Development is good, except when it isn’t

On the other side of the tracks from the strip-joint business, La Jolla–based influence-peddler Matt Peterson continues to pull down heavy money from ex-GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney and his wife Anne, hard at work on a scrape-and-rebuild project by the sea in the exclusive Barber Tract. Their tab for the third quarter: $15,087. Lois and Dave Butterfield, still trying to demolish two houses and build a new McMansion on a single lot on Calumet, coughed up $9881. But that was nothing compared to the $183,000 development giant Pardee Homes paid the big downtown law and lobbying firm of Sheppard Mullin to get approval for a long list of projects, including “Castlerock in the East Elliot Community Planning Area, Las Casitas in [the] Dennery Ranch Precise Plan Area of Otay Mesa, Nakano Park in Otay Mesa and Chula Vista, Planning Area 61 in [the] Ocean View Hills Precise Plan Area of Otay Mesa, Crescent Heights and Sunset Point in Mira Mesa Community Planning Area, and South Otay Mesa Project in the Otay Mesa area of San Diego.” In addition to its building mode, the Sheppard Mullin lobbyists also mounted “opposition to development of adjoining properties where development is adverse to Castlerock.”