Del Monte Forest Plan Back On Table: Coastal Commission to Take Up Zoning Issue This Summer

By Larry Parsons, The Monterey County Herald, Calif.

Mar. 23–A long-controversial development plan by the Pebble Beach Co. is headed for another showdown before the state Coastal Commission this summer.

Nearly seven years after Monterey County voters approved zoning changes that would allow more homes, hotel rooms and another golf course in the Del Monte Forest, the commission must decide whether the coastal zoning plan is consistent with the state Coastal Act.

Charles Lester, commission deputy director, said the hearing on Measure A, the voter-approved zoning plan, should be held in June, July or August.

“We’re just looking at the available staff resources,” Lester said Thursday.

Both the Measure A zoning and project plan were headed for a commission vote last summer. But company officials said they weren’t getting a fair shake in the face of a negative staff report that didn’t consider environmental changes they were willing to make to the project. They asked county supervisors, at the eleventh hour, to withdraw the application.

The second time around, the commission will only consider the Measure A zoning, which voters approved in November 2000. Depending on that decision, a specific project plan would be heard later by county supervisors.

“Once Measure A is decided, or however the Coastal Commission tweaks (it),… we may have to change the project,” said acting county planning manager Carl Holm.

The company proposed a new 18-hole golf course, 160 hotel units, a relocated equestrian center, a conference center, underground parking and a driving range. But the project has drawn fierce opposition from environmental groups statewide who contend it would seriously harm Monterey pines, wetlands and other environmental features.

Mark Massara of the state Sierra Club said the company should forget about the Measure A zoning and propose a different, scaled-down project. “We never have argued that no development is allowed,” he said.

A project spokesman wasn’t available Thursday afternoon.

The Coastal Commission staff hasn’t changed its fundamental position that the Measure A zoning would be at odds with the Coastal Act, Lester said.

“We do have a staff recommendation from last June… that (Measure A) is inconsistent,” he said. “I don’t see any major changes at this time.”

But the Coastal Commission has undergone changes, too, since last summer.

This month, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger replaced Meg Caldwell, one of the panel’s strongest environmentalists, with Steve Blank, a Menlo Park business professor and president of the state Audubon Society. Meanwhile, Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez is looking for a replacement for former Chula Vista Mayor Steve Padilla, who was the commissions’s elected official from San Diego County.

Massara said it’s unclear how the commission turnover could affect the panel’s review of the Pebble Beach project.

County supervisors set the stage for the upcoming showdown with two actions in December and January. First, they rescinded their previous approvals of the Del Monte Forest project. That cleared away several pending appeals before the Coastal Commission.

Then in January, supervisors routinely approved resubmitting the Measure A zoning package to the commission. That’s essentially the course of action that Coastal Commission staff members had recommended several years ago, after voters approved the measure.

Larry Parsons can be reached at 646-4379 or lparsons@montereyherald.com.

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Copyright (c) 2007, The Monterey County Herald, Calif.

Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Business News.

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