SAN MARCOS — Families and San Marcos officials gathered on Woodhaven Road on Monday to celebrate the opening of Las Abejas Park, the city’s newest park built to serve the new San Marcos Highlands community.
Las Abejas, whose name meaning “the bees” was selected through a community naming process, features a new play structure, covered picnic area, barbecues and a large grass area with a view of the hills along a cul-de-sac at the north end of Woodhaven Road.
More specifically, the park is in the future Ridgeview neighborhood, one of two planned communities in the 187-home, single-family Highlands project in Santa Fe Hills.
Ridgeview will contain 80 units, while the adjacent Foothills community will have 107 units.
Steve Ruffner, division president of project developer KB Homes, assisted with the ribbon cutting for the park on Monday alongside Mayor Rebecca Jones while several children waited eagerly to tackle the new playground.
Ruffner said this project had been 23 years in the making.
“The park was part of the original entitlement. We’re excited about it — we’re just pleased it’s here,” Ruffner said.
According to KB Homes spokesperson Bob Kronenfeld, model homes for the Foothills project opened in 2021, and 40 homes have closed escrow, while the first homes in the Ridgeview project opened this past summer, and nine have since closed escrow.
The project faced a great deal of pushback from the community when it was approved in 2016, with residents concerned about increased density and the loss of natural open space.
As a result, the project was scaled back to preserve two hundred acres of open space, a wildlife corridor and a flight corridor.
Upon the project’s completion, the public will have access to several nature trails throughout the open space and over 3 miles of city-improved trails along Las Posas Road leading to park space from Ardilla Way.
Councilmember Ed Musgrove said seeing a new park appear in the city was exciting.
“We don’t do a lot of new parks, usually it’s building a new one,” he said.
