Council Scuttles Redevelopment of Beach Boulevard : Heavy Opposition Sways Officials in Huntington Beach

The Huntington Beach City Council voted to torpedo the Beach Boulevard redevelopment plan early Tuesday, ending a strained 7 1/2-hour hearing before about 350 cranky citizens who had overwhelmingly opposed the plan.

Fifteen minutes after the 3:15 a.m. decision to reject the project, City Administrator Charles Thompson gave each council member a letter marked confidential, declaring his intent to resign at an unnamed date. Thompson, who has captained the city’s ambitious redevelopment plans and who expressed disappointment over the defeat, said the vote had “absolutely nothing to do with my decision. . . . It was just time (to leave).”

The council voted 5 to 2 against the plan, citing the avalanche of opposition expressed by the spectators and a citizens advisory group formed to represent 1,100 businesses, 400 property owners and 180 residents lining Beach Boulevard.

They had formed a 21-member Project Area Committee (PAC) under state redevelopment law to advise council members on the plan and had voted in April to reject it. Some of them had threatened to sue to block the redevelopment proposal.

Members of the eclectic band--including gas station owners, elderly homeowners, a car salesman and a school official--were thrilled early Tuesday that their four-month battle was over.

“We’re having a party Saturday night at my house,” said a grinning Jim Lane, PAC president, as the meeting adjourned.

“We have spent thousands of hours at meetings and poring over documents. We have people who have spent $100 of their own money who didn’t have it, people who have walked and circulated flyers. I think this renews one’s faith in the process.”

The council members sided with the PAC and other property owners who said that redeveloping the five-mile stretch of the boulevard from north to south is unnecessary. California 39, as the state highway is also called, is the most congested street in Orange County, and somehow traffic solutions must be found, the opponents said. But they were adamantly against the plan under consideration.

The scope of the proposal alone made Beach Boulevard itself the biggest issue, and the largest redevelopment area, to be considered by the council in some time.

The plan called for drawing redevelopment boundaries around 509 acres of property, most of it fronting on Beach Boulevard, from the San Diego Freeway south to the sand. A consultant’s report commissioned by the city anticipated up to 100 acres of privately owned land--or one-fifth of the project area--to be condemned by the council, acting as the Redevelopment Agency, under its powers of eminent domain.

City planners--and some council members--had hoped to pay for $14 million worth of such public improvements as curbs, gutters and lane additions along the corridor with property taxes the agency could collect from the project area.

The public hearing was rancorous from its beginning. It was suggested that speakers addressing the council do so under oath because, City Atty. Gail Hutton said, there appeared to be some “threat” of litigation if the plan was approved. The 350 spectators booed and hissed the idea and Councilwoman Grace Winchell called it “intimidating.” That idea was abandoned.

For the next two hours, city redevelopment planners presented the proposal, showing slide after slide to illustrate conditions that contribute to blight. Included were pictures of a few dilapidated buildings, but mostly the pictures were of properties lacking sidewalks and curbs, and those that are “under-utilized”--frequently meaning vacant or undersized.

About 35 people had signed up to address the council, but the audience did not have an opportunity to do so until well after 10 p.m.

“I did something I don’t very often do,” said Councilwoman Ruth Finley, who made the motion to kill the plan. “That is, I made up my mind several weeks ago. . . . I decided we were not ready to use redevelopment in this area.”

The existence of so-called blighted conditions--which Thompson’s redevelopment staff contended are sufficient to justify a redevelopment project--was disputed by property owners along the boulevard.

Most of the council members, even those who backed the plan, expressed disapproval of using eminent domain for the plan.

Council members Winchell, Ruth Finley, John Erskine, Tom Mays and Peter Green voted to scuttle the project; Mayor Jack Kelly and Councilman Wes Bannister voted for the plan.

“Even if I were to find my way to support the plan . . . there’s no way eminent domain could be a part of it,” Erskine said. “I’m convinced that the finding of blight in (only) some areas is not sufficient. I believe there are other funds we can find available (to finance the public improvements).”

He added, “I don’t believe blight exists . . . and this plan lacks the support of the people it’s supposed to be helping.”

PAC president Lane had outlined his group’s major concerns. He said the city’s consultants had failed to prove that Beach Boulevard is characterized by a predominance of blight. He said the corridor is having economic growth.

Another PAC consultant cited as an example of a healthy economy the $18 million in building permits issued by the city since 1985.

“We spent more time on eminent domain than anything else,” Lane told the council. The PAC’s conclusion: “We were unwilling to place a blank check into your hands. The taking of private property for private use is not acceptable to the PAC.”

Some residents not connected with PAC opposed the plan. Jo Elliott told council members that her father is 91 years old and that the threat of having to move posed by eminent domain “would be very devastating to him.”

“You are mortgaging my great grandchildren,” a schoolteacher said.

The owner of a pet store at the corner of Besach Boulevard and Warner Avenue lamented having to go through the process of getting a building permit and business license for his one-year-old shop and then seeing a city design showing a high-rise on his property.

“It makes me sad,” the shop owner said. “It’s like if we got a leaky roof, we don’t need to remodel the whole building to fix the leaky roof.”

The hearing, after several hours with no breaks, became grueling to some. Shortly after midnight, the city-hired court reporter pleaded exhaustion and tearfully strode out of the chambers.

Councilman Mays, losing his temper at one point, blurted at a PAC attorney, “I’d like to know who the hell’s gonna develop property down there without public improvements!”

PAC attorney Christopher Sutton replied: “It’s the cost of doing business, redevelopment or not. If I’m going to put in a restaurant, I’m going to have to put in sidewalks, sewers and water lines.”

The crowd had been winnowed down to no more than 100 by 2 a.m. But the crowd was nonetheless gleeful when the council finally voted to scrap the plan.