SAN CLEMENTE : Residents Review City General Plan

More than 100 people turned out for a workshop this week to review a proposed General Plan amendment that would guide development in the city’s historic Pier Bowl area.

City Planner Jim Barnes said the workshops are designed to let residents have a say in the future of the 68-acre Pier Bowl area, designed in the 1920s by city founder Ole Hanson as the blueprint for his “Spanish Village by the Sea.”

“This is a consensus-building process,” Barnes said. “This really was an initial step. It was a good step.”

Many of the comments during the four-hour workshop Monday came from residents who would like to see planners scale back a proposal to convert the 52-year-old Beachcomber Motel along the coastal bluff into a 123-room luxury hotel, Barnes said.

Under the city plan, development of a hotel at the Beachcomber site would be limited to a maximum of 84 rooms, Barnes said.

The city plan would also allow for hotel development at the site of the Casa Romantica, the landmark mansion built by Hanson in 1927. But the development would be less extensive than one proposed by the San Clemente Historical Society.

Last month the Historical Society proposed buying Casa Romantica from the city for $5 million and hiring a developer to build a 90-room luxury hotel that would wrap around the mansion’s back end.

Historical Society President Charles Ashbaugh said the group will try in coming weeks to persuade residents that a larger hotel at the site would be better.

“We can get more hotel rooms there,” he said. “We can do a bigger and better job.”

Ashbaugh said he was pleased that the city plan would support the possibility of turning parts of the mansion into a museum.

The plan would also provide for:

* Improving traffic flow by turning Coronado Lane into a two-way loop, connecting one end of Avenida del Mar with the other.

* Expanding the municipal parking lot on Avenida del Mar without obstructing ocean views for area residents and pedestrians.

* Building a new train depot next to the pier.

* Adding commercial development at the pier.

* Creating a shuttle service from neighboring areas to the Pier Bowl during peak tourist seasons.

* Establishing incentives to private homeowners to preserve and enhance historic homes in the area. Only Casa Romantica would be a mandatory preservation site under the plan.

A second workshop will be held at 7 p.m. Monday in the Ole Hanson Room at the Community Center.