Oceanside Strand Ban on Building Is Lifted

With a swift series of votes, the California Coastal Commission relieved Oceanside of one of its longstanding woes on Wednesday and replaced it with what could be a new, bitter fight over future development of the coastal city.

The state panel commission voted unanimously to lift the decade-long building moratorium on the blighted beachfront area along the South Strand, freeing property owners to renovate and reconstruct the homes along the three-block stretch.

“This is a great relief to us,” said Bill DeViney, who wants to retire by selling the cottage that he and his wife bought in 1978.

“The property was redlined by lending institutions and no developer would touch it because of the restrictions on building, and now we will be able to sell it,” said the 60-year-old electrical engineer, who now lives in Torrance.

The commission had enacted the building ban years ago because of beach erosion and a history of storm damage in the area. But since then, commissioners said, improved technology that replenishes the area with sand has addressed the problem.

But the Coastal Commission, at the insistence of the city of Oceanside and over the objections of its staff, also voted 6-5 to allow the city to issue permits for buildings as high as 140 feet in the pier area.

Oceanside hopes to attract a full-scale hotel to the area to boost a stagnant downtown commercial sector, and without the increased height no hotel would be interested in the area, city officials said.

A local developer, Data Property Services, has already begun “discussions” with three major hotel chains to bring a hotel to its Pier Plaza project, said Jim Keenan, president of the firm.

“We’re building a family destination resort,” said Keenan, who said his project has been in development for about three years.

But some Oceanside residents said their city isn’t ready for 12-story buildings jutting out onto their seascape.

“We live in a historical neighborhood, and have a Main Street lifestyle. When you put in a 12-story building, you’re saying we want downtown, dense development, and that’s not what Oceanside is about,” said Joan Bockman, an Oceanside resident.

And Bockman fears that the Pier Plaza project would be just the beginning of a downtown where high-rise buildings sprout up “like weeds along the freeway.”

“We don’t want to be San Diego, we want Oceanside,” Bockman said.

But others, including City Councilwoman Melba Bishop, said the coastal community has grown up into a city of more than 130,000 people.

“Oceanside isn’t Carlsbad. Oceanside isn’t the sleepy little town next to Camp Pendleton that we once were. We are a large city now and we are a city that needs revival,” said Bishop, who is an alternate on the Coastal Commission and who cast the deciding vote to allow the city to build high-rise buildings.

To ban tall buildings in hopes of preserving an ocean view could condemn the city to “lovely views of blight from here to eternity,” said Bishop, who was elected to the City Council on a slow-growth platform.