South Village is shaping up!

Valley Center planners approve map of village core

By: QUINN EASTMAN - Staff Writer

VALLEYCENTER -- After drawing several different maps showing new roads through the commercial area at the south end of Valley Center, community planners have agreed on a plan for a village "core." The agreement could end months of wrestling over what the map of the "South Village" could look like in coming decades, after San Diego County finishes rezoning the area and new homes and a shopping center are built.At the Valley Center Community Planning Group's Monday meeting, San Diego County planner Bob Citrano and architect Bill Lewis presented a plan that was approved with only one planning group member in opposition.
The plan has Mirar de Valle Road curve twice in a double "L" shape before meeting up with Woods Valley Road as it crosses Valley Center Road.
Citrano said that was preferable to a previous plan that had Mirar de Valle bisecting a planned shopping center, which Lewis is working on, and a nearby residential neighborhood on the east side of Valley Center Road.The double "L" could slow but not stall traffic flowing through the area, Citrano said.The plan also shuffled some of the zoning in the area, reducing the amount of commercial area but boosting residential density in some places.Questions about how the road will be engineered still remain, he said.Over the last few months, a subcommittee of the planning group had held several meetings with local property owners, trying to handle complaints about roads drawn through barns."Awesome, this works for me," said one of the previously aggrieved owners, Bill Wagner.Much of the village core map is on the property of the Konyn Dairy, whose owner, John Konyn, continues to raise doubts.The new plan is an amendment to the Circulation Element of the county's General Plan 2020, scheduled for a decision by the Board of Supervisors in about a year.Also at Monday's meeting, planning group member Lael Montgomery also announced that Valley Center had received a $225,000 state grant for construction of a tree-lined 2.5 mile footpath on the west side of Valley Center Road, now being widened by the county. The grant would pay for more than 700 new trees, helping to make up for the loss of almost 600 trees along the current path of Valley Center Road in the last few years.The county, the Rincon Band of Mission Indians and local businesses contributed $162,000 in matching funds to supplement the grant.

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South Village. Sounds so..........big, doesn't it? South and North Village. And here, we always thought it was just a couple businesses on opposite ends of the road.