Coastal Panel Expected to Sink Pierside Plan : Land-use: The agency’s staff has urged that Huntington Beach be barred from allowing more large commercial buildings in the pier area.

The powerful state Coastal Commission at a meeting here today is likely to drive a final nail into the coffin of the controversial Pierside Village project.

The commission’s staff has recommended that the agency forbid Huntington Beach to allow any more large commercial buildings--such as Pierside Village--in the Municipal Pier area. If the panel upholds its staff recommendation, as it usually does, Pierside Village would appear to be dead.

In a surprise move Monday night, the City Council voted, 4 to 3, to deny a lease of pier-area land for Pierside Village. The Pierside project calls for building two new restaurants on the beach side of Pacific Coast Highway and relocating an existing restaurant--Maxwell’s--into the new complex.

For five years, the project has been the most controversial in Huntington Beach. Environmental groups have vigorously campaigned against the plan, saying it would ruin the city’s famed oceanfront. Supporters have argued that the project would be good for city business and downtown redevelopment.

The council’s vote temporarily halted Pierside by denying the project a lease, but it could be revived by the council at any time if just one member changed a vote.

However, if the Coastal Commission rejects Pierside Village today, that project--or anything like it--could not be built on the beach. The Coastal Commission’s power in ruling on beach-related matters supersedes that of local governments.

Jonathan Chodos, spokesman for the proposed developer of Pierside Village, said last week that he was optimistic that both the City Council and the Coastal Commission would support the project. He said Pierside had “been approved at every step along the way.”

But after the council’s unexpected rejection Monday, Chodos declined comment.

Coastal Commission staff members, in a Pierside analysis, present a negative view of the restaurant proposal. The staff report, among other things, says Pierside “would disrupt and destroy visual resources and public views.”

The staff report also says more commercial buildings by the pier would violate a public easement, or right of way. In 1932, the city sued private landowners to gain beach right of way for the public. The Coastal Commission staff and the state attorney general’s office have both said that this public right of way still exists on the land by the pier and that Huntington Beach has a duty to protect it rather than build on it.

Technically, the Coastal Commission today is hearing an appeal regarding Pierside Village. The appeal was filed by City Councilwoman Grace Winchell and Save Our Parks spokeswoman Debbie Cook, both longtime foes of the project. They appealed to the Coastal Commission in March, asking it to drop its previous support for the project.

The panel approved Pierside in 1986, when the project was first proposed. But the panel’s staff members, in their new report, say many things were not known to the commission in 1986--including that land proposed for the project is dedicated to public right of way.

The land on which Pierside Village would be built extends from Main Street to 1st Street on the ocean side of the Pacific Coast Highway. Now on the tract are paved parking lots.

Supporters of Pierside Village say the paved lots are an “ugly” area that could be beautified by development.

But the Coastal Commission staff report said the lots, just as they are, have good public uses.

The staff report said: “Historically, surfers have used the existing parking lots to view the surf conditions. . . . The proposed development would result in the elimination of this practice.”