Huntington Beach Wins HUD Funds for Soil Cleanup

Huntington Beach will receive $8 million in federal loans and grants to clean up contaminated soil at the site of the proposed Waterfront Hilton expansion project, it was announced Monday.

For years, at least six oil wells hauled up messy crude on the land next to the resort on Pacific Coast Highway. The site also has been used as a dump and most recently as a beach maintenance facility. Aging underground gasoline tanks, along with an abandoned oil pipeline, must be removed and the soil cleaned before construction can move forward.

Newport Beach-based Robert Mayer Corp. plans to build a 530-room luxury hotel with a 50,000-square-foot conference center at the site. Another phase of the project includes a shopping center and a residential area with as many as 230 homes.

City officials expect the project to create 500 permanent jobs.

Housing and Urban Development Secretary Andrew Cuomo, who announced the winners of the competitive funding process, said employment is the primary goal of the initiative to clean up so-called “brownfields,” named after contaminated commercial and industrial sites. Nationwide, the Brownfields Economic Development Initiative Grants and Economic Development Loan Guarantees should create 7,700 permanent jobs, Cuomo said during a conference call announcing the funding.

“If a city or a county or a state has a strong economic base, they can take care of themselves,” Cuomo said, adding that one of the biggest hurdles to economic development is the expensive task of cleaning up contaminated sites.

The city was one of 29 communities across the nation to win a share of $152 million in funding from HUD, earmarked for restoring contaminated industrial or commercial sites to acceptable environmental standards.

Other California areas receiving the federal funding include south Los Angeles, which was awarded $12.1 million in grants and loans to restore a 208-acre tract, and Stockton, which won $3.5 million to revitalize its waterfront.

When Robert Mayer Corp. proposed building the new resort in Huntington Beach, the city pledged to reimburse the company $16 million in costs to clean up the site and prepare it for construction, said David C. Biggs, the city’s economic development director.

The $2-million grant and $6-million loan mean the city will save nearly $10 million, when principal and interest are calculated, he said.

Cuomo noted that in some cases, smaller cities such as Huntington Beach beat out larger municipalities for the competitive funding. The federal program tried to identify and fund projects that were focused on creating jobs and had the added benefit of bringing in additional funding sources from the private sector.

“I think it shows we’re doing some of the right things here,” Biggs said. “We’re trying to diversify our economic base. It’s a good project that creates the types of jobs the government wants to create. It was a great surprise.”