The residential areas of Bressi Ranch are situated on a “mesa” created by a canyon that runs north-south down Alicante Road to the west, and another canyon that runs east-west along Poinsettia to the south. There is a natural drainage course or creek that parallels the west side of Alicante and wraps east to parallel the south side of Poinsettia. Because of the topography and the city’s desire to maintain the drainage course/creek, the Alicante portion of the creek will be a public park and Poinsettia portion will be a 200 yard wide open space easement.
What is not addressed by “view amenity” permiums being paid by those buyers is that the area west of the Alicante canyon and east of El Camino Real is being developed with 300,000 SqFt of office and industrial buildings; and the downslope area on the south side of the mesa but north of Poinsettia is already being graded for another residential subdivision featuring smaller homes.
The views from inside the homes on the west side of Bressi Ranch will be limited to industrial buildings along El Camino Real because of the setbacks of the structures from the edge of the terraced lots; and the views on the south side of the project will be limited to the narrow open space easement on the south side of Poinsettia. Everything else east of Alicante and north of Poinsettia will be built out with homes. There are a few homes along Keeneland that will have a diagonal view from almost 1/4 mile of the northern tip of the La Costa golf course, but on the bottom floor of the house you have to be standing and looking through the slats in the metal fencing to see it, and you wouldn’t recognize it if you weren’t looking for it – it ain’t much.
I don’t think it’s an accident that the development of the industrial lots didn’t start until after almost all of the Alicante canyon view homesites had already been sold. Or that the upper mesa homes were built out prior to the lower slopes. This would be a little different if the project only included residential projects and the industrial projects were offsite on an adjacent parcel – then the developers could claim they didn’t know and had no control on what was happening on the other parcels. This development was planned this way from the start and the master developer has control over both parts. In my personal opinion the developers have clearly manipulated the development to max the pricing on the homes knowing that they wouldn’t have gotten that pricing if the industrial buildings had been built first.
I truly wonder how many of those buyers realized what they were getting for their money.
All this really calls into question the resale value of these view amenities a couple years down the line. $150,000 is a lot of money for the folks on the west side of Alverton to have paid to look at industrial buildings. As an example, I know of examples of older homes in other areas of Carlsbad with comparable price ranges where such limited “open” views might be worth around $20,000.
