![\"JP](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/sut-l-harmony-003.jpg\")
JP Theberge stands along the only entry road leading into and exiting from Harmony Grove. (Nelvin C. Cepeda \/ The San Diego Union-Tribune)<\/p>\nThe San Diego County Planning Commission again approved the controversial Harmony Grove Village South development despite some local residents\u2019 simmering concerns about wildfire risks and evacuation.<\/p>\n
The project is now scheduled to move on to be heard by the San Diego County Board of Supervisors on Oct. 1.<\/p>\n
Harmony Grove Village South includes 453 single-family and multi-family residential units along with 5,000 square feet of commercial\/civic uses, 35 acres of biological open space and four acres of public and private parks and trails. It is located in the rural community of Harmony Grove, situated between Escondido, San Marcos, Encinitas and Rancho Santa Fe, and within the Rancho Santa Fe Fire Protection District.<\/p>\n
Those opposed believe that if this development is approved, it will be a \u201cdeadly disaster waiting to happen.\u201d<\/p>\n
One opponent, Harmony Grove resident Kevin Barnard, was elected to the RSF Fire Protection District board last November, unseating one 20-year member of the board. Barnard, a retired law enforcement officer, said he ran for the board primarily because of his concerns about \u201cill-conceived development\u201d and public safety in light of past tragedies such as Paradise and Santa Rosa, months before January\u2019s devastating wildfires in Los Angeles.<\/p>\n
Barnard believes that the fire protection plan is flawed as the project is located at the end of the narrow, two-lane County Club Drive with no secondary access in case of emergency in a valley rated as a very high fire severity zone.<\/p>\n
\u201cEvery retired fire chief that has had jurisdiction over this area, be it with the old Elfin Forest\/Harmony Grove Volunteer Fire Department, or Rancho Santa Fe Fire Protection District, has admitted, either publicly or privately, that this plan is deficient, or as one chief put it in two separate public meetings, \u2018absolutely insane\u2019,\u201d wrote Barnard in an op-ed.<\/p>\n
The Elfin Forest\/Harmony Grove Town Council, the San Dieguito Planning Group and the Sierra Club San Diego chapter have all lodged opposition to the project.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are now counting on the Board of Supervisors to keep our families safe,\u201d said JP Theberge, vice chair of the Elfin Forest\/Harmony Grove Town Council in a statement. \u201cThis project first came before the board in 2018, and at that time the supervisors ignored the very clear wildfire risk. Our local leaders now have a second chance \u2013 and better information \u2013 to do the right thing and vote down this poorly planned housing development unless they can provide a second way out should the main exit be unusable.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe fire danger in this area is severe, and the idea that even more homes would be added without even considering a secondary exit is unconscionable,\u201d he continued. \u201cWe\u2019re counting on the board to put the brakes on this bad project.\u201d<\/p>\n
After the Board of Supervisors approved the Harmony Grove Village South project in 2018, its environmental impact report (EIR) was challenged in court in a lawsuit by the Elfin Forest\/Harmony Grove Town Council. In 2020, the trial court halted the development, ruling that the EIR violated California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) based on inadequate greenhouse gas (GHG) mitigation measures, failure to address fire safety and evacuation issues and insufficient analysis of air quality impacts. The project was also found to be inconsistent with the county\u2019s general plan related to providing adequate, affordable housing.<\/p>\n
Then in 2021, the Court of Appeal affirmed the trial court\u2019s ruling on GHG mitigation measures and the policy to provide affordable housing, but reversed the ruling related to the other concerns, which included fire safety and evacuation.<\/p>\n
As a result of the litigation, the project has revised GHG mitigation measures (including installing solar) and added 45 income-restricted affordable homes but there were no other changes made to the previously approved project.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe followed every rule, we passed every test, we earned every approval. Again,\u201d said applicant David Kovach, managing partner of Harmony Grove Village South at the planning commission\u2019s Aug. 22 hearing. He said the expensive, \u201carduous and grueling\u201d process over the last seven years proved to him that \u201cyou can follow California\u2019s toughest rules and still do what\u2019s right.\u201d<\/p>\n
Kovach said their project aims to be an extension of Harmony Grove Village, providing the \u201cmissing middle\u201d types of homes, including cottages, farmhouse townhomes, bungalow-style single family homes and loft-style live-work homes.<\/p>\n
Alonso Gonzalez, the acting director of the San Diego Housing Coalition, said that the diverse mix of single-family and multi-family homes is what the region needs to provide accessible and affordable entry-level housing.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a sad state of affairs when a project can be delayed for over five years with a net result of adding 10% affordable restrictions and solar panels,\u201d Gonzalez said. \u201cThese concessions might be great, but it comes at a big cost.\u201d<\/p>\n
In the recirculated EIR, Kovach said 75% of the comments \u201crepeated the same fire concerns that were settled by the court\u201d and only 5% addressed the two court-required refinements regarding greenhouse gases and affordable housing.<\/p>\n
The planning commissioners also acknowledged that during the public testimony, most of the comments from the 21 speakers were related to fire\u2014there were none on greenhouse gas mitigations and only positive ones regarding affordable housing.<\/p>\n
When the project was first reviewed and approved in 2018, the county also received extensive public comments related to fire safety concerns and emergency evacuation. Per the county, the issues were litigated by the court and based on staff\u2019s analysis and coordination with the RSF Fire Protection District and the sheriff\u2019s office, the concerns raised have all been addressed.<\/p>\n
The county stated that the project has been determined to be in conformance with county fire code, RSF fire code, state regulations, CEQA and county guidelines for determining the significance for woodland fire and fire protection.<\/p>\n
Back in 2014, residents evacuating the Cocos Fire experienced long evacuation times, prompting concerns about the impact of the new development\u2014people shared stories about being stuck in gridlock and taking an hour to go one mile trying to flee with their families.<\/p>\n
JP Theberge stands along the only entry road leading into and exiting from Harmony Grove. (Nelvin C. Cepeda \/ The San Diego Union-Tribune)<\/p>\n
While emergency evacuations are fluid and determined by incident response teams, the county said the evacuation routes have improved since the Cocos Fire, including the extension of Harmony Grove Village Parkway, a new bridge to Citracado Parkway and a completed Harmony Grove Village road network. There have also been improvements in how evacuations are managed and conducted, including the use of a digital mapping system and phased evacuations by neighborhood to reduce large-scale traffic jams.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have had tools implemented into our toolbox that we didn\u2019t have in 2018,\u201d said Rancho Santa Fe Fire Protection District Chief Dave McQuead.<\/p>\n
McQuead noted that Citracado is now four lanes and connects to West Valley Parkway via a new bridge, giving options for fire evacuation into Escondido and San Marcos. The Rancho Santa Fe district\u2019s new Harmony Grove fire station, completed in 2020, is located about 1.3 miles away from the proposed project\u2014the district had worked out of temporary trailers on the site after merging with the Elfin Forest\/ Harmony Grove Fire Department in 2016.<\/p>\n
McQuead said in the event of a wildfire, a unified command composed of the fire district, law enforcement and CalFire would develop an evacuation plan and Country Club Drive would be used as a three-lane road (two for egress, one for emergency vehicle access) with a clear life safety objective: \u201cKeep it simple\u2026 Move.\u201d<\/p>\n
For those residents who live in one of the most fire-prone areas of the county and who have had the harrowing experience of evacuating wildfires multiple times, they are not as confident in the community\u2019s safety with the addition of the 453 homes.<\/p>\n
When over 30 homes burned down in the Cocos Fire, Harmony Grove resident Marilyn Johnson-Kozlow said hers was one of the lucky ones to make it through.<\/p>\n
She admittedly has \u201cthe same old fire concerns\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe live with the fear of fire, we really do,\u201d she said, reflecting on being surrounded by chaparral, ridges and ravines during one of the hottest and driest years in recorded history. \u201cI expect in my lifetime there will be another wildfire. Do I worry about getting out? Yes, I do.\u201d<\/p>\n
As Theberge said, the town council doesn\u2019t oppose housing or development across the board, they just want the common-sense solution of a secondary egress point. He noted that the fire district has turned down much smaller projects that lack a secondary exit and gave examples of the number of exits for similar-sized or smaller developments in Rancho Santa Fe, such as the six exits for Cielo (with 528 homes), three for the Bridges (240 homes) and two for Rancho Santa Fe Lakes (250 homes).<\/p>\n
Steve Barker, a retired Elfin Forest and RSF Fire battalion chief, said of the project: \u201cUntil it\u2019s got a secondary access, it just doesn\u2019t make any sense.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The San Diego County Planning Commission again approved the controversial Harmony Grove Village South development despite some local…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":191820,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5134],"tags":[5229,1582,276,7356,9866,3549,7264,67,586,132,5230,68,2969],"class_list":{"0":"post-191819","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-san-diego","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-ca","10":"tag-california","11":"tag-rancho-santa-fe-review","12":"tag-rancho-santa-fe-review-news","13":"tag-san-diego","14":"tag-sandiego","15":"tag-united-states","16":"tag-united-states-of-america","17":"tag-unitedstates","18":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","19":"tag-us","20":"tag-usa"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/191819","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=191819"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/191819\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/191820"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=191819"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=191819"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=191819"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}