San Clemente Delays Decision on Nixon Library for 2 More Weeks

A decision on a San Clemente development that would include the Richard M. Nixon presidential library was delayed another two weeks Tuesday night by the city Planning Commission.

Three hours into a hearing, Commissioner Constance Haggard asked library officials whether they really intended to move the Nixon archives out of the city if the commission failed to approve the plan by a July 1 deadline.

“Nobody’s gonna drop dead if this thing doesn’t happen tonight,” responded library board member Anthony R. DiGiovanni, a San Clemente banker, “but there is an urgency. You know, it has been four years since Mr. Nixon gave his approval for this site.”

Haggard fired back: “I appreciate the fact that it’s been four years. However, this commission has been dealing with this project for one month, not four years.”

Haggard said she did not wish to be rushed into a decision on the 253-acre project. She noted that the Nixon library involves only about 6% of the land included in the development.

Another Nixon library board member, Ken Khachigian, said he did not know if the library would relocate to another site but said: “I don’t think the process is infinite. Every tunnel has an end somewhere.”

Earlier this year, officials from the presidential archives had become impatient with the delays and had threatened to move the library to another site, possibly Carlsbad in San Diego County, if San Clemente did not approve the project by July 1. John C. Whitaker, executive director of the Richard Nixon Archives Foundation, said its board members had raised $24 million of the $25 million needed to build the 80,000-square-foot library and were eager to break ground.

But in early June, after the Irvine-based Lusk Co. agreed to reduce the size of its project from 1,500 homes to 1,290, and to create a 12-acre park on the bluffs overlooking the ocean, library officials said that Lusk and the city seemed finally to be making progress and that they would be “flexible” about deadlines.

The development, known as the Marblehead Coastal Project, would include the 16.7-acre library site, three hotels and a commercial center, as well as the homes. It would be built on a windswept bluff that is one of the largest parcels of undeveloped oceanfront land remaining in Southern California. And it would overlook a promontory called Cotton Point, where one of Nixon’s presidential residences stood in 1969-74.

San Clemente has balanced environmental concerns with its interest in creating a national historic monument that could bring the city an estimated $76 million in revenues in the next 30 years. The library is expected to include a museum as well as millions of documents and tapes from the Nixon presidency.

‘I Want the Library’

“I want the library. I want the library,” Councilman Brian Rice protested last week when he encountered a San Clemente Chamber of Commerce official at a busy downtown restaurant. Chamber officials have lobbied hard for the structure.

But Rice and other city officials have repeatedly cautioned that they will not “sell out any portion of the town for the library.”

In private meetings with Lusk, city planners have held fast to requirements in the city’s general plan. They have demanded that 30% of the land, or 76 acres, be set aside for parks. Lusk initially argued that it could not afford to donate any parkland, but recently offered 65 acres, still 11 fewer acres than the city asked.

City planners also told Lusk they wanted the site’s pine-studded canyons and 100-foot-high cliffs to be preserved, rather than graded by up to 40 feet, as Lusk officials had once planned.

Walking Tour of Site by Nixon

The city approved plans for building the library, but not the rest of the Marblehead Coastal Project, in April, 1983. That year, Nixon made a walking tour of the bluff and gave the project his blessing.

But library officials subsequently decided not to submit those plans to the state Coastal Commission until the entire Marblehead Coastal Project had received city approval. Library consultant R. J. Meade said he thought the Coastal Commission would be more likely to approve the library if the entire project had been certified by the city. Lusk officials also said they would not start work on $5 million worth of site improvements until the entire project is approved.

In October, 1984, Lusk finally gave the city its plans for the entire Marblehead Coastal Project. Several times after that date, Lusk asked that processing of the plans be stopped so it could consider revisions.

Lusk and San Clemente officials still had major disagreements on the proposal until early June when, at a private meeting with city planners, Lusk officials reduced the number of houses and offered the city the ocean-view park.