Battle Reflects Dueling Views of a Coastal City’s Future

To outsiders, it’s just a giant hole, notable mainly because of its location three blocks uphill from the ocean. But to residents of Manhattan Beach, the former site of the now-defunct Metlox Pottery plant has become a battlefield of competing civic hopes and values.

The question, one faction says, is whether the city will preserve its village-like feel and mom and pop businesses or turn into a crowded shopping destination for tourists drawn to the commercial development proposed for the three-acre site.

The other side depicts the fight another way. The city of 33,000 can build itself a little town square, along with a 40-room hotel, a few shops and offices, or, they contend, risk its financial health to develop an expensive park on the land instead.

The debate over Metlox echoes those in other coastal cities, such as Santa Monica and Rancho Palos Verdes. Although the specifics differ, there is a common theme: The closer proposed developments are to the water, the more residents’ passions seem to boil.

In affluent Manhattan Beach, it all comes to a head with a special election June 6.

“I have been surprised at the brouhaha over this,” said Mayor Linda Wilson, who supports the 90,000-square-foot commercial project favored by the City Council. “I thought we were doing a good thing for the city.”

But an anti-development group called Residents for a Quality City collected enough signatures to force an election.

Members of the group say a hotel, big stores and office buildings belong farther from the beach, along Rosecrans Avenue or Sepulveda Boulevard. Their ballot measure would rezone the Metlox land to allow only civic, cultural and noncommercial uses. Ideally, they would like a walking area with trees and shaded paths. Some people suggest a new library or police station there.

What they envision is “small enough so it would not draw people from outside the city,” said Robert Caldwell, spokesman for the group. “And children in the schools could participate in gardening and feel a sense of responsibility to the community.”

Two other community groups--opposed to the public use idea but not in full agreement with each other--are working to defeat the initiative.

One group, Residents for a Smalltown Downtown, says the city desperately needs a few more stores and a hotel, but wants the development to be only 60,000 square feet.

The other group, Residents Against Rezoning, wants to let the pro-development council decide. “We elect people to make these decisions,” said Chairwoman Helene Lohr.

From 1927 to 1989, when Metlox went bankrupt, the lot housed a pottery factory, famous for teddy bear cookie jars and ceramic Disney characters. During the early 1990s, the lot was infamous mostly as an expensive piece of real estate polluted by toxic amounts of lead from pottery glazes.

After the site was cleaned up by its owners, the city purchased it in two chunks, one in 1997 and one in 1998, for a total of $5.5 million. City officials said they wanted to save the site from a proposed 200,000-square-foot commercial project and at the same time put in a development about half that size, with a few shops that could bring a bit of money into city coffers to offset the cost of buying the land.

So, half the site, which is between Morningside and Valley drives at Manhattan Beach Boulevard, was turned into a metered parking lot. The rest remains a fenced-off hole, about 10 feet deep, tantalizingly close to the city’s main tourist spot, the pier.

The city contracted with the Tolkin Group, a developer that helped transform Old Pasadena and the Third Street Promenade in Santa Monica into regional shopping meccas. After meetings with residents, an artist for the developer produced a rendering that showed a 90,000-square-foot development of a town square surrounded by boutiques, a 40-room hotel and office space. Beneath it all would be underground parking.

City Council members loved the design, and asked for an environmental impact report, a necessary first step before construction can begin. That report will be completed sometime later this summer, city officials said.

Foes said such a project would bring traffic, crime and pollution to their beloved town and, despite the garage, would make already scarce parking spaces as rare as affordable beachfront cottages.

So they hit the streets and collected 8,500 signatures calling for a special election to override the council’s decision.

Caldwell, who is pushing the ballot measure, said he estimates that it would cost about $400,000 to landscape the recreation area his group wants and that it would cost the city about $20,000 a year to maintain.

But having spent $5.5 million to buy the land, Wilson said the city cannot afford not to develop it.

“It’s unrealistic and fiscally irresponsible to turn the area into a park, and the space is not needed for a new library or police station or any of the other things that have been proposed,” she said.

Not so, counters Caldwell. The money to landscape the area could come from state park bond funds, and the cost of maintaining it could be covered by revenue from the parking meters on the adjacent lot. Besides, he says, Manhattan Beach has a budget surplus.

This fight has added urgency, all sides say, because the city has been transformed in recent years by an influx of wealthy residents working in the entertainment and high-tech industries, some of whom have torn down tiny bungalows in favor of hulking houses, and sent real estate prices skyrocketing.

The city is not the only one in the region grappling with issues of land use near the beach. For example, in 1990, Santa Monica residents passed a ballot measure sharply restricting the number of luxury hotels allowed. In Rancho Palos Verdes, residents fought bitterly against a golf course and two housing developments now under construction.

Because Manhattan Beach already has undergone so much change, it is imperative to preserve as much as possible the old way of life, Caldwell said.

But a small development downtown is exactly what’s needed to preserve the old way of life, says Councilman Walt Dougher, who unsuccessfully tried to get the council to add a pro-development initiative to June’s ballot. “The right kind of development will strengthen the downtown and the city, which in turn will help the whole community,” he said.

Mayor Wilson thinks the tide of change cannot be turned back.

“We need parking. We need a hotel,” she said. “It’s not necessarily a bad thing. Manhattan Beach is a wonderful place to live. We couldn’t keep it a secret forever. Change is inevitable.”