Scripps Highlands Master Plan

Scripps Highands Master Planned Community

In the Scripps Ranch community of the City of San Diego, master developer Shea Homes awarded landscape architecture contracts to then-named Gillespie Design Group for the Scripps Gateway Master Plan. The project included over 300 single-family homes, several parks, a Class-A Office component on more than 40 acres, commercial and multi-family lots and a major widening of Scripps Poway Parkway. 

Tasked with one of his first projects out of college - which he would work on for nearly ten years, Chris Gustard assisted in preparing mass grading landscape and irrigation construction plans in collaboration with Rick Engineering, the project’s civil engineer. Brush management plans and strict fire reduction zones were required to be implemented as part of the approved landscape plans and for grading permits to be issued. Once those drawings gained the necessary agency approvals, the developer began mass grading operations which lasted more than two years. Chris helped prepare irrigation meter maps and long-term H.O.A. maintenance maps.

Chris acted as the assistant project manager in preparing numerous neighborhood entry monuments, street tree plans, fencing and wall plans and designs for the parks. By demonstrating successful coordination across many disciplines and public agencies, he would become the lead project manager for the landscape improvements of Scripps Poway Parkway. That aspect of the project involved a major road widening which was planned as part of a city landscape maintenance district. Chris went on to help Shea Homes gain entitlements for the multi-family component and prepared the landscape construction documents for that project. 

Finally, Chris gained significant experience in large-scale campus planning when the firm was selected to prepare landscape concept plans and guidelines for a medical research campus that would encompass the entire 40+ acre Class-A Office Space Lot.