Hueneme Makes Compromise on RV Park Top Priority

The Port Hueneme City Council has directed staff members to try to work out a compromise with the California Coastal Commission in a last-ditch effort to build a recreational-vehicle park on a city beach.

The move came nearly five weeks after the Coastal Commission rejected the city’s original plan, deciding that the site proposed for the 144-space RV resort was an environmentally sensitive habitat.

But Coastal Commission staff said the beachfront project could be built if it was moved 290 feet north toward the municipal pier and away from fragile sand dunes and wetlands.

It also required that the city add overnight tent camping, which would replace half the RV stalls the city wanted to build, said Tom Figg, director of community development.

In a 4-1 vote shortly after midnight Wednesday, the council directed city employees to work with the commission staff to find a compromise that will comply with commission recommendations and be acceptable to the city.

Figg said the city is asking the commission to withdraw the requirements for the overnight tent spots and to move the resort northwest instead of north.

“The project as recommended by the Coastal Commission is too close to the pier, and that would destroy the character of the beach,” Figg said.

Figg said the Coastal Commission had invited the city to resubmit the project and that city staff members have been meeting with Coastal Commission staff since the commissioners reviewed the proposal at the panel’s September meeting in Eureka.

Toni Young, the only council member to vote against the project, said she still doubts the resort would generate the $400,000 a year that city officials predict.

“We are unable to increase retail sales in Port Hueneme,” Young said. “How are we going to attract RVs when we don’t even have freeway access to the city? I don’t think this project is appropriate in any circumstance.”

But other council members disagreed, saying that the park would be a good source of revenue for the financially strapped city, and that the proposal should be expedited.

By sending the plan back to the commission as soon as possible, Councilman Dorill Wright said, the city is making it easier for the incoming council to continue with the project.

“If we don’t act now, we are denying the new council the opportunity to carry on this project without having to spend more money,” Wright said.

Several residents at the Wednesday meeting felt that since the city has agreed to move the resort, the city should seek new public input.

It appears that the council “completely ignored the needs of the residents and voted to send what is basically a new proposal,” said Larry Bailey, a homeowner near the proposed site. “We need to have a public hearing so we can understand what this new proposal is about.”

But city officials said they had a public hearing in May and there is no need for another one.

Tom Brigham, a spokesman for the homeowners association of the Surfside III Condominiums near the proposed site, said earlier this week that the 309 members of the association authorized the board to do “whatever it takes to defeat the RV park project.”

“If the project is approved, we will tie it up in courts for years,” Brigham said.

City officials said the Coastal Commission is expected to look at the RV proposal again during its Nov. 15-18 meeting in San Diego.