Evan Torres joined the Landscape Architecture Division as a Landscape Designer in January 2007. He will be working primarily on landscape design and construction documents. Mr. Torres interned at The Lightfoot Planning Group two years ago while attending Cal Poly San Luis Obispo. He received a Bachelor of Landscape Architecture with a concentration in Sustainable Environments and 3D Modeling.
 Also in January, Skye Montecinos became our new Administrative Assistant: performing administrative duties, administering Homeowner Association applications, and providing customer service. Skye has been performing administrative work for ten years. With her extensive experience, she has developed excellent skills in assisting others and providing support for the company.
 In Footnotes, we occasionally share the end result of guiding notable projects through a city’s entitlement process. One such development is the mixed-use project, North River Village featured in our Land Use Planning section of this website.
TLPG, specifically Lou Lightfoot and Chris Harrison, represented this controversial joint-venture mixed-use project for 2-½ years on behalf of the clients, North County Transit District (NCTD) and Loranda Corporation.
Overall, there were 4 years of cooperative planning between NCTD and Loranda Corporation: first in locating a suitable site and then, in designing a project that met the objectives of both clients as well as environmental and zoning conditions. As a result, the project received approval from state and federal environmental agencies and was strongly supported by City Staff. Neighboring residents were also in favor of the project and will use the proposed “San Luis Rey” transit center, especially given their neighborhood has the highest per capita bus ridership in North County.
The Lightfoot Planning Group advocated the project at Planning Commission and City Council hearings to ultimately receive project approval. Initially the Planning Commission denied the project due to proposed density of the condominium units, the transit center use on the subject property, and the absence of an extended park-and-ride facility on site. Their decision was appealed by NCTD. Despite this denial and a 134-signature petition against the project from area residents, a 3-2 vote from the City Council approved North River Village with the much needed Transit Facility.
 The Lightfoot Planning Group is constantly making efforts to improve or gain skills in our industry to better serve our clients. One example of such an effort is from Dan Crowe, our GIS Analyst and Cartographer. He successfully completed a semester-long Computer-Aided Drafting (AutoCAD) class at Mira Costa College enhancing the integration of the company’s CAD and GIS data. Typically, CAD and GIS are used to graphically represent how a proposed project will appear on a vacant site by overlaying AutoCAD drawings generated by a civil engineer or architect onto aerial photos. Mr. Crowe’s new skills were applied in creating a series of custom exhibits for our client, Hallmark Communities, for a proposed 158-unit residential project, Oceanpointe. These custom exhibits were necessary to help the City better understand and evaluate this proposed hillside development. As the saying goes, a picture is worth a thousand words.
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