Coastal Commission OKs Plan for 70-Home Seal Beach Community

The California Coastal Commission gave final approval Wednesday to a plan for a 70-home gated community on Seal Beach’s Hellman Ranch, ending two decades of battles over the coastal property that, at one point, triggered apparent death threats against local officials.

The commission voted unanimously for the plan by Hellman Properties LLC to build the upscale community on 18 acres of a 196-acre undeveloped parcel near the San Gabriel River. The project also will add parking signs and trails to the existing 15-acre Gum Grove Park.

But the vote at a meeting in Oceanside came only after the developer agreed to add more than 50 acres with producing oil wells to a 100-acre parcel of lowlands property that must be sold only for conservation and wetlands restoration. The lowlands area was once slated to be a golf course.

A list of special conditions was attached, including a 25-year deed restriction that would bar sale of the lowlands for anything but restoration. Once oil production was exhausted, a 25-year deed restriction for conservation or wetlands restoration would apply to that area.

The decision was long in coming for the developer, which had won commission approval for other versions of the project twice before.

“It’s been challenging, but it’s exciting to have this part of the process resolved,” said Jerry Tone, an official for Hellman Properties.

Commission Chairwoman Sara Wan, who voted against the project in 1998, congratulated the developer and said she now is proud of the project.

“Finally they’re getting development, and the wetlands are going to be restored,” said Wan, a commissioner from Los Angeles.

Work probably won’t begin on the project until next year at the earliest, but Tone said searches for Native American artifacts will begin soon.

The commission narrowly approved the project in 1998, including an 18-hole golf course on the lowlands that would have destroyed nearly 18 acres of wetlands. Environmentalists objected loudly to the vote, saying the project violated the state’s landmark 1972 Coastal Act.

That decision prompted two lawsuits by the League for Coastal Protection, California Earth Corps and Wetlands Action Network charging that the powerful state agency had violated the Coastal Act, which allows wetlands development only in special cases. The commission’s own staff had written that it saw no legal justification for filling in the wetlands for a golf course.

Teeming with wildlife, wetlands at the ocean’s edge in Southern California provide food for migratory birds and purify runoff before it hits the ocean. Over the last century, more than 95% of the state’s coastal wetlands have given way to development.

The 27 acres of degraded wetlands on Hellman Ranch are adjacent to a 123-acre coastal marsh, which is all that remains of what was once the 2,400-acre Alamitos Bay wetlands network.

Because 18 acres of wetlands will be saved from dredging, the developer no longer is required to compensate for them. Thus the project loses plans for restoration of nine acres of wetlands and creation of another 30 acres that the developer had offered as mitigation for the environmental damage.

The ranch property has been in the Hellman family since the 1880s. Plans by various developers have been downsized from an original attempt to build 1,000 multiple- and single-family homes to the current 70 dwellings.

In 1997, several proponents of development--including then-Seal Beach Mayor Gwen Forsythe--revealed that they had received bullets in the mail. Similar mailings were made to officials tied to projects in the Bolsa Chica and Newport Beach areas. All the parcels involved were thought to contain Native American remains.