No Sound Wall for La Mesa Meadows; Garfield Neighbors Lose Bid at Planning Commission

Acoustics experts Wednesday night said an 11-foot sound wall along state Route 125 above the planned La Mesa Meadows housing tract wouldn’t help the neighborhood much—with decibel levels not significantly reduced.

So the Planning Commission voted 5-2 to release Reynolds Communities of El Cajon from an agreement it made five years ago to build the 1,000-foot-long barrier in southeast La Mesa.

Armed with a petition signed by 93 residents, a half-dozen residents of the Garfield neighborhood attacked the change in plans sought by brothers Neal and Mike Reynolds.

“They made what I consider a handshake deal with us,” Sig Diener of Highfield Avenue said in a 45-minute hearing in the City Council chambers.

In exchange for the community’s support, he said the community was told Reynolds would build a sound wall overlooking the six-acre, 31-lot development.

Diener and others said the promise, which he likened to a carrotlike inducement, allowed the development to gain city approval much easier.

Don Chadwick of San Diego, who grew up in the neighborhood and whose parents still live there, said Reynolds Communities “got the benefit of that presentation [in 2006]. They didn’t receive a lot of opposition.”

For their part, the Reynolds brothers said they decided to ask for a change in the special permit they received as part of the tract OK because of new acoustical studies done in the area.

“Our experts are telling us we don’t need the wall,” Neal Reynolds said after independent consultants spoke of the new science of estimating sound-buffering qualities of the sound wall and city staff supported dropping the sound wall.

“If it’s not going to be that much difference in the sound [volumes], even if the wall were to be built, then we didn’t see the necessity to build the wall.”

Mike Reynolds rejected the notion that his company had pulled a bait-and-switch.

“We’re nice people,” he said, “and we want to work with the neighborhood. But we can’t afford to build a million-dollar wall that’s not going to improve the lifestyle or give them any kind of benefit.”

However, Mary Putnam of Garfield Street criticized the 2009 noise study cited by the Reynolds brothers and the sound experts, saying it wasn’t supported by the information in its own report.

“For those who live in the area, we know that existing noise levels are high and that they will get worse in the future as traffic levels increase,” she said in a letter with the petition. “Future residents of La Mesa Meadows should not have to live indoors with their windows closed due to freeway noise.”

Despite some tough questioning by Commissioner Dexter Levy and others, the panel decided to side with city staff and accept the change sought by the builders.

Said Commissioner Janine Hurd Glenn: “I would not require the builder to put in an expensive wall based on emotion [of the neighborhood].”

After close to three hours on the matter, five commissioners—Chairman George Hawkins and members Linda Keene, Hurd Glenn, Harold Bailey and Kristine Alessio—voted in favor of allowing the developer drop the sound wall.

Michele Hottel joined Levy in voting against the change.

Putnam, an environmental planner with the County Water Authority and a 20-year resident, said her group would pay the $25 fee and appeal the decision to the City Council.

But commissioners noted after the meeting that such reversals are rare, with only two such appeals of Planning Commission decision successful in recent years.