A proposal to build an ice sports complex at Escondido’s Kit Carson Park will face public pushback when a lease comes before the City Council for a vote later this summer.
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During a public meeting June 3, the council unanimously approved a non-binding memorandum of understanding with The Rinks Foundation, a nonprofit that runs eight such facilities throughout Southern California, including one in Poway. Officials said that they expect a lease agreement to come before the council “this summer,” though no such item appears on the Wednesday, July 29, agenda, the first since a month-long summer hiatus.
The proposal would be a significant new amenity for inland North County, offering three different ice rinks, meeting space and other amenities, and would serve as the practice facility for the San Diego Gulls, who play in the American Hockey League on home ice at Pechanga Arena in San Diego. The foundation and the Gulls are controlled by Henry and Susan Samueli, owners of the Anaheim Ducks.
Local hockey families expressed their excitement when the proposal had its first public meeting. Many are looking forward to the return of Escondido’s hockey and ice skating culture, which melted with the closure of the Escondido Ice Plex in 2020.
The city has not specified when this summer the lease will be considered, directing the public to keep checking agendas. And a group calling itself Save Kit Carson Park is doing just that, waiting for the opportunity to share their opinions in public with the elected officials who will decide whether this 14-acre project, called Escondido Ice, moves forward.
Brenda Townsend, a founding member of the group, said this week that she does not oppose building an ice rink in Escondido. It’s the proposed location, one that would displace an adult softball complex on the southern edge of Kit Carson Park, and the quick timing of the project that has pushed her and others to oppose the plan.
“We do encourage them to build the ice rink; we simply oppose the location,” Townsend said. “I’m not saying don’t build it; I’m just saying that this is our park, we go there for peace and quiet. We don’t go there for a cocktail in a restaurant adjacent to a 3,000-seat ice rink arena.”
She and others have spent significant time educating themselves on Kit Carson Park’s history, posting historical documents in a “knowledge hub” on their website, savekitcarsonpark.com. This repository includes information on the 1966 bond referendum that raised $825,000 to buy 204 acres from the city of San Diego that, along with another 30 acres in the area, became Kit Carson. There is also information on the 1979 ballot measure that leased 77 acres of park land to a private developer who built the North County Fair shopping mall, which opened in 1986.
If it took a public vote to turn part of the park into a mall, Townsend said that a similar vote seems appropriate for an ice sports complex.
“Let’s do democracy,” Townsend said. “If it’s such a great project, it shouldn’t be a problem passing with flying colors, right?”
On its website for the project, the city rejects this idea, noting that the public elects City Council members to make such decisions on their behalf.
“As with decisions around budget allocations, adding pickleball courts, building splash pads or approving a housing development project, the Council is not bypassing voters — it’s performing its delegated governing role as elected representatives of the voters,” a frequently asked questions section states.
There is also the matter of the softball fields. According to information presented at the city’s MOU meeting on June 3, the fields would be relocated to make room for Escondido Ice. The Rinks Foundation, a city official said, would pay $4 million to help relocate the fields, likely to Francis Ryan Park nearly seven miles to the northeast.
The details of this plan have not yet been fleshed out. On its website for the project, available at yourescondido.com/icesportsproposal, the city states that it will engage a design firm to draw up a plan for a new adult softball complex. But the potential cash contribution is not expected to cover the costs, and it did not appear that designs and full information on funding would be available until after the council votes on the lease with the foundation. A city representative did not confirm that detail Friday.
The city’s list of frequently asked questions includes two that point out other possible locations for the ice complex. Some have noted that the former North County Fair property, now operated as North County Mall by Mershops North County, is underused. The massive property’s northern end, for example, includes a former Sears store now hosting a temporary consignment business surrounded by a parking lot built for the kind of vehicle traffic not seen since amazon.com shifted a significant portion of shopping online. This northern part of the property covers 16 acres, more than the 14 acres that the proposal seeks at Kit Carson Park.
While the mall was “initially considered” and the city still technically “owns the land under the mall,” four active leases mean the city “can’t unilaterally impose this project there,” according to the project website. The East Coast company that controls the leases did not respond to a request for comment on the city’s statements about the lease situation.
Ice Plex, Escondido’s former single-sheet ice sports facility on North Tulip Street, has also come up since Escondido Ice plans surfaced. The facility was to be razed and turned into a battery-based electricity storage facility. However, those plans have not come to fruition. Why couldn’t the existing, and empty, ice rink be reborn? The city says that “the size and location of the former Ice Plex would not accommodate The Rinks Foundation’s proposed facility.” Indeed, the Ice Plex and its adjacent parking lot comprise only about four acres, a third of what would be needed to build Escondido Ice.
If Escondido Ice happens, it is clear that the city would have a new source of revenue. The memorandum of understanding that the City Council approved in June anticipates a 25-year lease that would pay the lesser of 18.75% of the project’s cash flow or $187,500 per year.
But the economic impact is likely to go far beyond annual rent. On its website, the foundation estimates recurring annual city revenues of $237,302 from the project and $10.9 million in “recurring annual economic output” associated with Escondido Ice, citing an economic impact analysis by London Moeder Advisors. In June, a foundation representative said that the full report would be made available to the public; however, to date, the document has not been released.
Mike Thorne, communications manager for the city of Escondido, said in an email this week that, while the city does not yet have a copy of the analysis, the foundation and the city “are committed to making that report available to the public ahead of the lease consideration.”
While several proponents of the project spoke at the June meeting, some are starting to question the relocation of the softball fields which, on a recent weekday evening, rang with the sound of aluminum bats hitting line drives and softballs smacking into baseball gloves as the sun set and outdoor lights kept games going after dark.
While he acknowledged that a multimillion-dollar ice sports complex would surely be a regional draw, Dionisio “Dino” Carrasco said he drives up from Carmel Mountain to play weekday softball. Because Kit Carson is so close to the I-15, getting in and out is quick and easy, allowing residents of many nearby communities to compete with each other and often go out for drinks afterward.
If the plan to move to a park much deeper into Escondido goes through, he said, he will have to find somewhere else to play. It’s hard to see, he said, why a property such as the mall couldn’t be made to work. Parks, he noted, are in greater demand than ever for their ability to provide free or very cheap recreation.
“There is a lot to do here, not just for myself but other families,” he said. “Where can you go to get outdoors, walk and just do something for free?
“Everything’s too expensive these days.”
There would, however, still be plenty of places to walk at Kit Carson even with Escondido Ice built as planned. The community resource includes a wide array of amenities, including hiking trails, pickleball courts, picnic areas, a roller hockey facility and tennis courts. The civic gem’s most artistic amenity is Queen Califa’s Magical Circle, a sculpture garden by artist Niki de Saint Phalle. According to the city, 185 acres of Kit Carson’s overall area is preserved as natural habitat.
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