The Peninsula’s Growing Pains

I believe it was that homespun philosopher Satchel Paige who said, “Never look behind you. Someone might be gaining on you.” Well, it is high time that all peninsula residents take a good look behind, because someone is gaining on you . . . and threatening to leave you in the dirt.

You may have already guessed that it is that overdevelopment juggernaut in Rancho Palos Verdes that is gathering speed. Recently I saw the Barry Hon people mount a presentation on the new Ritz Carlton Hotel proposed to be built near the San Pedro border on the R.P.V. coastline.

The scope of the project leaves one aghast--a 450-room posh hotel to include five restaurants, two ballrooms, a separate 350-seat church-chapel for weddings, a championship golf course, 10 championship tennis courts, a shopping arcade, a 1,700-seat banquet facility, and clubhouses for the tennis and golf complexes. Not content with this gross money machine, Hon also plans to build an additional 128 single-family homes on the bluffs near the hotel.

Meanwhile, nearby at Long Point, the Monaghan people revealed their plans for an additional 485-room resort hotel with 10 separate private suites, the Catalina Room Restaurant, a 25,000-square-foot spa/fitness center with various restaurants and bars, an 8,000-square-foot theater, and 6,000 square feet of retail space. Naturally, a championship golf course is also proposed along with 80 single-family homes to help fill all that useless, empty bluff space.

In gaining these monster hotels on our precious coastline, Rancho Palos Verdes citizens will lose Shoreline Park, much Pt. Vicente parkland, school property, federal parkland near City Hall and most, if not all, of our planned bluff-top trails and roadway. Although Councilman John McTaggart assured citizens that the Portuguese Bend landslide area would remain public parkland in perpetuity, it now appears that Barry Hon will need this area for his championship golf course.

Calculate if you will the impact of this gross overdevelopment on our already overcrowded highways and byways. We are facing total gridlock in the not-too-distant future. We are looking at a grand total of 935 hotel rooms, 218 new luxury homes and suites and the resulting traffic, plus golf traffic, tennis traffic, restaurant and entertainment traffic, plus hotel employee traffic.

Then add in all the new developments planned or now under construction in Rancho Palos Verdes--the giant VMS (housing development), the Watt project, the Marriott Lifecare Facility, the Sea Cliff and Sea Bluff developments, the Forrestall developments, the Lunada Pointe project and numerous others in construction or on the drawing boards. Hon is also proposing an additional 100 or more homes plus a golf course up in the Peacock Flats area below the Crenshaw Cut . . . landslide country!

You must also consider the impact of thousands and thousands of dump trucks hauling fill dirt back and forth over our thoroughfares. You have seen the mayhem that occurs when a truck loses its brakes and/or control at the top of Crenshaw or Hawthorne Boulevards and comes careening down on hapless victims. With all of this mindless overdevelopment and construction, road safety over many of our steep and slip-sliding roads may be at risk.

Many people now complain about the difficulty of getting off the peninsula in the morning and back on it again in the evening. There is bumper-to-bumper traffic on the few main arteries that enter or leave our area. Think of how much worse gridlock will be when the new hotels and hundreds upon hundreds of new dwellings line Palos Verdes Drive South.

If you value the quality of life here on the peninsula, make your voice heard at Rancho Palos Verdes City Hall and in your own city hall if you live in a neighboring city. Tell City Hall that the “gang of three” on the Rancho Palos Verdes City Council (council members Jacki Bacharach and Douglas Hinchliffe and Mayor Mel Hughes, the controlling majority) MUST follow their own General Plan and Coastal Specific Plan. No hotels were envisioned by R.P.V. founding fathers and mothers when they drew up plans to develop the coastline. No restaurants, ballrooms, helipads or golf courses were ever contemplated--only residential housing zoned one home to an acre was mandated, and this fits in perfectly with housing on the rest of the peninsula.

The “gang of three” on the City Council is desperate to get the new public golf course, the new City Hall and amphitheater and the $3 million per year bed tax from the proposed Ritz Carlton hotel. Only a City Council that is completely out of control could propose to devastate the coastline in this manner.

Only a City Council that is completely out of control could be heedless of the impact that this kind of overdevelopment will have on the rest of the peninsula. Only a City Council that is completely out of control could shove Councilman McTaggart aside, stack the Planning Commission and make preparations to rubber-stamp overdevelopment into permanent existence here on the peninsula.

Speak up, speak out. Help to save your coastline! And remember the words of another homespun philosopher, Bertrand de Jouvenal: “A society of sheep must in time beget a government of wolves.” Well, the wolves are at the gates. Will you be sheared? Or will you be the shearer?

GAR GOODSON

Palos Verdes Estates