Fate of Sites Uncertain After Voters’ Rejection

While Santa Monica ponders the future of commercial growth in the city, the fate of two recent battlegrounds of the development war remains unresolved.

At 415 Pacific Coast Highway, where Michael McCarty wanted to build his luxury beach hotel, city officials hope to use a former private beach club as a public facility while they assess their long-term options for the valuable piece of public beachfront property.

The property, owned by the state and administered by the city, includes a building that was once a beach house for actress Marion Davies. More important, as far as city officials are concerned, it also has paddle tennis and volleyball courts, a swimming pool, cafeteria, children’s play area and lockers and showers for beach-goers that the city could use.

The state had sought to oust the private Sand and Sea Club from the site to open it up to public access and provide the city with more revenues for use in beach cleanup. While the city considers its options on what to allow on the site, city officials said they hope to run the club as a public facility.

Douglas Badt, operator of the now-defunct private club, has said he will not attempt to regain control of the site or get in the way of the city’s plans. Indeed, some of the equipment at the club has been sold to the city, Badt said.

When Santa Monica officials decided several years ago that McCarty’s hotel project was what they wanted to do with the site, the state stipulated that the hotel would have to generate at least $500,000 a year in revenue for the city. Now that the hotel has been killed by voters, however, the state Parks and Recreation Department does not plan to set any new conditions until Santa Monica officials come forward with a specific proposal for the site.

Parks and Recreation Department Director Henry R. Agonia said in an interview this week that the legislation giving Santa Monica the authority to oversee the nearly five acres of choice property and collect revenue from it is vague and can be interpreted in different ways.

“The city has to determine what the next step will be,” Agonia said. “Until then, everything is hypothetical.”

Across town at Santa Monica Municipal Airport, plans to build a massive commercial project on 37 acres of city-owned land seem more remote than ever, city officials and the developer said.

In putting a hold on the project earlier this year, the City Council said it would re-examine plans by Reliance Development Corp. in a year or two. But due to the strong anti-development sentiment expressed by voters, company President Henry A. Lambert and city officials said they would hesitate to bring up the project again in the near future.

Meanwhile, slow-growth activists are wondering what the city will do with the site.

“We are all waiting,” said activist Sharon Gilpin.