Council Votes to Permit Housing on Old Hotel Site : Hermosa Beach: The City Council has voted 3 to 2 to allow construction of as many as 16 condominiums on a controversial beachfront parcel. But that vote has to be confirmed, and the opposition persists.

Efforts to settle Hermosa Beach’s long-running debate on the future of the old Biltmore Hotel site took a small step forward Tuesday when the City Council narrowly voted to permit residential housing on the beachfront lot.

By its 3-2 vote--which must be confirmed in a final action later this month--the council hopes to end a controversy that has dogged the city ever since the old hotel was torn down in 1965.

However, not many people expect the festering issue to disappear so easily.

Community activist Parker Herriott, who has long championed development of a park in the now-vacant and weedy lot of almost an acre, promised Tuesday to initiate a recall drive against council members supporting the housing proposal.

Herriott said he would work to place the issue on the ballot again, despite numerous and inconclusive attempts in the past to have voters decide the question.

“It now appears that the council wants to act without the opinion of the people. . . . This smacks of a dictatorship,” Herriott told the council, holding a hand-drawn poster colored with his vision of an oceanfront park between 14th and 15th streets.

Councilman Robert Essertier argued that the city could buy less expensive open areas to convert into public parkland with proceeds gained by selling the city-owned Biltmore parcel, valued at $8 million for residential development. “We would have more green, more park, by selling that lot,” Essertier said.

This week’s vote was a replay of an initial vote taken last month, with Essertier, Mayor Roger Creighton and Councilwoman Kathleen Midstokke supporting the current proposal. The matter was returned for a public hearing this week because Essertier privately discussed alternative proposals with other council members, raising concern that the state law on open meetings had been violated.

The council approved the same plan as last time--a zoning change that would allow construction of as many as 16 condominiums on the parcel.

Councilman Chuck Sheldon voted against the proposal, saying he supported a mixed-use development in which the front part of the site would be made into a park and the back lots developed commercially, preferably for a restaurant.

Councilman Albert Wiemans also voted in the minority, saying he wanted to send the issue to the people for a vote. Creighton predicted it would end up back on the ballot in any case.

But as most council members noted, the public has never spoken with one voice about what to do with the property and isn’t doing so now. Just last November, two competing ballot measures regarding the Biltmore site both failed to garner the necessary votes. One would have split the site into park, commercial and housing areas. The other, drafted by Herriott, would have converted all of the site into a park.

At this week’s public hearing, residents suggested everything from hotels to senior citizen housing for the little strip that fronts The Strand.

“We have enough open space near the beach,” said one resident, Jerry Compton, who argued against the park idea. “We have the whole beach.”

The Rev. Richard Parker of St. Cross Episcopal Church said a park “would be ideal for the older people to enjoy the beach and sunset.” Parker said seniors such as himself have no place to sit near the beach and often hesitate to cross The Strand, where bicyclists, roller-skaters and runners speed along the path.

The bulk of the residents who turned out to express their opinions supported the city’s plan to sell the property and use the revenue to buy other land, diminish city debt and lower taxes. One resident, citing Santa Monica as an example, warned that a park could invite vagrants and homeless people to loiter in the area.

Whatever the city decides, though, the plan must also clear the Coastal Commission. Some residents said the commission might reject a zone change that switches the site’s use from one serving the public and beach visitors to one benefiting private individuals.

In the meantime, the sandy stretch of prime real estate remains as it was 25 years ago, vacant and dotted with litter, animal waste and tufts of grass.