Developer Gets Quick Reversal of Council Vote : Zoning: A 7-0 vote to revise a residential project was reconsidered after a Huntington Beach Co. official arrived to complain. He got what wanted minutes later when the change was scrapped.

The largest planned residential development in the history of the city got a last-minute change late Monday after the general manager of the development company unexpectedly showed up at City Hall and expressed displeasure with a City Council vote on the project.

Roger Work, vice president and general manager of the Huntington Beach Co., came to the council meeting about 11 p.m., just minutes after members had voted, 7-0, to revise the proposed Holly-Seacliff plan

to allow for some light industrial development.

While the council was taking a break, Work told Councilman John Erskine that company officials objected to the industrial revision.

Industrial development is less profitable than residential development, city and company officials subsequently acknowledged.

When the council reconvened a few minutes later, Erskine suggested that members reconsider. The council then voted 5-2 to keep the plan the way Work and his company wanted.

Councilwoman Grace Winchell and Councilman Peter M. Green, both outspoken environmentalists and frequent critics of development, cast the dissenting votes.

Green said Tuesday that he is bitterly disappointed that the council majority so quickly agreed to reverse its vote after Work complained: “It shows we live in a company town, and that company is the Huntington Beach Co.”

Winchell said, “The Huntington Beach Co. pulled the strings of their puppets” and added that the company’s last-minute lobbying was a “blatant example” of how the large development firm dominates Huntington Beach politics.

The council’s initial revision of the Holly-Seacliff plan--a 768-acre development calling for about 4,400 new residences--involved designating land along Gothard Street for “mixed development,” which allows for some light industry. City staffers had recommended the change, saying Huntington Beach needs to keep some non-residential areas “to bring jobs to the city.”

Huntington Beach Co. officials, however, wanted to make Gothard Street a mixed-density residential area.

John Fisher, a member of the citizens groups Huntington Beach Tomorrow and Save Our Parks, also criticized the council’s quick change of vote.

Fisher said that he considers the council majority to be subservient to the wishes of the development firm and that he was told that Work had been watching the council meeting on cable TV at his home, across the street from City Hall.

Work rushed to the meeting to express his displeasure after the council had made the Gothard Street change, Fisher said.

Work could not be reached for comment Tuesday.

William Holman, a spokesman and project manager for the Huntington Beach Co., said he is unsure of whether Work was already at the council meeting or had come from home after learning of the vote.

But Holman said he had joined Work on Monday night in telling council members during their 11 p.m. recess that the company did not like the mixed-development change.

“We made our feelings known to the council people present there,” he said Tuesday. “Mixed development carries some design problems and some environmental problems.”

Holman, however, conceded that potential profits figured in the company’s opposition to the Gothard Street change: “In a city like Huntington Beach, industrial land does not command as much as residential land commands.”

Erskine on Tuesday defended his action in moving for immediate reconsideration of the Gothard Street zoning after Work complained.

“It was not just the landowner who was unhappy with making the area into mixed development,” he said. “Some residents of the Village Court condo development along Main Street also said they didn’t like it, and they talked to us when we took our break last night.”

Erskine said the council had quickly and unexpectedly come up with the mixed-density revision of Gothard Street during their debate of Holly-Seacliff on Monday night: “It was sort of a hybrid land arrangement that we came up with during the heat of straw votes. . . . It was not a burning issue with any of us.”

Erskine said he talked to Work during the 11 p.m. break “because the major landowner”--the Huntington Beach Co. owns 80% of the project area--had concerns about the proposed revision.

Commenting Tuesday on the criticism that the reconsideration vote brought, Erskine said: “It never looks good to some when you listen to a property owner.”

Winchell and Green said the Huntington Beach Co.’s objections would have been heard eventually and did not need an immediate vote Monday night.

“I thought we should have studied this more before taking another vote,” Winchell said.

“This (vote change) was a very blatant example of who’s writing the bottom line,” she said. “It must have been very important to the company, because they chose to do it right out there in front of God and everyone.”