ENCINITAS — A local 10-year-old boy offered to donate the money he raised in support of a proposal to build a park on a city-owned lot along Quail Gardens Drive at Wednesday’s council meeting, weighing in on a topic that has become a focal point in the city’s debate between affordable housing and open space.
Encinitas resident Oliver Pratt, who raised $1,500 by collecting and reselling golf balls at the Encinitas Ranch Golf Course, told the council that Glenn Johnson’s financial contribution spurred him to action.
Johnson, an Encinitas resident, offered the city $100,000 to build a park on L7 in his deceased wife’s name.
“I thought a lot about how awesome and generous it was for Mr. Glenn Johnson to donate $100,000 towards the construction of a park, so I decided that I also wanted to contribute,” Pratt said in the meeting. “However, I’m only 10 years old, so my allowance fund doesn’t have anywhere near $100,000, yet.”
Pratt has raised more than $3,000 from residents eager to support the building of a park on the vacant plot.
After dozens of residents took to the podium, along with testimony from both Johnson and Pratt, the City Council voted 3-2 to direct the Encinitas Parks & Recreation Commission to explore the possibility of transforming L7 into a park.
Council members Kellie Hinze and Joy Lyndes dissented.
The Parks and Recreation Commission initiative will run concurrently with the city’s ongoing evaluation of whether the site should be used for housing, prompted by the newly organized Affordable Housing Task Force.
The site, located on roughly 9.4 acres along Quail Gardens Drive, has long been eyed by affordable housing advocates in the city as a prime location for high-density housing units. However, many in the vicinity have argued that multi-unit housing would only further congest the area, known for its already high traffic volumes during certain times of the day.
Johnson, whose donation would be made in memory of his wife Sally, told the council he envisions a quiet, simple park with open space that honors the local wildlife.
“My neighborhood is taking the brunt of the housing element, and I want to do something good for my neighbors,” Johnson said in the meeting. “They’ve been good to me, I’ve really enjoyed living in Encinitas…and I want to leave something for posterity.”
Joined by dozens of residents who live in the L7 vicinity, Pratt and Johnson echoed the concerns of those who voiced their concerns in the meeting about the city’s lack of affordable housing but argued that L7 was not the place to focus those efforts.
“With the housing element, there’s even more need for parks, they’re not making parkland anymore,” Johnson said, referring to the spike in development and population in Encinitas in recent decades. “A bad precedent would be set if parkland such as this would be cannibalized for some other purpose.”
Purchased by the city in the 1990s, L7 spans the 600 block of Quail Gardens Drive, with most of the land on the road’s east side and about 1.5 acres on the west. The site, identified as potential parkland in the city’s general plan, has also been considered for various uses, including a city public works yard and a library.
In November 2023, the Encinitas City Council voted 3-2 to declare the property surplus, with Councilmember Bruce Ehlers and Mayor Tony Kranz dissenting. The council’s vote triggered a 60-day window during which local, county and state parks and recreation departments could request to lease or purchase the property for open-space purposes.
No proposals were submitted, leaving the city free to explore other options.
Along with the motion to direct the Park and Recreation Commission to explore transforming L7 into a park, Kranz suggested the city continue its community outreach efforts regarding the potential for housing on the L7 site, combining both discussions to gather comprehensive information.
“The fight over L7 has been raging since 2014, and it actually goes back further than that,” Kranz said. “This has been going on for a long time, it’s not new, and it’s not going to go away.”
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In July 2023, Cardiff School District paid the final installment of the $570,000 it pledged to California Department of Parks and Recreation (DPR) for park land it appropriated for its own use in violation of a federal grant. That money, Cardiff taxpayers’ money, was supposed to go toward acquisition of replacement park land for public recreational use. The School District agreed in the settlement agreement to assist the DPR in making the necessary submissions to the National Park Service for approval of the replacement property. Not surprisingly, no replacement land has been identified and nothing has been done – the School District, once again, has skated on its promise.
If an industrious young man like Oliver can take the initiative to raise money for a park, it seems that the least the School District could do is honor its obligations and work with the City to identify a park project that could use the already-dedicated funds to meet it obligations to at least partially make up for the public park land it took.
In the journalistic spirit of “Completeness”, it is important for readers to know that Council Member Lyndes and Council Member Hinze both stated that they support both open space and affordable housing. This article failed to mention that they dissented on this Agenda Item for the following reasons:
New California State Housing Laws and the impact of Housing Element site on Quail Gardens Drive was the impetus for the formation of an Affordable Housing Task Force (AHTF) by City Council at its August 14th 2024 meeting. The AHTF includes eleven dedicated volunteer Encinitas residents from all four districts, with diverse professional backgrounds and talents tasked to assess all options for affordable housing locations. The AHTF will meet weekly to evaluate the new housing laws and look across the city for locations that are the most appropriate for an affordable housing community. Lyndes and Hinze respect AHTF’s volunteers and wanted its members to have the chance to complete their assigned mission and give their recommendations to City Council in November before considering that the Department of Parks and Recreation start to imagine a design of a potential park on 634 Quail Gardens Drive.