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diggOceanside Surfs the Boom
The scrolling numbers on John Benfield’s computer screen go on and on. House after house after house: SOLD. After 20 years in Oceanside real estate, Benfield knows a boom when it happens. And it’s happening. In spades.
The numbers: 1,622 single-family homes between January and mid-October in Oceanside. Average price: $234,874, up 12 percent from a year ago. Average time on the market: 37 days. Three years ago, sales were a quarter of what they are now, and houses stayed on the market about six months—at average prices way under $200,000.
The Century 21 office where Benfield works looks out over Mission Avenue and Pacific Highway, in the heart of old Oceanside. Even though the view is the same as it’s been for decades, Benfield is optimistic the promises will be met for a new, grand panorama. “If you can see past that tweaker [drug addict] coughing up a syringe, you can see the ocean and it’s great,” he says. “Seriously, they [the city] have stuff going up here that’s big-time. I would say there is no street, no intersection, no alleyway that hasn’t shown signs of real improvement.”
Benfield’s comments reflect the sort of defensive reflex you notice when the locals talk about their town, now the third largest in San Diego County. It’s an attitude that says, “Yeah, we’ve had a bad rap, some of it deserved, for years. But that is O-V-E-R.” Oceanside is practically using fire hoses to wash off its muddy image, which got so bad Camp Pendleton troops were being warned by Marine Corps brass to steer clear.
There is, of course, the much-discussed $120 million resort developer Doug Manchester has been planning along some of Oceanside’s scruffy but prime real estate on the bluffs overlooking Oceanside Pier—land that’s been vacant for 20 years. Some saw Manchester’s proposal as a land grab of beach-side public property. His revised plan for a downsized 450-room hotel gets some opponents off his back. The compromise in the redevelopment plan—forged because the Coastal Commission staff had made loud noises about turning Manchester down—also puts construction of 150 nearby condominiums into the hands of local developer Jim Watkins.
Manchester Resorts senior vice president Pete Litrenta says his boss is anxious to build something much different than the convention-oriented hotels he’s built along San Diego Bay. He says Manchester plans to be intimately involved in building a five-star resort to take advantage of Oceanside’s beaches and new transit center, already open where the old train station used to be.
But the battle is not over. Opponents say Manchester’s revisions aren’t enough. “Everyone here wants a hotel east of Pacific Street, which means east of Pacific, not on it,” says Shari Mackin of Citizens for the Preservation of Parks and Beaches, complaining about a proposed street closure. More legal battles are ahead for this one.
Mackin says Oceanside’s economic boom can continue with or without Manchester. The city, she says, has “seemed to find a balance for families and tourism and the military. We welcome with open arms development that’s going to be good for the city and for the people who live here.”
She cites the new restaurants and stores that are opening, and thriving, in a downtown that’s been crawling along the comeback trail. But Mackin is one of those who worries that the best parts of old Oceanside will be wiped out along with the worst. And she promises to remain vigilant.
On another front, IDEC Pharmaceuticals has announced plans to move its La Jolla headquarters to a big industrial area on wide-open acreage known as Ocean Ranch, between College Avenue and El Camino Real. “That means nearly 2,000 employees,” says a gleeful David Nydegger, chief executive officer of the Oceanside Chamber of Commerce.
Oceanside’s coup is a signal to other bio-med and high-tech firms that the city’s cheaper commercial real estate remains a bargain. And besides, commuters who now swell the masses in the daily grind to and from San Diego on Interstate 5 will be going the opposite direction at peak hours.
“Oceanside has 160,000 people now—we have the housing, and we don’t have the industry to support it,” Nydegger says of the potential the IDEC deal represents. “We’re excited because it’s a great way to balance that housing-to-industry mix.”
Then there are the half-dozen fix-up projects, for everything from the dismal southbound offramp from Interstate 5 onto Mission Avenue to new signs, logos and trees for Oceanside Boulevard. There also is a new 16-theater complex, which opened downtown last December, and the sold-out Pacific Village homes that went up in place of run-down businesses near the train station.
“They sold out before they even put up the first stick,at $300,000 to $400,000,” says real-estate agent Benfield. “They’ll be reselling them at $500,000 to $600,000 soon enough.”
There are plans to take advantage of the old railroad tracks that parallel Oceanside Boulevard, too. If all goes the way boosters want, there will be light-rail service by 2004. North County Transit will provide trolley service between Oceanside and points east, all the way to Escondido. All the better to bring people to jobs in a city with more land zoned for industrial use than anywhere in the county except the city of San Diego. Condos and apartments would replace dated industrial lots and strip malls that now line the freight tracks.
The city’s redevelopment office also has a list of 16—count ’em, 16—redevelopment projects in the works, and nearly a dozen ongoing promotions meant to bring people to Oceanside. The changes have been coming in dribs and drabs over the last few years, but they’ve picked up speed like a runaway train. Some credit outgoing Mayor Dick Lyon’s eight years in office, but another big chunk of credit goes to an aggressive school superintendent.
“In three years, Superintendent Ken Noonan has done everything he can to make this the best school district in the county, if not the state,” says Chamber of Commerce chairman Marvin Mick, citing improved test scores, student-uniform policies and fewer problems than before, in one of the county’s most racially diverse districts. “And that [improved schools] started bringing in new families. The police department has done a great job, too, and those things have made Oceanside a lot easier to sell,” says Mick.
And that’s another plus: Oceanside’s crime rate is the lowest it’s been in 10 years, according to FBI statistics. Violent crimes are down more than 40 percent since 1995—a figure higher than all but five other cities in the county. That is no small feat. In 1995, a record 23 murders were committed in Oceanside, 40 percent of them tied to gang violence. So far this year, there has been one murder—just one. It was last month.
A crackdown on gangs gets much of the credit for the overall crime decrease, along with an improving economy. Gang violence h
as been stifled significantly by the three-year-old restraining orders used to cite any gang members who are seen hanging out together. The aggressive stance has barely elicited a ripple of protest.
The posture has paid dividends in Oceanside’s relationship with the neighbor that’s been both bane and boon. Camp Pendleton is home to nearly 40,000 Marines, more and more of them young married people with growing families—families that didn’t want to live in Oceanside unless they absolutely couldn’t afford anything east or south.
Gone, too, are the days when Oceanside blamed some of its problems on rowdy Marines. The Chamber of Commerce these days meets with high-ranking enlisted people to make the pitch that their city is safe and a place where younger Marines can shop, live and have a good time—minus the honky-tonks, hookers and dive bars that years ago prompted the corps to discourage its people from going downtown. “We’re trying to dispel the perception a lot of the older Marines had of the Oceanside of 20 years ago,” says the chamber’s Nydegger.
By the year 2020, the San Diego Association of Governments estimates, there will be more than 200,000 people living in Oceanside, a 39 percent increase in population. And most of that growth is expected to be among people in high-paying jobs—managerial, professional and technical.
By then, maybe the rich folks in that tiny Oceanside enclave of serious money called Saint Malo won’t try to tell people they actually live in Carlsbad. And Oceanside’s inferiority complex will have washed out to sea.
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