Manhattan Beach Puts Initiative on Ballot : Slow-Growth Measure to Go to Voters

Manhattan Beach voters in June will decide the fate of a controversial slow-growth initiative that would place tighter controls on both residential and commercial development.

The City Council on Tuesday voted unanimously to hold the election after learning that initiative supporters had gathered enough voter signatures to qualify it for the municipal ballot.

The deadline to place the initiative on the city’s April ballot has passed, and council members could have delayed a vote on the measure until the city’s next scheduled municipal election in 1990.

However, council members decided to place it before voters as part of the June 7 primary.

“This is a very divisive issue in the community,” Mayor Bob Holmes said in an interview on Wednesday. “It has unsettled the community and it has raised concerns in a lot of people’s minds about their property values.

“Let’s clear the air.”

The initiative has split the council, with Holmes and council members Connie Siebert and Larry Dougharty opposing it. Council members Gil Archuletta and Jan Dennis support the measure.

Among other things, the initiative would:

Impose a 26-foot height limit on new buildings in the city, except for the so-called “beach area” and the Manhattan Village Mall. Since much of the city already has a 26-foot limit, the main impact would be on Sepulveda Boulevard, a major thoroughfare where a 30-foot limit has been in effect.

Shrink the beach area, officially defined as all property west of Valley Drive. The initiative would redefine it as only property west of Highland Boulevard. The 30-foot height limit in the area would not change.

Prohibit commercial parking lots in residential areas.

Archuletta said Wednesday he was not surprised that initiative supporters collected enough signatures to place the measure on the ballot. Over the past several years, he said, many residents have voiced concerns about development.

The initiative, Archuletta contended, “takes a stance against overdevelopment and the encroachment of commercial development into residential neighborhoods.”

Holmes, who has criticized the measure as unnecessary and unfair to property owners, said many residents who signed petitions to qualify the measure for the ballot probably did not understand it and will vote against it on June 7.

“Many of the people who signed the petition did so based on a 10- or 15-second pitch,” Holmes said.

Steve Alexander, a spokesman for the Neighborhood Protection Committee, the group sponsoring the initiative, said that since three council members oppose the measure, he was surprised that the vote to hold a special election was unanimous.