DANA POINT — Developers of a boutique hotel — with a restaurant featuring an outdoor dining deck and views of the ocean and hostel — has received the OK from the California Coastal Commission to develop the project planned for a Headlands bluff-top site.
In a hearing on Friday, Aug. 10 in Redondo Beach, the commission voted 7-3 that the proposed project, known as The Wave Resort at the Strand, is consistent with Dana Point’s certified local coastal program and the public access and recreation policies of the Coastal Act — which advocates for beach preservation and public access.
“The standard is the standard,” said Commissioner Steve Padilla, saying the proposed hotel, hostel and visitors center are visitor-serving and consistent with the commission’s land use plan. “All of the evidence in the record supports this. This has not been an easy one but I think staff got it right.”
The 35,000-square-foot project includes a 57-room hotel, 4,000 square feet of restaurant space plus 2,851 square feet of outdoor dining, an 800-square-foot visitor center and a 52-bed hostel. Parking will be subterranean and the development will link to trails in the nearby Headlands nature preserve.
The hotel project, which is planned for a 1.6-acre site along Pacific Coast Highway and Green Lantern, was approved in October by the Dana Point City Council after it rejected an appeal by Surfrider Foundation to overturn a Planning Commission approval of the project in July 2017.
Surfrider appealed the development to the Coastal Commission and in December, the commission determined the appeal raised a substantial Issue and overturned the city’s approval of the Local Coastal Development Permit.
Rick Erkeneff, chairman of the Surfrider Foundation of South Orange County, contended that the project is more dense and goes beyond what the Headlands Development and Conservation Plan allows. He said the project conflicts with the area’s conservation efforts and the city’s local coastal plan.
“We’re disappointed they didn’t uphold the plan that was previously done by the commission,” Erkeneff said Friday after the vote. “It was 25 years in the making, and now another 15 years. It’s been a total of 40 years.”
Erkeneff’s points of contention include an addition in total rooms when the Headlands plan only allowed 90 rooms between the two hotel properties. The plan also called for a full-service center that offered educational opportunities instead of an information kiosk in the hotel’s lobby, he said.
Doug Chotkevys, who was Dana Point’s city manager for 15 years until October 2016, supported Surfrider’s position and pushed for a less dense project.
“I would ask you to maintain the integrity of the (Headlands Development Conservation Plan) done in 2008 and go with two stories with user-serving retail on the first floor and a hostel on the second floor,” he said Friday.
Chotkevys said he worries about all the effort that went into the Headlands coastal plan.
“With the passage of time and the turnover of staff, I hope the city doesn’t lose sight of all the community work that went into the HDCP 15 to 20 years ago and thereby diminishes the integrity of the HDCP.”
Todd Stoutenborough, the project’s architect, told commissioners he had been working on the project for more than 10 years and he countered Surfrider’s contention of density, saying the project steps up the hill and that there is no part more than two stories high.
“It’s actually an average of 15 feet below the height limit where it steps up the hill,” he said.
In 2004, the Coastal Commission certified the project site for commercial use, saying it complied with the city’s local coastal program and provides the development requirements for the Headlands area. A 2007 plan by former owner Steve Sinclair for retail, offices, a restaurant and a hostel — that would have required twice the number of cars a hotel does — was approved, Stoutenborough said.
But the downturn in the economy halted the project. The property was purchased by Headlands Investments LLC, an investor group from Orange County that nearly two years ago brought the plan for the hotel, restaurant and hostel to the city, Stoutenborough said. The group determined that retail and office space were not as lucrative as a hotel in the current economy, he said.
Erkeneff ultimately agreed the project will be attractive, but “the density for that area will be extremely busy — it’s just in the wrong spot.”
Chotkevys, too, wondered about the future tranquility of the neighborhood, adding that plans for other hotels in the city are underway.
In June, the city’s Planning Commission approved a 100-room hotel, restaurant and spa at Cannon’s Seafood Grill adjacent to where the Wave Resort is being built. A demolition, with new development, was also planned to start Friday, Aug. 10 at the Seaside Inn in Capistrano Beach, which was red-tagged by the city in 2016.
“I will be curious to see the outcome of the EIR (environmental impact report) and what will be required to mitigate the totality from traffic, noise and lights,” Chotkevys said. “I don’t see how anyone can say there are no negative impacts without putting their heads in the sand.”
