Staff Wants Cutbacks at Bolsa Chica

The three-decade battle to develop Bolsa Chica--a mesa overlooking coastal marshes between Sunset Beach and Huntington Beach--took another twist Friday when California Coastal Commission staff recommended slashing the project area by more than half, limiting development to the upper tier of the mesa.

In a 333-page recommendation, the commission’s staff strongly advised the powerful state agency to limit the 1,235-home development to about 60 acres rather than the 183-acre limit set earlier. That would mean five- or six-story condominiums could be built by Irvine-based Hearthside Homes, formerly known as Koll Real Estate Group.

A Hearthside official said she was appalled by the finding. The company will sue if the commission adopts it at a Nov. 16 meeting in Los Angeles, she said.

The land consists of a two-tier mesa west of a 1,249-acre wetland that provides habitat for native and migratory species. The staff recommended that new residential development be concentrated on the upper portion of the mesa near existing houses to conserve important coastal resources on the lower part.

Environmentalists were thrilled.

“This is an important step toward our vision of preserving the entire Bolsa Chica,” said Flossie Horgan, co-founder of the Bolsa Chica Land Trust.

But Lucy Dunn, executive vice president of Hearthside, said the proposal would take private property from her company, a school district and two other landowners without compensation.

“It’s outrageous,” she said. “They’re not skilled at local planning issues and not sensitive to the history and all of the . . . promises made on this plan that need to be kept. For them to be doing actual land-use planning is absurd.”

Normally, commission staff simply analyze proposals and recommend approval or denial. In this case, they drew up an alternate plan.

The recommendation is not binding, but if the commissioners follow it, it would be a major victory for environmentalists.

Since the Bolsa Chica project’s inception in 1970, it has won Coastal Commission approval three times--in 1986, 1996 and 1997--but has been dramatically scaled back after a series of court challenges by environmentalists.

The project has undergone a series of transformations over the years. In 1986, the Coastal Commission approved a plan for 5,700 homes and millions of square feet of commercial space, hotels and restaurants on about 700 acres. The latest plan has no commercial development and about a fifth of the housing.