City, Bolsa Chica Developer Achieve a Compromise

An Orange County developer and Huntington Beach officials have reached a fragile compromise on legislation that could help pave the way for construction of a marina and 5,700 waterfront homes on the Bolsa Chica wetlands.

The agreement, contained in amendments to a bill authored by Sen. Marian Bergeson (R-Newport Beach), gives the city more power over a special district that the measure creates. The special district is designed to oversee financing of $230 million in public works projects needed before the homes can be built.

The Senate Natural Resources Committee approved the amendments Monday night after Huntington Beach Mayor Jack Kelly said the changes had eliminated the city’s opposition. But action on the bill itself was postponed to give the committee members time to study the amendments and their impact on the legislation.

Russell G. Behrens, an attorney for the developer, Signal Landmark Co., said his firm agreed to the amendments only as a way of meeting legislative deadlines which, if missed, would put the bill on hold until 1988.

Signal Landmark, an Irvine-based company, proposes to build as many as 5,700 homes on 500 acres and a 1,300-slip marina. The proposed community would have a 130-acre regional park and 915 acres of wetlands to be maintained as wildlife habitats.

At issue is how much power Signal Landmark should have in the special district the bill creates--a “city within a city” to implement development plans that have already won tentative approval from the California Coastal Commission and the Orange County Board of Supervisors.

The bill as it was amended Monday would not take effect as scheduled Jan. 1, 1988, unless Signal, the county and the city reach an agreement on how the 1,600 acres of the special district will eventually be annexed to Huntington Beach. The area is now an unincorporated part of the county.

Despite the agreement between Signal and Huntington Beach, the Sierra Club continues to oppose the bill, contending that the measure provides insufficient guarantees that the environmentally sensitive Bolsa Chica wetlands will be restored and expanded.

Bergeson’s changes would give the city and the county seats on the special district’s five-member governing board, with the three other members elected by the landowners, of whom Signal is the largest. The original version of the bill gave all five seats to the developer.

The bill would require four votes of the five-member board to issue bonds or levy assessments to finance the public works needed for the project.

But Behrens said Signal, which has already seen the project delayed for more than a decade by controversy over its effects on the environment, does not want to leave the crucial question of public works financing in the hands of a county or city government that could become hostile.

“There’s enough risk if we have (control of) the district,” Behrens said. “There’s additional risk if we don’t have the district and we have other political bodies with no financial stake in the project making decisions on when to borrow money, when to invest money in the project, when to start completion of other aspects of the project.”

In other words, Behrens said, if the city were to control the district and decide to delay the sale of bonds needed to finance the area’s water system, that decision would also delay the project itself. Behrens said Signal wants the power to make such decisions, which could mean the life or death of the development.