Project on Monterey’s Cannery Row Goes to Coastal Commission
By Kevin Howe, The Monterey County Herald, Calif.
Feb. 26–Cannery Row’s long delayed and controversial Ocean View Plaza project will come before the state Coastal Commission next week when it meets in Carmel Valley.
The project was approved by the Monterey City Council on June 1, 2004, and final consideration by the Coastal Commission was postponed during the commission’s December meeting. It is scheduled for hearing at the March 6 commission session, which begins at 9 a.m. at Rancho Ca ada Golf Club, 4860 Carmel Valley Road.
The Coastal Commission staff is recommending denial of the project.
The application by developer Cannery Row Marketplace LLC Monterey calls for a mixed use project that would include 87,362 square feet of retail and restaurant development, 38 "market-rate" condominiums, 13 inclusionary housing units, 377 parking spaces, a replication of the San Xavier fish reduction plant warehouse, a community park, rehabilitation of the historic Stohans building, a history plaza and a replication of a historic utility bridge connecting two buildings in the 400-500 block of Cannery Row spanning the street.
The proposed 92,000-square-foot complex would be housed in four new buildings, two each to be constructed on either side of Cannery Row. It has been scaled down from the original 1997 proposal by Cannery Row Marketplace LLC from 224,000 square feet.
The developer has agreed to pay $2 million for road improvements along Lighthouse Corridor, which links downtown Monterey, Cannery Row and Pacific Grove.
A letter
sent to the Coastal Commission by the Monterey City Council in December urging approval of the project describes the site currently as "unattractive, inaccessible, contains an at-risk historic structure and detracts from the pedestrian’s experience of Cannery Row." It says the site is frequently "tagged" with graffiti by vandals and fenced off from the ocean shore.
The San Xavier fish reduction plant is described as an ideal location for a Cannery Row museum that is included in the city’s history master plan adopted in 1999.
The site has no water or water allocation credits, so the developers have proposed building a desalination plant on the site to provide the necessary water for Ocean View Plaza’s businesses and condominiums.
A lawsuit filed by the Save Our Waterfront Committee last year against the city and the Monterey County Local Agency Formation Commission was rejected in Superior Court but is now pending in the state Court of Appeal over LAFCO’s approval of forming a special district to administer the desalination plant.
Monterey’s City Council has agreed to serve as the new district’s board of directors, a plan the suit’s plaintiff says puts the city at financial risk. State and local laws require formation of a community services district to manage desalination plants.
The commission staff’s objections center on the desalination plant and the issue of public access.
"As currently designed, the proposed on-site desalination facility is not consistent with the Coastal Act," said the staff report, "due to impermissible fill and dredging of ocean waters, as well as potential entrainment impacts due to a backup open ocean intake line."
"Entrainment" is the unintended destruction of marine organisms by drawing them into the desalination intake pipes.
The staff said that issue needs more study.
It also contends in its report that the proposed desalination technology has not been proven to be completely reliable, and establishment of the community services district to own and run it "raises concerns about the long term public responsibility for the facility in the event of failure."
Failure of the desalination plant would create pressure to have the project’s commercial and residential units connect to the California American Water system, the report states.
"Such a connection to the Cal-Am system would, in turn, result in adverse impacts to the Carmel River and the Seaside groundwater basin."
The report also criticizes the project because, as planned, it limits public access to the coastal area through the project and on the seaward side.
Kevin Howe can be reached at 646-4416 or
khowe@montereyherald.com.
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Copyright (c) 2008, The Monterey County Herald, Calif.
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