The New San Diego Land Rush
September 16, 2003

By Jane Rampling

A new land rush is sweeping San Diego, and it has gone largely unnoticed in the local business press. The eco-terrorists who recently burned down a University City apartment complex probably didn’t know about it either.

Or else they would have chosen a different target in a different part of the country for their anti-sprawl-inspired arson.

“The eco-arsonists are probably not familiar with the county's Multiple Species Conservation Plan,” said Jerome Stocks, the Mayor of Encinitas. “Under this plan, meaningful sections of critical San Diego habitat have been set aside over the last ten years.”

From Oceanside, Encinitas and Ramona, to Chula Vista, Otay, and the East County, more habitat in the San Diego has been taken off the market in the last five years than the previous 50 combined.

This land did not set itself aside. Somebody bought it. At least some of it, probably because they were forced to purchase it to comply with the MSCP. Regardless, habitat that just a few years ago was worthless, is now fetching $50,000 to $90,000 an acre from landowners who need to buy it so that they can secure permission to build elsewhere.

Exactly as many early proponents had hoped, the MSCP has received national acclaim across the country as a model of habitat preservation. But even the most fervent proponent of the MSCP did not predict the new way that landowners would treat their habitat once it acquired more value: The more their habitat is worth as investment, the less they are eager to get rid of it for marginal economic uses such as strip malls and industrial warehouses.

The more habitat is worth, the more of if that will be preserved—with much of it never even changing hands.  This new market for habitat may be the most powerful – albeit unintended – consequence of San Diego’s regional habitat conservation plans.

SDSU economics professor Ed Balsdon was among the first to discover how the new market for habitat is sending powerful new signals to property owners throughout Southern California. And here is the biggest signal: If you want your land to be worth something as habitat, you’d better take care of it.

The result: Habitat may be more expensive, but that means more of it is being preserved because landowners are not in any hurry to sell it anymore.  That may be counter-intuitive for people who have long believed that the less expensive the habitat the better, thus making it easier to buy.

That may be true short term, but economists such as Balsdon point out that longer term, higher prices mean more habitat.

That also means, all of a sudden, San Diego has a new class of people passionately committed to saving habitat: Large landowners.

“In the past, environmentalists have tried a “command and control” method to create and preserve habitat: i.e., just figure out a way to take it during the development process without putting a price on it,” said local environmental leader Lori Saldana. “How well that has worked depends on how well you think open space has been preserved in San Diego. Most people would say ‘not very well.’

“A lot of environmentalists believe (intuitively) that habitat should be inexpensive so that local governments can buy more of it.  But In the long run, too low a price sends a signal to landowners throughout San Diego that open space has no value – and what could be worse for people who care about preserving open space? Nothing.”