City's La Bahia Plans Found to Violate Coastal Act After years of turning a deaf ear to warnings that their ambitious plans for a new beach hotel (170,000 sq. ft) on the La Bahia site would likely run afoul of the Coastal Act, city officials and business boosters were informed last Thursday by the Coastal Commission that their scheme amounted to overdevelopment of this relatively small parcel at the foot of Beach Hill. Commissioners, six to four, rejected the city's application to amend its local coastal program to allow developer Barry Swenson to demolish the dilapidated landmark La Bahia Apartment complex and replace it with an upscale, resort-style, seven-story, 125-unit condominium project intended to be operated and taxed as a hotel. City leaders, who joined the Swenson development team a decade ago, had whipped up a hurricane of public support for the plan. For hours speakers regaled Coastal Commissioners with the promise of business opportunities and tax revenues that Swenson's plan could engender. The majority of commissioners were unimpressed. Even local Commissioner Mark Stone ultimately voted against the city's proposal. He cited the long-term deleterious effect on the California coast of exempting individual parcels from local coastal programs for up-zoning on a piecemeal basis. He noted that this particular upzoning would permit development to dominate the public view shed and permanently remove the front of Beach Hill. Both are inconsistent with the Coastal Act. The Act, which functions as the Commission's constitution, promotes low-cost coastal accommodations, and Stone expressed concern that a tony resort might set a new standard for driving up the cost of accommodations so high as to shut out lower-income visitors over time. Five other commissioners also voted against the city's request. Esther Sanchez, Mary Shallenberger, and Steve Blank, all veteran commissioners, and newly appointed Dayna Bochco and Jana Zimmer. All cited the adverse effect that such massive construction would have on the surrounding residential area. Four commissioners voted to approve the city's application. Three of them, Steve Kinsey, Brian Brennan, and Martha McClure, all elected officials, are among the newly appointed commissioners that city leaders were counting on to follow the Commission's staff report, which had recommended approval of the city's request. Wendy Mitchell, a public member appointed by Governor Schwarzenegger, joined them. Two commissioners (Richard Bloom and William Burke) were absent from the meeting held in Watsonville's new city government center, but the city's application would have failed even with two more votes, since seven are needed to approve changes to a coastal program. The fallout from the Commission's decision preserves the status quo at La Bahia until its owner, the Santa Cruz Seaside Company, submits a new development plan to the city. The Demolition Permit that the city had issued in 2009 as part of its “conceptual” approval of the Swenson plan was conditioned on the issuance of a building permit. Since the Coastal Commission denied the zoning changes necessary for the plan to proceed, no building permit will be issued, and so the landmark still stands. It's an open question whether the site developer, Barry Swenson Builder, and the Santa Cruz Seaside Company will renew their joint venture agreement which is due to expire shortly. Swenson sank over two million dollars into this project, having bought two supposedly bullet-proof Environmental Impact Reports, designed and redesigned several versions of the project, and paid for extensive use of lawyers, lobbyists, and consultants. When you add Swenson's lost millions to the cost of the countless hours that city officials have wasted chasing phantom taxes they hope someday to collect from a La Bahia Hotel, the mind boggles — not least from the realization that if all of that money and effort had gone instead to rehabilitate important portions of the landmark and design a suitably scaled hotel, a fair number of us would probably be drinking in the handsome La Bahia Lounge right now. But the city dreamers dream big and wouldn't consider anything less than the seven-story block that Swenson designed, despite repeated requests by a community coalition to stay within the current zoning. At the eleventh hour, Mayor Coonerty was still trying to persuade Coastal Commissioners that Swenson's project, with approximately 5,000 feet of meeting space, was actually a “conference center.” The mayor argued that without those penthouse ocean-view suites for which the property had to be rezoned, it just wouldn't be a “conference center” any more. Earlier the city had claimed they were forced to build above the legal height because replicating some historically-correct landscaping had eaten up so much of the building site. Coastal Commissioners dismissed both of these notions, noting that not only was renovation of more of the old structures feasible, but that the city's goals could be accomplished without a change in zoning. Deprived of its expanded building envelope, will the city finally rethink its vision for the La Bahia site and seek a smaller hotel? That would require Mr. Canfield to be satisfied with a smaller hotel, and the city to moderate its estimate of future taxes flows. Frankly, neither of these seems likely. These folks are locked in an echo chamber that reflects their own fixed assumptions about transforming the beach area, and they spurn any alternative suggestion. They would let a landmark rot rather than refurbish it, let alone invest the effort and money to incorporate it into a smaller development. Or they might try again to aggregate the La Bahia site with two adjoining parcels into a larger building site and revive the 1999 plan for an even larger conference center complex. How can they hope to attain their headiest goals when they can't even make their partner repair and maintain a landmark? Whatever city officials dream up next, let's hope—in a fiscal crisis—that they don't start another round of spending mountains of time and money chasing a castle in the air. To all of you who lent a hand in stopping our city leaders from needlessly destroying a famous beach landmark, or who helped preserve the scale of development at the Main Beach, thank you for your time, your ideas, and your support. If the insiders ever do figure out how to build a hotel at the beach appropriately, I hope to meet you there. Don Webber