DANA POINT : Builder Further Cuts Headlands Project

The developer of a proposed $800-million, 121-acre resort on the Headlands agreed this week to scale back the residential portion of the project to a maximum of 394 units, the second such reduction in three months.

In a meeting Wednesday night before the city Planning Commission, the developer presented the new proposal calling for fewer homes in the Dana Strands area of the project, a 21-acre custom-home tract on a bluff overlooking the Strands beach. After initially projecting 164 houses for the Dana Strands area, 95 homes are now proposed, said Dan Daniels, president of the Newport Beach-based M. H. Sherman Co., which is developing the property along with the Chandis Securities Co.

The 95 houses represent a density of 4.5 houses per acre, which is “much less than anything surrounding us,” Daniels said. The new residential figures would drop the density of the entire project to eight houses per acre, contrasted with the next-door development, Niguel Terrace, which has a density of 21 units per acre, Daniels said.

Under the city’s General Plan, a total of 522 residential units could be built on the entire Headlands property, one of the last privately owned, undeveloped parcels along the Orange County coast. Last July, the developers scaled back the proposed residential portion of the project to a total of 447 units.

Toni Gallagher, a homeowner in the Headlands area and one of the most vocal critics of the project, said the cutbacks “are not even close” to being enough.

“I think it’s an insult to the residents of Dana Point,” she said of the new proposal. “We have been showing up at the City Council meetings and Planning Commission meetings asking to have this overdevelopment cut back by one-half or three-quarters.”

Daniels said the development has been reduced by more than one-half going back to the early 1980s when the Dana Point Specific Plan called for two hotels and 800 dwelling units on the Headlands parcel.

The majority of the residential cutbacks have been in the Dana Strands area because of concerns about the stability of the bluffs and the effects on the beach below, said Planning Commissioner Carlos Olvera. The original development proposal called for compacting the bluffs, although there were also concerns about what that would do to the environment, he said.

As it is now proposed, the project will include a 400-room hotel on the bluffs overlooking Dana Point Harbor.

The next commission meeting on the Headlands will be held Oct. 13 at City Hall. Later this fall, the five-member commission hopes to have developed a consensus on the project and forward it to the council, said Planning Commissioner Lynn Dawson.