Council OKs Pacific City

Andrew Edwards

The hotly-debated Pacific City project took a big step forward

Tuesday morning when the City Council rejected an appeal to halt the

project and approved it’s environmental impact report, conditional

use permit and conceptual master plan.

Makar Properties can now proceed with more specific preparations

for the project, which is slated to include more than 500 condos, a

hotel, stores and office space on a 31-acre lot bordered by Pacific

Coast Highway, Atlanta Avenue, Huntington and First streets. The

company will eventually have to submit plans for approval for

infrastructure, water quality and architecture, Makar vice-president

Michael Gagnet said.

“We’re still a couple years out,” he said.

The council’s vote came at the end of a long and contentious

meeting that included many local labor union teamsters and local

business leaders supporting the project and nearby residents and

business owners who were opposed because of parking and health

concerns.

Labor unions strongly supported the project, which they said would

be a ripe source of much-needed jobs. Support also comes from

residents who want to see the dirt lot filled in and waterfront area

completed.

Pacific City opponents from the business arena, including Steve

Bone, president of Robert Mayer Corp., which appealed the project,

argued vehemently that the development would not have enough parking

spaces to accommodate all its uses. Many residents also urged the

council to withhold its approval if greater health safeguards were

not enacted.

The site was once a Chevron oil field, and some worry deadly

toxins lurk in the soil.

The Planning Commission approved the project in May, but an appeal

by the Robert Mayer Corp., which owns the two resorts to the south of

the property, forced the council to make the final decision.

Representatives from the Robert Mayer Corporation, which owns the

Hyatt Regency Huntington Beach Resort & Spa and the Hilton Waterfront

Beach Resort, appealed the decision on the basis that Pacific City’s

environmental impact report did not have enough parking.

Bone, said the Pacific City plan assumed 3,000 guests would walk

from the beach or Downtown to Pacific City each day.

“It condemns the Hilton and Hyatt to accommodate cars that cannot

park at Pacific City,” Bone said.

City staffers disagreed with Bone’s argument. Planning director

Howard Zelefsky said the “shared parking” concept in the Pacific City

plan had been approved at other projects in the city.

“Every major project that’s come to the city in the past four or

five years has been based on the basis of shared parking,” Zelefsky

said.

After unanimously rejecting the appeal, the council voted 6 to 1

to approve the project, after making several alterations to the plan.

The dissenting vote was cast by Councilwoman Jill Hardy, who said she

could not favor the proposed eight-story hotel at Pacific City.

“I would never vote for anything more than four stories on the

coast” Hardy said.

But for council members who voted for the project, Pacific City

represented a chance for a transfusion of much needed cash into

Huntington Beach’s economy.

“I just think it’s an excellent project,” Councilman Dave Sullivan

said. “It accomplishes what we want, it’s essential that this city

make money off tourism.”

The City Council selected the consultant firm GeoSyntec to work on

the cleanup, despite the objections of a community group that worries

the development will expose incoming residents to carcinogens left

over from the parcel’s days as an oil field. Members of the Pacific

City Action Coalition, were given a chance to choose a consultant

from a list of five firms but the group’s members declined, saying

none of the choices were acceptable.

“We demand an independent consultant, not one from the city’s

pre-approved list with close ties to Chevron,” coalition member Gaye

Chuchin said.

The Fire Department will have oversight on the cleanup, and Chief

Duane Olson said the cleanup will be consistent with the state’s

hazardous materials code, and experts will look for cancer-causing

chemicals like benzene, toluene and butane. The area should be clean

in six to eight months, he said.

* ANDREW EDWARDS covers education and crime. He can be reached at

(714) 965-7177, (949) 494-4321 or [email protected].