Replace love trysts, tawdry scandals and buxom blondes with a supercharged rumor mill, personality wars, raptors, wetlands, politicians and developers, and welcome to the saga of the Wavecrest Village project, Half Moon Bay's very own soap opera.
The history of the struggle between the city's slow-growth movement and the Wavecrest Village project dates back for years - 14 if you count previous attempts to develop the property, which is less than a mile from downtown, on the west side of Highway 1.
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The project is currently in limbo, undergoing its fourth reworking by the developer and staff of the California Coastal Commission, and consideration by the commission itself has been delayed until at least May or June. The commission is waiting for the completion of studies about the project's potential impact on wetlands and raptor species on the property.
FACTIONS TAKE SIDES
The subject of the debate is far-reaching, with several factions on each side. Environmental groups, including the Sierra Club and the Sequoia Audubon Society, seek to protect wetlands, raptors and potential endangered species on the site from development.
The developer, Wavecrest Partners, is a partnership between Ocean Colony Partners and the P1umbers and Steamfitters Union, which owns 90 percent of the project. Wavecrest wants to build a development that would include 279 homes, 150,000 square feet of commercial space, 15,000 square feet of retail space, 10 acres of ball fields and a community garden. Sixty acres would remain in undeveloped open space.
The proposed development also includes a new middle school and a Boys and Girls Club, each of whose boards have aggressively lobbied public opinion about why the Wavecrest Village site makes sense for the community. With the project stalled, however, the school board voted unanimously last week to re-examine its commitment to the Wavecrest site.
Local political action committees, the League for Coastside Protection and Coastsiders for Quality Living (CQL), have squared off on opposite sides of the debate, with the league opposing it and CQL in support. In recent weeks, the league has stepped up its efforts to get its message out with a series of public forums and Coastal Commission lobbying.
REDEVELOPMENT PLAN DEFEATED
In 1995, Half Moon Bay voters resoundingly defeated the proposed North Wavecrest Redevelopment Project, which called for approximately 750 homes and two new golf courses to be built on the entire 495-acre North Wavecrest property.
Prior to that defeat, the City Council had signed an Owners Participation Agreement with Ocean Colony Partners, stating that the city would assist in the future development on the property. It did not guarantee approval of any project, though.
Over the next four years, Wavecrest Partners, city staf,f the Cabrillo Unified School District board and the Boys and Girls Club board created a project on a 205-acre portion of Wavecrest. The plan received unanimous approval by the Half Moon Bay City Council in 1999.
Shortly thereafter, separate appeals were filed against the project by two local landowners and two coastal commissioners.
The Coastal Commission makes its decisions based on the findings of its staff, but public opinion will certainly come into play in the next phase of the project.
Since 1999 the project has gone through many revisions, with pieces of the development reduced and moved around to mitigate environmental concerns. If the Coastal Commission approves Wavecrest Village, it must then return to the City Council for a Coastal Development Permit. Because of the many changes incorporated into it, the City Council will be looking at a much different version of the project.
SHIFT IN COUNCIL POLITICS
Likewise, the council, too, has undergone a shift in its membership. Three council members, a majority of the five-member body, weren't on the council when it voted on the project in 1999.
"I'm not sure in my mind that I know what the current project even looks like," said Councilman Dennis Coleman, who, along with Councilwoman Deborah Ruddock, are the only remaining council members who voted on the project in 1999.
Former Council members Jerry Donovan and Naomi Patridge supported the project, and Councilwoman Betty Stone supported some parts of it. They have been replaced by Councilmen Jim Grady and Mike Ferreira and Mayor Toni Taylor.
Grady has opposed Wavecrest Village. Taylor and Ferreira approved the project as members of the Planning Commission in 1998 before it was sent to the City Council for consideration, but both are concerned by the development, and Ferreira has emerged as its lead opponent.
Supporters and opponents have engaged in near-constant campaigns over the past three years to get their message out, stirring up deep resentment on both sides in the process.
Members of the league have raised concerns about the developers' lack of due diligence in their required environmental impact report (EIR). They assert that potential effects on wetlands, raptors, trees and endangered species, as well as the already maddening traffic congestion on the Coastside, have not been adequately identified.
Wavecrest opposition has also voiced allegations about the potential hidden agendas and motivations of the school board and Boys and Girls Club officials in including those facilities in the project.
NO HIDDEN AGENDAS
The developers and project proponents argue that they have tried to mitigate the environmental concerns of the opposition - the project is currently in its fourth revision - and that claims about hidden agendas are simply false accusations without sufficient evidence to support them.
Both school board members and Boys and Girls Club board members say that the assertion that Wavecrest Partners wooed them into the project to hold children's needs hostage until the project gets built are false.
The seemingly infinite history of the battle, the strong convictions of the key players and the personalities that spearhead each side of the debate have engulfed the Wavecrest Village project in contentiousness.
Most of the key players in the debate readily admit that they don't speak to their adversaries on the issue, and many see no chance at reaching a compromise on the current site.
In recent months, with both sides attempting to rally public support behind their cause, about the only dialogue between the two parties has occurred on the opinion pages of the Review and on the Midcoast-L, an online discussion forum.
"The process has really deteriorated," Mayor Taylor said. "They are simply rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic, and no one is bringing any new ideas to the table."
Nearly all of the major figures involved agree that a deep level of mistrust exists on both sides, and the result has been a tempest of personality-driven conflict.
KEN JONES AT CENTER OF STORM
At the center of the storm is school board President Ken Jones, who led the school district's effort to be included in the Wavecrest project. Jones' critics contend that he has a number of conflicts of interest and much to gain personally if the project's approval causes property values in the areas to increase.
However, according to Jones' Form 700 conflict-of-interest disclosure filing with the school district, his approximately 280 acres of real estate holdings that surround his home are nearly five miles south of the Wavecrest site and have never been subdivided.
Scott Boyd, co-chair of the League for Coastside Protection, says that five miles is enough for Jones to have a personal interest in the project's success, but Boyd is more concerned that the school board never dealt with the matter at a public hearing. Jones was forced to address the issue in his campaign for the school board last year.
Jones also dealt with the issue in two investigations by the civil San Mateo County Grand Jury in l998 and l999, which focused on allegations of irregularities related to the school district's "land swap" with Wavecrest Partners.
In that deal, the city exchanged 20 acres of land in El Granada that it had owned for 40 years but was not using in return for a 25-acre parcel in North Wavecrest. The deal maximized the school district's resources by attempting to rid itself of an albatross of land it was unable to develop, according to CUSD Superintendent John Bayless.
Both grand jury reports were critical of the district's use of an unclear Consumer Price Index in determining the value of the land and the lack of a timeline for eventual development at the El Granada site.
Jones defends the district's actions.
"There's nothing in those decisions that I am ashamed of at all," he said.
BOYD, JONES NEVER SPOKEN
Boyd and Jones have never spoken to each other about this issue, or any other subject relating to Wavecrest, and Boyd said that he doesn't trust Jones.
"When pressed to have the board consider if there was a conflict of interest in his participation in the choice of the Wavecrest site, he, as board president, refused to allow it to come before the board for a hearing," Boyd said. "That's a hearing that must happen. If he's not willing to do that, what am I accomplishing by meeting him?
"Ken Jones doesn't want to engage and doesn't want anyone to stand against him."
Jones' supporters universally slam the opposition's tactics.
"The claims that he will personally benefit from the Wavecrest deal are despicable slanders of someone who has done nothing but good deeds for this community," said Jim Larimer, a school district activist and Coastside County Water District director.
Half Moon Bay Councilwoman Ruddock agrees.
''Linking the location of the project to Ken Jones' property is a malicious representation," she said. "Joe's Restaurant, which (Councilman and league co-founder) Mike Ferreira bought, is closer and represents more potential for conflict of interest than Ken Jones' real estate holdings."
COMMISSION "IS A FARCE"
Jones' own words have added fuel to the controversy, however.
Aggravated by the long, frustrating process of trying to garner Coastal Commission approval for the project, Jones fueled suspicion among his critics by making the following comment: "The Coastal Commission is a farce. Any public body that would allow itself to he manipulated by one individual, Mike Ferreira, and threaten the middle school and the Boys and Girls Club, should be disbanded."
While Jones stands as the most visible proponent of the Wavecrest Village project aside from the developers themselves, Ferreira has become the lightning rod for the opposition.
He claims that the school district's assertions that the Wavecrest site is the best place for a new middle school and that alternate sites were explored are hogwash.
"We've been telling (district Superintendent) Bayless all along to rebuild Cunha (Intermediate Middle School) right where it is," he said. "They keep coming up with this stuff about finding them a new site. Shove your new site!"
David Cline, a Boys and Girls Club board member, said that he finds Ferreira's staunch opposition to the project disappointing, especially since Ferreira was one of the proponents of moving the club from its original site behind the Lutheran Church and into the Wavecrest site.
Ferreira acknowledges that when the church site for the club became bogged down in the EIR phase, and amid complaints from nearby neighbors about potential noise problems, he recommended the Wavecrest site to Boys and Girls Club board member Keith Waddell.
PROPER EIR NEVER DONE
The focal point of the debate, says Ferreira, is that Wavecrest Partners didn't give the site a proper EIR, and therefore its attractiveness as a site has been based on faulty information.
"This is a battle between a true EIR and a corrupt EIR," Ferreira asserted. "Wavecrest is an extremely troubled site from an environmental standpoint, and sometimes there are things that can't be compromised, that are straight-up win or lose.
"Once people adopt environmental issues, the mindset is simply, 'Don't ruin this area,'" he continued. "How do you compromise that? To say, 'Let's build half the amount of houses as proposed' that is not a compromise. That's just as destructive as the larger number."
While the Coastal Commission has reviewed the project for nearly two years, Ferreira has personally worked to convince commission staff that there are more wetlands on the Wavecrest site than they have identified and that they need further identification study.
One of the conditions that the Coastal Commission has already outlined for approval prohibits development within 100 feet of a wetland.
Although Wavecrest Partners commissioned several biologists to conduct wetland studies, subsequent wetlands discovered by both commission staff and Ferreira have required further wetland delineation.
Finding previously undelineated wetlands suggests that a full analysis of the entire area has not been completed, according to Ed Wylie, section chief of the Army Corps of Engineers' San Francisco office.
REBUKE FROM COASTAL STAFF
The wetlands issue has already caused several delays for the project at the Coastal Commission. In a stern letter to Wavecrest Project Manager Pat Fitzgerald on Feb. 26, commission staffer Peter Imhof chided Wavecrest for not providing necessary maps around specific areas of wetland vegetation and ponds. The Coastal Commission was set to review the project earlier this month, but delayed that review indefinitely pending further wetlands studies.
Meanwhile, Gary Deghi, a Half Moon Bay resident, bird enthusiast and member of the Sequoia Audubon Society, has provided the Coastal Commission with several reports relating to the group's studies of a wide range of raptor species on the property.
After concluding a summer 2001 raptor study had been insufficient, the Coastal Commission ordered Wavecrest Partners to commission another study over the winter. On March 1, Imhof informed Fitzgerald, Deghi and Mark Massara, director of the Sierra Club's Coastal Programs, that Brian Walton, a raptor specialist from the University of California, Santa Cruz, would provide an independent review of the raptor data collected at the Wavecrest site.
Other hiccups in the project's approval have centered around the bunkers or old military radar enclaves on the site. A condition of Coastal Commission approval requires that the developers obtain authorization from the California Office of Historic Preservation that the bunkers don't merit historic preservation, or evidence that no such permission is required.
If the bunkers do require preservation, the condition calls for Wavecrest Partners to protect the structures, or to submit a mitigation plan for the bunkers. The Office of Historic Preservation has yet to weigh in on the issue.
While Jones and Ferreira have been lightning rods for criticism from their opponents, Ruddock, a member of the City Council since 1991 and a former mayor, has taken heat from both sides.
RUDDOCK TAKES HEAT IN STEREO
In the early years of her tenure on the council, Ruddock was a thorn in the side of developers, and a critic of the 1995 redevelopment plan. But her support of the Wavecrest Village project, which she helped shape as part of a city subcommittee on the issue, has hurt her credibility in some Coastside environmental circles.
"I wasn't the only person who voted on that project. There was a fair amount of unanimity that this project was good for Half Moon Bay at the time," she defended.
"A lot of the rancor over this project stems from a lot of new people being involved that don't understand the history of this, or why Dennis and I voted for it," she said. "I am not pro-development by any means, but I am for the public good and identifying trade-offs that we can live with that serve the public good as much as possible.
"By having housing mixed in with some commercial space and the school and Boys and Girls Club and some affordable housing where teachers can live, you would be achieving that compact mixed-use development, which is the hallmark of new planning," she continued.
"Half Moon Bay has a lot of single-use neighborhoods, where each resident must go out to Highway 1 for everything. Mixed-use areas like Wavecrest would help that."
Ruddock points out that the project is a huge improvement on previous attempts to develop the property.
"The project has become more and more sensitive to the environmental constraints, and therefore has become a better project," said Ruddock, who predicts that the project will receive approval from the Coastal Commission with a long list of conditions.
Ruddock says the rumor mill has been in full gear about her ideals, with league members contending that she has "gone over to the dark side" of development. "I've done more for this community in terms of environmental protection than any of those folks put together," she said.
'BIG BOX' STORE IN HMB?
The rumor mill has touched nearly every aspect of the debate surrounding the project. For instance, rumors have circulated that the developer plans to entice "big box" stores such as K-Mart or Wal-Mart to the project.
But the project's current proposal calls for 15,000 square feet of retail space, which wouldn't be able to accommodate even one "big box" store. For instance, a Wal-Mart Discount Store, the smallest of the retail conglomerate's outlets, would require a minimum of 40,000 square feet, according to the company's corporate fact sheet.
Ruddock's place in the middle of the debate over Wavecrest puts her in a position to mediate between the two opposing viewpoints when the project comes back to the city for CDP review.
But few of the key players in the project hold out any hope for mediation between the two sides.
"It would be great if we could get people to sit down, set their egos aside and try to hash this thing out," said Joe Angelini, the president of the Boys and Girls Club board. "But at this point, I don't see that happening. There isn't one common belief fueling the debate, so it becomes a much more difficult thing to mediate or to try to compromise on."
Project proponents say that dozens of public hearings were held during the site selection process for both the middle school and the Boys and Girls Club, and that Wavecrest opponents had their chance and continue to have their chance to engage in dialogue and suggest alternatives.
"Why are they not participating in a board meeting or volunteering for a site selection group to work through these difficulties with us, rather than just taking shots at us from the outside?" Cline asked.
Meanwhile, opponents question the justification for dialogue with the project's proponents.
"Why would I be responsible to tell (Ocean Colony Partners general partner Bill) Barrett where he can go build 225 houses elsewhere?" Ferreira said.
'WHAT ALL OF IT IS FOR'
Taylor, however, is hopeful for a resolution. "It's fixable, because we have well-intentioned, honest people who want the best for the community and for the kids, and have an honest difference of opinion on how to get it," she said.
"There is going to have to be a time when people put aside the bitterness that things deteriorated into and just get back in touch with what all of it is for."
Taylor thinks that the Coastal Commission will give the City Council a set of parameters around which to review the project.
"It will be more science than art," she predicted.
The crucial aspect of any compromise, Rudduck said, will be getting the developer to agree to a longer development window.
"Projects can also get worse as politics change, and we need to make sure that we can get the best possible project we can get, and lock it in with public benefits," she said. "Santa Cruz is going to continue to grow, Pacifica is going to grow, the unincorporated area is still going to grow, and you have to control what you can in the window of opportunity that you have. We need to pick our battles."
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