Huntington Beach Redevelopment Plan Draws Big and Critical Crowd

An emotional crowd of more than 350 people packed into the Huntington Beach City Council chambers Monday night to hear details of a plan to redevelop Beach Boulevard from the San Diego Freeway to the sand.

The meeting got off to a slow start. Thirty-five people signed up to speak on the plan, but after three hours, they still had not had a chance to present their views to the City Council. The council decided as its first action to review a slide show of the proposed redevelopment area that had been prepared by the city staff.

At stake is the future of a five-mile stretch of Beach Boulevard, which virtually connects the north and south edges of town. The redevelopment would include 509 acres of privately owned land that largely fronts the bustling boulevard from Atlanta Avenue to the south and Edinger Avenue to the north.

City planners want to make Beach Boulevard a redevelopment project area within the city limits to pay for $14 million in public improvements that they say could not otherwise be financed. Those projects would include additions of sidewalks, curbs and gutters, plus improving traffic flow on what is Orange County’s most congested street.

20% of Project Area

The city’s plan calls for the Huntington Beach Redevelopment Agency to take up to 100 acres of privately owned land--or 20% of the total project area--through its powers of eminent domain.

The threat of having to sell their property involuntarily--be it business or residence--to the Redevelopment Agency even at fair market value is the source of considerable outrage and fear among merchants and homeowners lining the boulevard.

The plan would directly affect 1,100 businesses, 400 property owners and 180 residents along the boulevard.

The 1,000-member Huntington Beach Chamber of Commerce, with 160 members whose businesses are on the boulevard, voted to endorse the project area, but it did so with what Chamber President Steve Holden called “grave concern about eminent domain . . . and the way the plan was communicated to the property owners.”

Group Rejects Plan

Accusing the city of trying to grab land, members of the Project Area Committee, a municipal advisory group established under state redevelopment law to advise the City Council on the proposal, voted 18 to 3 in April to reject the plan.

In its report to the City Council, PAC said that the plan was generally unnecessary, that the city had failed to establish that there is a significant proportion of blight along the boulevard and that its financial feasibility studies were inadequate.

Individual PAC members have called the proposal a misuse of redevelopment law designed to help cities improve blighted neighborhoods. They have threatened to sue to block the plan if it is approved.