Long Point Development at Odds With R.P.V. General Plan

O what a tangled web we weave when first we practice to develop the coastline! As the Rancho Palos Verdes City Council deliberates on how much leeway to give the Monaghan Co. in developing Long Point, many odd and strange happenings are coming to the surface.

We learned, for example, (at a council meeting on April 17) that the entire concept of bringing a large conference hotel to the peninsula was dreamed up not by developers but by the R.P.V. City Council. After the rape of Marineland by Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, the council worked out specific guidelines as to how big the conference hotel at Long Point should be and what kind of amenities and accessories the hotel should have. By their own admission, the council members said this was long before Monaghan ever came on the scene.

What’s wrong with this picture, you may ask? Well, the Rancho Palos Verdes General Plan is quite specific about the kinds of commercial activity that will be permitted anywhere in Rancho Palos Verdes. On Page 56a of the plan you will find the words “The City shall discourage industrial and major commercial activities due to the terrain and environmental characteristics of the city. Commercial development shall be carefully and strictly controlled, and limited to consideration of convenience or neighborhood service facilities.” Both the General Plan and Coastal Specific Plan rigidly restrict commercial activities to very small, very locally oriented service facilities, such as mini-malls.

If the general planners were that hesitant about permitting major commercial activities in R.P.V., you can imagine how horrified they would have been at the specter of giant Ritz-Carlton hotels, 500-room conference centers and attendant shopping malls, wedding chapels and sport complexes on the coastline, with inevitable traffic gridlock problems. The proposed Monaghan and Hon coastal hotels are completely out of scope with the General Plan and never should have been contemplated by council members.

Further, we discover (per Councilman Hinchliffe on April 17) that when Monaghan said that he needed an 18-hole golf course for his hotel, the City Council magnanimously offered Rancho Palos Verdes parklands, bluff tops and federally donated parkland to build a golf course (public) to serve the Monaghan hotel.

These abrupt departures by the City Council from critical policies and principles and restrictions of the R.P.V. General Plan and Coastal Specific Plan will have grave consequences for the coastline, for the city of Rancho Palos Verdes and for the entire peninsula. It will bring crime, traffic gridlock, added pollution and gross overload of all coastal facilities.

It is time for the R.P.V. City Council to allow the citizens of R.P.V. the chance to vote as to whether they want hotels and a giant service community on the coastline. Finally, let the people speak.

GAR GOODSON

Palos Verdes Estates