Plans to Develop Hermosa Land Going to Voters

The Hermosa Beach City Council indicated Thursday night that it will give voters three options in the November election about how to develop the city’s only vacant beachfront property--the subject of controversy for two decades.

The council intends to sell the land to help purchase the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe Railway right of way that bisects the city.

The council scheduled a special meeting for noon Saturday to finalize the ballot measures. The measure with the highest number of “yes” votes will win, as long as it receives a majority.

The property, known as the Biltmore Site after a hotel that once stood there, includes seven lots of beachfront land between 14th and 15th streets, as well as five adjacent lots to the east, some of which are developed.

First Option

Voters will probably be asked to retain the property’s current land-use designation and sell the Biltmore Site and a nearby public parking lot on Hermosa Avenue for $6 million to Hare, Brewer & Kelley Inc., which is connected with developer David Greenwood.

Use of the property is currently governed by a “specific plan area,” which allows only a hotel and related businesses on the site.

Under the first proposal, the developers would have to provide 100 public parking spaces in the hotel garage to replace those in the existing lot.

Greenwood and partner Joe Langlois lost elections in 1984 and 1985, the second time by a tie vote, on hotel projects planned for the site. Under those proposals, the developer would have leased the land from the city and public financing would have been used.

Competing Plans

The other two probable ballot measures call for auctioning the property after changing the zoning to single-family residential, which would allow eight homes to be built, or to C-2, which allows commercial businesses, including restaurants, bars, offices, retail shops and banks.

The City Council could change the land-use designation without voter approval, and at a meeting earlier this week several residents urged the council to kill the idea of a hotel once and for all.

“It’s like ‘Alien,’ ” said resident Howard Longacre, referring to the science-fiction movie. “It just keeps popping its ugly head back up. You can’t get rid of it.”

Rather than repeal the specific plan governing the Biltmore site and several private properties surrounding it, the council voted 4 to 1 to slightly amend the plan. Greenwood still holds options to buy the surrounding privately owned lots included in the specific plan.

Councilwoman June Williams voted against the changes, noting that voters had already rejected Greenwood’s hotel twice. “That’s an indication to me that the voters don’t want it,” said Williams, who favored repealing the land-use designation.

Although the council did not discuss the latest hotel proposal in detail at Thursday’s meeting, Williams said she objected to a ballot measure that would include only one hotel developer instead of allowing any interested hotel developers to bid on the property.

Williams sought to place another measure on the ballot that would rezone the property as open space, but the council rejected her request.

Land Swap

Council members had said previously that another measure would probably be on the November ballot, asking voters whether the Biltmore Site should be traded to the Santa Fe railroad as partial payment toward the railroad’s abandoned 20-acre right of way.

But Santa Fe is no longer interested in a trade and wants cash for its property, railroad attorney Benjamin Salvaty said. He would not say how much the company wants but added that it is close to an agreement with the city.

The city-owned Biltmore Site has been a source of controversy almost since the former Biltmore Hotel was condemned in 1965 and razed. Five elections have been held on various development proposals since 1972, including a high-rise hotel and a time-share condominium project.

Three of the developments were soundly rejected by voters, and a fourth--the hotel proposed by Greenwood and Langlois--was rejected by 19 votes. The two developers scaled down their proposal and took a similar plan back to voters six months later, in June, 1985.

After several vote counts and two court cases, the 2nd District Court of Appeal ruled last October that the election was a tie, meaning no hotel.