Coastal Panel OKs Project in San Clemente

The California Coastal Commission on Wednesday unanimously approved plans to build hundreds of homes and an upscale mall on a 250-acre parcel overlooking the Pacific. The action ends decades of controversy over the majestic Marblehead property in San Clemente.

With its sandstone bluffs, striking canyons and blue-water vistas, the property is one of the last large undeveloped coastal parcels in Southern California and was once the potential site of the Nixon Library.

The panel approved the proposal only after the developer, the Lusk Co., agreed to slash the size of the project and increase environmental protections.

Lusk Chief Executive Jim Johnson was so moved by the approval that he broke down in tears after the two-hour hearing and later was congratulated by city officials and others offering hearty hugs. He said he never expected the project to pass on a 12-0 vote.

The last time the proposal was heard before the commission, in 2001, there was so much criticism directed at Johnson and his company that he withdrew the project before a vote.

The latest proposal includes 313 homes, 675,243 square feet of commercial space and roughly 105 acres of open space, trails and parks. Initial plans in the 1970s called for as many as 2,000 homes.

“This really underscores the reason California needs the Coastal Commission,” said Commissioner Pedro Nava, who had expressed concerns about the previous proposals. “This project is vastly improved because the Coastal Act protects coastal resources and preserves what’s important about our coastline.”

Commission staff tacked on dozens of special conditions to address water-quality requirements, building specifications, archeological requirements and other mandates.

The commissioners made only minor changes to the proposal during Wednesday’s hearing in Santa Barbara. They eliminated a three-quarter-acre bluff-top park from the plans, which city officials had requested, because it would have disturbed wildlife habitats.

The project won the support of many of its previous critics, including San Clemente’s mayor, the Surfrider Foundation, Orange County CoastKeeper, the Sierra Club and San Clemente Citizens for Responsible Development. They praised Lusk for including increased habitat restoration and water-quality protections.

“I think this is a beautiful plan,” said Lyn Harris Hicks, who has lived in the city for more than half a century. “When we faced that first proposal to fill in those canyons, I just about died. This plan successfully achieves the saving of those canyons.”

Under the plan, development is eliminated from most canyon and all coastal wetlands. Building is set back at least 250 feet from bluff edges and 100 feet from most wetlands.

Urban runoff from the property and surrounding area will be diverted to a nearby sewage-treatment plant. Flora such as coastal sage-scrub, Blochman’s dudleya and native grasslands are being preserved, and the developer is enhancing more than 70 acres of sensitive habitats including sage-scrub, mulefat, needlegrass and alkali meadow.

“How can we not support this plan?” said Bob Joseph of San Clemente Citizens for Responsible Development, which strongly opposed previous proposals. “It is such a good plan that it has met all of the concerns we have brought up in the past.”

Mayor Stephanie Dorey, who was elected on an environmental platform in 2000, testified to the commission that she had opposed all previous versions of the proposal.

The city is counting on Marblehead for millions of dollars in sales tax revenue and local improvements.

The commercial part of the project, which will be an upscale shopping mall similar to Fashion Island in Newport Beach that is expected to generate $2 million a year in sales tax, could account for 51% of the city’s new retail sales tax growth over the next decade, city officials said.

Additionally, the developer has agreed to spend millions for beach and downtown improvements, a new senior center, library expansion and transportation improvements.