Wildomar funds $459K Old Town specific plan entirely from developer-agreement money

Wildomar's City Council voted June 10 to hire Albert A. Webb & Associates for up to $459,225 to prepare a city-initiated specific plan for its Old Town area, the historic district near Palomar Street and Wildomar Trail in the city's northwest. The council approved the contract 4-1, with Councilmember Joseph Morabito dissenting.

The funding source is the part operators should note. The city is covering the entire $459,225 through a supplemental appropriation from its Development Agreement fund — fees collected from developers whose agreements with the city confer private benefits, earmarked to pay for offsetting public benefits. The general fund isn't touched. Past development is paying to set the rules for future development.

The boundary already exists. Wildomar adopted a Historic and Downtown District overlay in September 2025 that drew a preliminary line around the Old Town area and set interim development rules until a specific plan is in place. Webb's job is to turn that boundary into a detailed framework — land use, development standards, infrastructure, design criteria, and a program-level environmental document.

For developers, the consequence is consistency. California law requires public works, subdivisions, and zoning within a specific-plan area to conform to the adopted plan, which makes it the controlling document for the district rather than one input among many. The tradeoff is certainty: projects that conform to a plan backed by program-level environmental review can qualify for CEQA streamlining, cutting duplicate analysis. Webb beat five other firms — Michael Baker, RICK Engineering, MIG, Kimley-Horn, and Precision Civil Engineering — in a bid process that ran from December into late January.

The contract had come to the council once before, on May 13, when members sent it back for a public presentation before voting.