Vacant Lot Full of Fight in Del Mar : Voters Again Argue Proposal for Hotel

It’s political rerun season in Del Mar, but civic passions in San Diego County’s smallest and most politicized city are at their usual fever pitch.

For the second time in five months, residents of Del Mar are being asked to approve a view-blocking hotel for their tiny downtown in exchange for a public library.

On Tuesday, voters will decide the fate of a slightly scaled down version of a hotel plan that was defeated last September by 15 votes.

The hotel is to be built on a vacant lot at the northwestern corner of 15th Street and Camino Del Mar.

Now covered mostly with weeds and wild grass, the 5.2-acre lot was the site of the venerable Hotel Del Mar for 60 years. It’s been vacant since 1969, when the old hotel was razed as an eyesore and money-loser.

The electoral rematch, which has pitted a nostalgia-business camp against a hard-core, slow-growth environmental movement, has brought this upscale seaside community perilously close to a political meltdown.

By one count, the hotel issue has undergone 70 hours of public hearings in the past two years.

A three-hour City Council meeting last week--broadcast live over the city’s cable television Channel 37--was hot even by Del Mar standards, with antagonists bitterly debating the already bitterly debated hotel issue.

“The opponents have strong arguments, but that’s easy to do when you don’t have to use the truth,” said Councilman Scott Barnett, who along with Mayor Ronnie Delaney is leading the pro-hotel fight.

“We’ve gotten to government by theater, very dramatic and full of bathos,” said Councilwoman Brooke Eisenberg, who along with Councilman John Gillies opposes the hotel.

Eisenberg and Gillies insist that a smaller, less bulky hotel would block less of the ocean view and still be financially viable, an assertion the developer denounced as an “11th-hour political hoax.”

Former Mayor Dick Roe, who is sympathetic to the anti-hotel “greens” but has not taken sides in the campaign, says he has not seen the council or city so polarized in a decade.

“The hotel has divided the community down the middle, and there is no compromise on either side,” Roe said. “Remember Kadafi and his Line of Death? Step across it and you die. That’s what the current council is like.

“Scott and Ronnie are one side,” he said. “Brooke and John are on the other.”

The current proposal calls for the 123-unit Chateau Del Mar, complete with 12 time-share condominiums, a 13,000 square-foot park and 4,700 square feet of retail shops. A meeting room will be open to the public at least 12 times a year.

On the Sept. 22 ballot, a similar project was called an inn and listed as 125 units, 24 time-share condominiums, a 10,000 square-foot park and plaza, and 7,700 square feet of retail shops. A meeting room was to be open at least six times a year.

In September, developer-landowner-hotelier Jim Watkins, a 22-year resident of Del Mar, offered to pay up to $2 million for a library and other public facilities. Now that the hotel size has been trimmed, Watkins is offering more like $1 million and that will be used to build a library.

Pro-hotel forces say the reduced size of the hotel--plus a predicted $300,000 a year in hotel taxes for the cash-poor city--make the proposal a good buy. They warn that if the hotel plan fails, the site will be used for condominiums and a shopping mall, which will bring more traffic and less revenue to the city.

Chamber of Commerce leader Jim Coleman, in announcing chamber support for the current plan, sounded a familiar theme: The new hotel will restore Del Mar to the graceful days of dining and sipping that were once part of the leisurely life style of the Hotel Del Mar.

“The (reduced) size combined with the Old World style and ambiance should actually enhance the village atmosphere,” Coleman said.

Opponents are even more adamant--if that’s possible--than last time.

They accuse the pro side of lying about the size of the project and employing scare tactics about what will happen if voters reject the hotel. They note that during the last election Watkins said the site might be used for a raucous Diego’s-style disco if the hotel were killed.

“This project is still no good for Del Mar,” Eisenberg said. “I’m against rezoning residential for commercial. The traffic involved will overwhelm us. With the plaza already going in across the street, that corner will become a metropolis that is not the right size or scale for Del Mar.”

As in the fall campaign, San Diego is again being used as a swear word.

Last time, the opponents’ rallying cry was “Halt the La Jollaization of Del Mar.”

This time, proponents have stolen the phrase themselves, saying there could be a more San Diegoesque development advanced if the hotel is not passed.

“The public should not be bamboozled by the developer constantly referring to his Seaport Village-La Jolla alternative if the hotel is defeated,” Eisenberg said.

On the other hand, a pamphlet sent out by the pro-hotel Residents for Fair & Responsible Planning accuses the anti-hotel side of using tactics described as Chicken Little, Baloney and Pinocchio. A drawing of a chicken is provided for emphasis.

The campaign has been fought in every possible venue: Competing financial analyses, dueling street-corner press conferences, tartlyworded mailers and even a lawsuit taken first to Vista Superior Court and then the 4th District Court of Appeal.

The suit sought unsuccessfully to block the election on the grounds that a provision in state law limits elections to certain dates each year. City Attorney Roger Krauel countered that the election falls under a separate provision that governs initiatives and referendums.

The election is required under slow-growth Measure B, approved by voters in 1986. Measure B requires a public vote for any commercial project of more than 25,000 square feet along Camino Del Mar.

Both sides agree the election will be close but offer differing reasons.

Eisenberg says hotel boosters are toying with the lingering civic reverence for the old hotel, which still evokes memories of simpler, quieter days when Del Mar was an isolated, woodsy village with miles of empty beaches and a wonderful Elizabethan-style hotel catering to townsfolk, as well as the Hollywood and racing sets alike.

“It’s a strong emotional hold,” Eisenberg said. “It’s nostalgia, and there’s nothing wrong with nostalgia. But those days are gone and won’t return. That’s where the divisiveness comes in. The developer is playing games with people’s emotions.”

Naturally, Barnett disagrees, and instead blames the divisiveness on a dedicated anti-growth faction bent on restricting the use of other people’s property. He will leave office this spring after one term, exhausted at age 25 by the Del Mar political scene.

“It’s hard to sell any development project in probably the most slow-growth community in America,” Barnett said. “We fight for hours over the smallest add-on to a house. Neighbors get up in arms over the smallest change.

“Somehow the process works--but it’s tough to go through.”

As cranky as the hotel campaign has been, it’s only the beginning of this year’s political season in Del Mar. If the hotel plan is beaten again, Watkins says he may seek a June election for a shopping mall.

After Tuesday, campaigning will also begin in earnest for three council seats on the regular April 12 election. Delaney--the current mayor--is seeking re-election, but Barnett and council moderate Lew Hopkins are not.

Along with the council seats, the April 12 election has measures involving two perennially controversial topics--a $300 a-month salary for heretofore payless council members, and a proposal to further restrict where beach owners can erect seawalls.

A $150 a-month salary plan was defeated by voters in 1986. As for the seawall measure, beach preservation may outrank even the hotel issue in terms of emotionalism and implacable hostility from rival camps.

Roe, a member of the council from 1978 to 1982, sees little chance that the city’s internecine warfare will end soon.

The last time that Del Mar council members stopped fighting among themselves for any extended period was when they joined forces to fight the city of San Diego over the North City West subdivision.

The losing battle spawned enormous legal bills but, as Roe sees it, at least it provided some civic solidarity.

“What we need in Del Mar these days is a good common enemy,” he said.