SAN CLEMENTE : Guidelines Allowing Seaside Resort OKd

In a move that brought some angry shouts, a City Council majority this week endorsed general development guidelines allowing a proposed seaside luxury resort near the pier.

The council voted 3 to 2 Wednesday night to support guidelines allowing a potential 123-room luxury hotel to be built where the aging Beachcomber Apartments Motel now stands on Avenida Victoria.

Council members Candace Haggard and Thomas Lorch voted against the guidelines, saying they would be willing to support a smaller project, such as an 84-room proposal recommended by the Planning Commission.

Beachcomber property owner Robert Laidlaw and a consultant hired by the city have said any hotel at the site would need about 123 rooms to be financially possible.

“If we are going to have a hotel, I want it to be a successful hotel,” Mayor Joseph Anderson said.

The heated debate involving potential redevelopment of the 52-year-old Beachcomber Apartments Motel came as the City Council considered a larger plan that will someday guide redevelopment and preservation of the seaside Pier Bowl area. The 68-acre Pier Bowl was designed back in the 1920s by city founder Ole Hanson as the blueprint for his “Spanish Village by the Sea” vision.

A standing-room-only crowd of about 100 people turned out for the meeting on the Pier Bowl Conceptual Plan, which was largely supported by the public.

But as in previous hearings about the plan, public testimony centered on the future of the Beachcomber, which many residents said they want to see preserved.

“I do not want to see a massive, oversized hotel built on a small site,” resident Joe Walker said. “Major commercial ventures do not belong in the picture.”

Resident Tom Dalton said his biggest fear involving a luxury hotel in the Pier Bowl is the traffic it would bring.

“Nobody in this city designed these streets as geniuses,” he said. “God forbid there was ever a fire down there. I mean, there’s no room.”

Proponents of the luxury hotel concept, including the San Clemente Chamber of Commerce and the Radisson Co., which has submitted a preliminary proposal for the hotel, said such a project would bring in much-needed sales tax dollars and revitalize the downtown area.

“A 123-room hotel is not going to clog up your city,” said Manfred Gerling, vice president of development for Radisson. “I believe it will be the pride of your community.”