The city of Del Mar’s hopes to build an affordable housing project at the Del Mar Fairgrounds may have, once again, hit a snag.
Del Mar and the 22nd District Agricultural Association, or 22nd DAA, which oversees the Fairgrounds, have been working for years toward a plan to build an affordable housing project on the Fairgrounds property.
The process has, at times, caused tension between the two parties, almost to the point of stopping the entire effort.
At a 22nd DAA board meeting last week, those tensions continued to rise. Board members suggested that a recent study of sites didn’t do nearly enough to analyze the impact to the Fairground’s operations and bottom line.
Some background: In 2024, the 22nd DAA entered into an Exclusive Negotiating Rights Agreement with the city of Del Mar to study whether and where 61 affordable housing units could be built at the Fairgrounds.
The Fairgrounds and the city of Del Mar commissioned feasibility studies to determine where the project could be built. Those studies were funded by HAP Grants, or Housing Assistance Payments Grants.
Last week, the board finally discussed these potential sites, and let’s just say it didn’t go super well.
What was said: The feasibility studies found six locations on the Fairgrounds property where an affordable housing project could potentially go based on water and sewer analysis, sea level rise concerns and other criteria established by the Fairgrounds.
However, a few board members took issue with the fact that potential impacts to the Fairgrounds operations or the Del Mar Thoroughbred Club were not part of the studies.
“How are we so far down this road without doing an operational study,” Board Member Mark Arabo said. “How can we justify it to ourselves … we survive by our operations.”
Fairgrounds CEO Becky Bartling, said the HAP Grant’s scope of work did not include operational studies, but that Fairgrounds staff did some operational analysis on their own, and found significant potential impacts to entrance and exit routes, emergency evacuation areas, a fire station, an RV Park, areas where animals are kept and more.
Ultimately, depending on the project site, the Fairgrounds will lose access to some of these areas, as well as revenue, Fairgrounds Environmental Planner Dustin Fuller said during the meeting.
He added that there are currently no plans to generate new revenue elsewhere to offset those losses.
Arabo insisted that there should have been a full operational study done, saying he “doesn’t understand the logic behind that.”
“We are an organization that makes money on operations and to go forward without an operational study is total negligence,” Arabo said.
He recommended that an operational study be completed as part of the exclusive agreement. Board members also said they need more information about the sites in relation to state housing laws.
And one board member, Ted Miyahara, questioned whether the need for more studies is even worth more money and potentially a lot more time, implying that the Fairgrounds may eventually need to reconsider this project altogether.
Del Mar responded: In a letter to the 22nd DAA, Del Mar Mayor Tracy Martinez responded to “some of the misinformation that was discussed” at the board meeting.
- Martinez said the consultant who worked on the feasibility studies should have presented the results, not Fuller, a Fairgrounds staff member. Fuller, she wrote, did not accurately convey the study’s findings.
- “[He] provided alternative conclusions regarding the sites studied that contradicted the district consultant’s findings without any supporting documentation,” she said.
- She also said the city of Del Mar was not involved in determining the scope of the study or the costs and timing of the study.
- According to Martinez, the report says the potential sites do not conflict with Fairgrounds events and operations, and that all sites could be designed to avoid or minimize any potential conflicts.
She also threw a little bit of shade:
“Since it doesn’t appear that district staff have provided the board with all of the information that is now publicly available, including the studies completed to date, we have it posted on the city’s website and encourage you to take a look at the information for yourselves,” she wrote.
And a little more:
“It is clear that much of what has occurred has not been communicated to the board by district staff and/or predates several new members of the board and the newly appointed district CEO.” (The board voted to fire the former CEO in April, on the same day that two brand new board members attended their first board meeting).
Martinez suggested that the 22nd DAA and the city of Del Mar hold a joint public workshop to bring “transparency and accuracy to this important public discussion.”
This isn’t the first time the agreement has been on the brink of falling apart: In February 2025, the agency’s board paused housing talks with the city for a month after then-Del Mar Mayor Terry Gaasterland publicly shared support for an underground train tunnel route that would run underneath the Fairgrounds. Fairgrounds officials said that would be detrimental to its operations.
Then, in July 2025, the board almost paused discussions again after learning that the Del Mar City Council voted to support an initiative called Our Neighborhood Voices that aims to change the California constitution to give local governments control over housing and land use decisions, allowing them to override state housing laws.
That made things awkward for the 22nd DAA whose board members are appointed by the governor of California.
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In Other News
- The San Diego County Sheriff’s Office held a workshop at the Vista Civic Center yesterday to share more information about a planned rebuild of the Vista Detention Facility, which is the oldest of the county’s seven detention facilities and has reached the end of its usable life.
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