Court Curbs Anti-Growth Bid in Hotel Ruling

The state Supreme Court, warning that environmental laws should not be used to needlessly delay development, on Monday upheld local approval of a proposed 400-unit Santa Barbara beachfront hotel fought by anti-growth forces for seven years.

The justices ruled unanimously that county officials, in preparing environmental impact reports, had properly turned down alternative sites suggested by a group opposing the project.

The justices readily acknowledged the importance of environmental protection laws and specifically declined to adopt “ironclad” rules limiting the official environmental review process. But the court stressed the need in such disputes for “a balancing of interests” by local authorities and residents--and appeared to signal displeasure with meritless legal attacks on proposed developments.

“We caution that rules regulating the protection of the environment must not be subverted into an instrument for the oppression and delay of social, economic, or recreational development and advancement,” Justice Armand Arabian wrote for the court.

The ruling was hailed as a “watershed” in land-use law by an attorney for the Hyatt Corp., which had undergone 47 public hearings and said it has spent millions of dollars since 1983 seeking approval of a resort hotel and convention center on an undeveloped 73-acre site at Haskell’s Beach, northwest of Santa Barbara.

“The court clearly saw that the environmental review process had gone on long enough in this case,” said Timothy A. Tosta, a San Francisco lawyer representing the developer. “It was sending a signal that if you’re going to contest the environmental impact of a project, you’d better have a basis for doing so--and not waste the courts’ time, money and limited resources.”

Tosta said that he expects that the hotel project will finally be under way by next summer.

Philip A. Seymour of the Environmental Defense Center, a lawyer representing opponents of the hotel, expressed concern that the ruling could encourage local authorities to improperly ignore environmentally superior alternatives to proposed projects.

“The decision has made it easier for public agencies that don’t really want to consider alternatives to alibi their way out of it,” said Seymour. “The court preserved the spirit of (environmental laws) but also made it easier to cheat.”

The case arose from a suit brought by Citizens of Goleta Valley challenging the approval of the hotel project by the Santa Barbara County Board of Supervisors. The citizens group voiced concern over the potentially harmful effects of the complex on a marsh, vegetation, archeological sites and a portion of the shore in the area.

In 1988, a state Court of Appeal in Ventura set aside the supervisors’ approval of the plan, saying their environmental impact report failed to adequately consider alternative sites. The county reviewed additional sites suggested by the citizens group but, for various reasons, rejected them. The appeal court blocked approval again, finding that the county failed to sufficiently explain its actions.

Hyatt Corp. then took the case to the state Supreme Court, contending that the appellate decision would improperly require consideration of sites that were zoned for other purposes, beyond the jurisdiction of the local agency or not owned or obtainable by the developer.

In Monday’s ruling, the justices refused to rule out consideration of those alternatives in some instances, but said that in this case an in-depth study of such sites was not warranted. In rejecting alternative sites as unfeasible, the supervisors properly relied on a previously prepared local coastal management plan and on the fact that other sites would need to be bought by the developer and rezoned by the county, the court said.

“We emphasize that an EIR may not ignore the regional impacts of a project proposal, including impacts that occur outside its borders,” wrote Arabian. “But the law does not require in-depth review of alternatives which cannot be realistically considered and successfully accomplished.”

In a second victory for developers Monday, the court, in a separate case, struck down a novel local initiative that had barred new projects that would add to congestion at key locations in suburban Walnut Creek.

The court voted 6 to 1 to invalidate a 1985 growth control initiative passed in Walnut Creek that had been challenged by Contra Costa County newspaper publisher Dean Lesher, who sought to build a new printing plant next to an existing company facility. The justices, in an opinion by Justice David N. Eagleson, held that the measure, as a zoning ordinance, failed to conform with the city’s general plan, as required by state law.

The court rejected the claim that the city should have been required to amend the pro-growth general plan to conform with the ordinance’s limitations.

The initiative was believed to be the first in the state to link growth to the amount of traffic it creates. Under the measure, new construction was barred as long as rush-hour traffic at key intersections exceeded 85% of capacity.

Monday’s ruling, however, will have no immediate effect. While the question of the validity of the initiative was before the courts, the City Council in 1989 revised the general plan to incorporate the measure’s growth limits. That action has spawned a second suit by Lesher.

In dissent, Justice Stanley Mosk said that in view of the revised plan the case was moot and should not have been decided by the court. The “undemocratic tenor” of the majority opinion undermined the deference courts should give to the initiative process, he said.

In other action Monday, the justices unanimously upheld the death sentences of Jay Charles Kaurish for the sexual assault, stabbing and strangulation of his 12-year old stepdaughter in Hollywood in 1982; Richard Allen Benson for the murders of a woman and her three children in San Luis Obispo County in 1986; Blufford Hayes Jr. for the stabbing murder of a Stockton motel manager in 1980; and Freddie Lee Taylor for the murder of an 84-year-old widow in Richmond in 1985.