Hearst Land Plan Gains Support

Overflowing a beachfront veterans hall Thursday night, a generally enthusiastic crowd of 400 people heard the details of a plan to preserve the Hearst Ranch and bring to an end three decades of public wrangling over the fate of one of the state’s most beguiling stretches of coastal real estate.

It was the first airing of a proposal that would transfer 13 miles of beaches to the state and bar development on most of the rest of the ranch. In return, the Hearsts would receive $95 million and rights to build a 100-room hotel, 27 homes scattered across 200 acres, 15 units of employee housing and 3,600 acres of orchards, vineyards and row crops.

Meetings on previous proposals that included a much larger resort complex, a 27-hole ocean-side golf course and riding stables were frequently noisy and angry affairs. By contrast, the mood Thursday was almost celebratory as San Luis Obispo County residents welcomed the prospect of a final resolution to the Hearst Ranch saga.

“The fact that we’ll never have to fight another battle on the ranch is worth the price of admission,” said Liz Scott-Graham, 61, a San Luis Obispo attorney and longtime conservationist who supports the plan. “We’re getting 80,000 acres permanently protected. That will look in 500 years the way it looks now. Plus, we’re getting 30 new beaches owned by the public.”

Still, a number of people feel that the deal doesn’t go far enough to protect the public interest or its pocketbook.

“The more I look, the more I sense a bait-and-switch scam,” said Peter Douglas, executive director of the California Coastal Commission.

Douglas, interviewed by phone from San Francisco, had looked at the plan when details were first disclosed early this week on a California Resources Agency website.

He argued that in letting Hearst Corp. retain control of several of the most pristine coastal areas, such as San Simeon Point and Ragged Point, the public would be getting less access than it has now.

He pointed out that under the law, all beaches are public property.

Advocates of the plan, however, pointed out that to get to beaches now, visitors must cross over a fence and walk through Hearst property that could be closed any time if the deal doesn’t go through.

“We may not get everything we want. But if you get enough, then you have to say, ‘This is a big opportunity,’ ” said Sam Schuchat, executive director of the state Coastal Conservancy, who led the meeting.

At the meeting, critics of the plan insisted that they weren’t trying to scuttle the deal but rather to strengthen it.

“Let’s improve this. We don’t have to go back and start over,” said Carl Zichella, a regional staff director for the Sierra Club.

Longtime residents of the area could not recall a larger turnout for a meeting devoted to land use.

As people waited to speak, they stood against walls and waited outside on a pier.

The crowd cheered loudest when rancher Ralph Covell stood and said, “This is probably the biggest bargain ever put before the people of California. If they [activists] are too blind to see it, they’re brain dead.”

Several state agencies that will either help pay for the plan or be involved in the management of the ranch will be holding meetings to discuss the deal during the next two months. They include the Wildlife Conservation Board, which is scheduled to take up the plan Aug. 12 and could vote on whether to fund the deal.

The Coastal Conservancy will review the proposal in September, as will the state Public Works Board, which must decide whether to accept the more than 1,000 acres of beaches that would ultimately be managed by the state Parks Department.

The question of what to do with the Hearst family’s 82,000-acre ranch that surrounds the monumental Hearst castle -- which is managed by the state -- and stretches 18 miles along the Central Coast to the southern end of Big Sur has been debated for close to 40 years. In 1965, plans were drawn up for a city of 65,000 that was to be called Piedras Blancas.

That plan was eventually discarded in favor of a downsized resort with a 650-room hotel, riding stables and an ocean-side golf course. That plan didn’t go anywhere either after a contingent of local residents joined forces with environmental groups to mount effective opposition. Hearst lawyers protested what they considered interference from outsiders trying to tell them what they could do with their land.

Environmentalists and some Hearst family members took issue with Hearst Corp.’s pro-development stand.

“The San Simeon issue is a reflection of the fact that the corporation is essentially controlled by non-Hearst managers,” said William Randolph Hearst II. He said the land should remain in an unspoiled state.

Determined to prevent the Central Coast from falling victim to the development pressures that have transformed Southern California and the Silicon Valley, preservationists doggedly fought the Hearst development proposals. Their goal was to prevent development from spreading beyond the existing roadside strip of motels and restaurants in San Simeon.

A particular target of their ire was a proposed 27-acre golf course between Highway 1 and the Pacific. That proposal was eventually dropped.

Relations became so strained that when Stephen T. Hearst, the family member who has been spearheading negotiations over the ranch most recently, tried to restart talks four years ago, not a single environmentalist would meet with him. Shirley Bianchi, a San Luis Obispo County supervisor, said she was so suspicious of his motives that when Hearst invited her over she made her assistant go with her.

“I was not going to talk to a Hearst alone,” she said recently.

Stephen Hearst, manager of the company’s extensive real estate holdings, insisted he wasn’t trying to ram a plan down the throats of local residents. He said he wanted a compromise everybody could be happy with. His charm offensive nearly backfired when it was revealed that while he was trying to ease tensions by hosting a series of breakfasts at the ranch, Hearst Corp. attorneys were filing paperwork asserting the right to build 400 homes on the ranch.

Amid the resulting howls of betrayal, Stephen Hearst said that while the family did have the right to build that many homes, he was only trying to authenticate historic real estate entitlements to help determine how much the land was worth.

Over time, Stephen Hearst’s efforts began to win supporters, first among business and ranching interests and then among local government officials.

While Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has yet to bless the deal that would cost the state close to $100 million, at least one of the governor’s appointees has indicated strong support for the plan.

“Once [the accord is] consummated, I believe all Californians will be well-served by our efforts to present this spectacular working landscape as envisioned by William Randolph Hearst nearly a century ago,” California Resources Secretary Mike Chrisman said in June. The ranch has been in the Hearst family since 1865.