San Clemente Delays Vote on Marblehead

A battle that has raged for about 20 years in courts, at City Hall and in the community of San Clemente was extended Tuesday night when the City Council postponed a decision on the Marblehead Coastal project.

The council voted 3 to 2 to send the controversial project back to the city Planning Commission.

“I would rather underbuild than overbuild,” Councilman Joseph Anderson said. He voted with Councilwoman Lois R. Berg and Mayor Jim Dahl to have the Planning Commission consider more homes on the site instead of a proposed 61-acre shopping center. Opponents said the center would conflict with a similar center at Plaza Pacifica two miles away.

“We already have empty stores,” Berg said. “To allow more to go up would be a sacrilege.”

The Marblehead discussion carried over from a special hearing called Monday night, attended by more than 400 people and lasting past midnight. Only about 100 people attended the more subdued Tuesday night meeting, which ended after only two hours.

“It’s a pristine piece of property. To put anything this large on it is a travesty,” said Mary Dunlap, a member of San Clemente Citizens for Responsible Development, a group opposed to the proposal for the last parcel of unused coastland in the city.

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“We didn’t want the city to have the homogeneous look that all others do. We wanted something unique,” she said.

The current proposal for the 250-acre site includes 434 single-family homes, a 14-acre canyon preserve and the commercial center, with Target and Albertsons stores, a Long’s drugstore, shops and a theater with as many as 22 movie screens.

Plans for the site have gone through many incarnations in past years. It once was slated to be home to the Nixon presidential library, and, more recently, to house a resort hotel and golf course.

After city voters approved a measure in 1986 limiting new growth to 500 homes a year, the developer sued the city. The two sides settled in 1992 when the company dropped the suit.

The developer, the Irvine-based Lusk Co., and residents who support the project say the shopping center will bring consumers from around the county to San Clemente.

“Delaying this project takes away a tremendous economic benefit to the city,” complained 13-year resident Jim Hill. “We have to have the income. Our parks and beaches are not being maintained because we don’t have the money.”

The delay also stalls payments of as much as $14 million by the Lusk Co. to help build a freeway interchange to the project site, at Avenida Vista Hermosa, and benefit library and senior services and schools.

The city Planning Commission could revisit the project as soon as its next meeting, July 14.

Also contributing to this report was Times correspondent Steve Carney.