Ruling on Dana Point Project Appealed

Owners of the 117-acre Dana Point Headlands have asked the California Supreme Court to overturn an appellate court ruling against the proposed development of a $500-million resort-housing complex on the property.

The Supreme Court has 60 days to decide whether to review the case or let stand a December decision by the 4th District Court of Appeal upholding two 1994 referendums in Dana Point that blocked plans for a 400-room hotel, a commercial center and up to 370 homes.

Although the appellate court left the door open to another development plan being submitted, the landowners decided to take the case to the high court.

Attorney Michael M. Berger said Monday that the landowners have gone through the planning process since the early 1970s and it is unfair for the “electorate to simply pull the rug out from under them” through the referendum process.

“The owners became trapped in a system that--in spite of all this solemn planning--will not permit development of their land,” Berger said in his appeal to the Supreme Court. “The courts . . . held that the residents of Dana Point can simply nullify the planning process at their whim, regardless of three decades of planning.”

The property is owned by M.H. Sherman Co. and Chandis Securities Co., a firm that oversees the financial holdings of the Chandler family, a major stockholder in Times Mirror Co., which publishes the Los Angeles Times.

Ken Rozell, an attorney for the city, said the landowners have subdivided the property several times over the years and have sold portions. “I think it is very disingenuous for them to say they have had no use of their property,” he said.

Although the controversy over development of the property goes back decades, it came to a head in April 1994 when the City Council unanimously approved the resort and housing complex plan.

The council’s action sparked an uproar in the community, where many residents felt the development would be too large for the environmentally sensitive property on the bluffs at the west end of Dana Point Harbor.

Opponents of the plan put two referendums to rescind the council vote on the November 1994 ballot and the measures won easily. The landowners then sued the city, claiming that the referendums were unconstitutional because the owners had been prevented from developing their property.

A Superior Court judge upheld the two referendums, and his decision was upheld by the appeals court.