauma Community Planning Group meets at the Pauma Valley Community Center on Highway 76 at 6:30 p.m.

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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.