Surfers Sound Alarm Over Plans for Headlands Resort : Environment: They hold ‘expression session’ at beach below Dana Point’s landmark Headlands, where developers want to build a major development with million-dollar homes.

Using a black felt-tipped pen, surfer Kirk Patterson had scrawled a dreamy design that included the words “Save Our Strands” on the nose of his surfboard.

For Patterson, the stretch of Dana Strands beach wedged between Niguel Shores and the pristine promontory here known as the Headlands, is his homeland of sorts.

“I’ve surfed here all my life, going back to when there was hardly anyone here,” said Patterson, 22, a San Juan Capistrano resident. “I don’t want to see anything happen that will hurt this beach.”

Patterson was one of about 100 surfers and other onlookers gathered at Dana Strands beach Saturday for what was billed as a surf “expression session” to protest a major resort development proposed for the bluff top. While the surfers rode some early morning waves offshore, the project’s two developers lobbied about 100 locals on the sand.

William R. Phillips and Dan Daniels, two principals for the proposed 122-acre resort hotel and residential development on the Headlands, showed up “to correct some misinformation” about the project that they claim has spread throughout the city. Phillips told the gathering that the project would “help you get access to this beach.”

“You won’t even be able to see the hotel from here,” said Phillips, adding that the 400-room resort hotel portion of the development will overlook Dana Point Harbor, near the Chart House restaurant but on the other side of the Headlands from Dana Strands.

But some of the surfers and Dana Point homeowners, among them members of the environmental organization called the Dana Point Conservation Group, claimed the developers have not been specific about their project. The developers’ plan to keep an estimated 55% of the project area as open space has sparked a good portion of the debate about the project.

“The developers and the city have insisted on counting roads, parking lots and the bluff faces in their open space calculations,” said Bob Larwood of Dana Point. “It has been really hard to get your teeth into how much open space there will be in this project.”

Saturday morning’s event, which was followed by another gathering at 1 p.m. at the county’s Youth and Group Facility at Dana Point Harbor, was organized by two longtime Dana Point residents and surfers, Mario (Maji) Melendez and Gary Wright. Both men have seen other surfing areas destroyed by development and have vowed not to let Dana Strands beach fall to a similar fate, they said.

“This is our home break. We grew up riding this surf,” said Wright, 31, co-owner of the Killer Dana Surf Shop in downtown Dana Point. “We have seen what can happen with Killer Dana (the nickname of a surfing beach dredged out when Dana Point Harbor was built in the late 1960s). We want to show the young people of today they can make a difference.”

Dana Strands and what was called Killer Dana are two surfing reefs on opposite sides of the Headlands, a nearly untouched promontory that represents the word “point” in the city’s name. It was near the Headlands that a Boston writer, Richard Henry Dana, spent time docked offshore in 1835. He recounted his time there in a book titled “Two Years Before the Mast.”

Today, the property is privately owned by the Chandis Securities Co. and the Newport Beach-based M.H. Sherman Co., said Daniels, the Sherman Co. president. Phillips is president of PBR, a planning firm that has created the project for the landowners.

Although groundbreaking is at least “two or three years away,” plans for the resort development have been filed at Dana Point City Hall and await scrutiny by city staff and the public, Daniels said.

Along with the resort hotel, 19 acres of “specialty shopping,” a bluff-top park and bike trails have been proposed along with about 550 homes. Some of the homes, particularly those on the bluffs over Dana Strands beach, will sell in the “million-dollar range,” Daniels said.

While Daniels and Phillips maintained that all possible precautions would be taken, some of those on the beach Saturday expressed concerns that any bluff-top development will have adverse effects on the beaches.

“There will be runoff, and all that stuff affects our ocean, not just here in Dana Point,” said Lars Yahr, 21, a Saddleback College student and 14-year Dana Point resident. “If people want to continue to enjoy our beaches, we need to consider these things. We know the bluffs are private property, but we just want to keep the area as natural as possible.”

Added Dyana Barton, 17, of Mission Viejo: “I don’t want to see anything happen that will hurt this environment. This is the last stretch of coastal land still untouched. It would be a real shame to let it go.”