To the delight of Los Angeles developer Rick Caruso, the Santa Barbara County Board of Supervisors on Tuesday gave its seal of approval to his proposal to rebuild the long-abandoned Miramar Hotel in Montecito.
Officially, the 4-1 decision, with Supervisor Janet Wolf dissenting, denied two appeals challenging the Montecito Planning Commission‘s approval in October.
Tuesday’s action apparently brings to a close the county’s major involvement in the 20-month-long process, but the saga might not be over. At least one of the appellants — neighbor Jean Harfenist — said she and her husband plan to file an appeal to the California Coastal Commission “immediately.”
“Janet Wolf had it right,” Harfenist said while walking out of the county administration building with her attorney.
The other appellant, a local environmental group called the Citizens Planning Association of Santa Barbara County, held its cards close after Tuesday’s hearing. Executive director Naomi Kovacs said the group’s next move will be up to her board of directors, but attorneys representing the CPA have hinted they might take the case to court.
Both groups say Caruso’s project should have been required to undergo an extensive study known as an Environmental Impact Report.
Tuesday’s decision means Caruso now possesses permission from the county’s highest elected body to raze the old Miramar — a cluster of rotting cottages that have sat empty for nearly a decade — and replace it with a five-star resort of the same name on South Jameson Lane along Highway 101. The 192-room resort will include a tennis court, ballroom, beach club, two swimming pools and three restaurants.
Although Tuesday’s hearing lasted about four hours, the decision came swiftly, with four of the five supervisors expressing their opinions briefly before voting.
Supervisor Salud Carbajal, whose vote was seen as pivotal because the Miramar is in his district, said the review of the project has been “extensive, extensive, extensive.”
“While the project’s not perfect, I think overwhelmingly the community has embraced the decision of the Montecito Planning Commission,” he said.
Wolf, on the other hand, said many of the issues raised by the appellants — flooding concerns, construction noise and water supply — warrant closer examination in an EIR.
“I am pretty much dumbfounded as to why a full EIR wasn’t required early on,” she said. “I want us as a county to make sure when we do something, that it’s done right.”
The Harfenists believe that Caruso’s plan to fill in a floodplain could spell trouble for their home in the event of a major flood. On Tuesday, their attorney, Fred Woocher of Santa Monica, pressed the board to consider internal e-mails that he said reveal profound disagreements among the county’s own flooding experts on the matter.
“Those who believe in ramming this project through the county approval process in this manner are sadly misguided,” he said. “It will result only in litigation and further delay.”
Caruso spoke to the flooding concerns, saying he believes that while there is indeed a potential flooding problem in the area, it’s not exacerbated by the Miramar. Still, he offered to contribute money to help find a solution, but said it isn’t fair to hold the Miramar accountable.
“We are not causing the problem,” he said.
Caruso on Tuesday also said that taxes from the hotel would generate about $4.3 million annually for the cash-starved county. Because of its economic malaise, the county — which operates under a $700 million budget — later this month will shut down three-quarters of its operations for two weeks in a rare furlough, saving an expected $10 million.
Throughout the debate, Caruso has been resistant to the idea of conducting a full EIR.
An EIR is a thorough study required by the California Environmental Quality Act, or CEQA, when a preliminary assessment has determined that a project would have a significant effect on the environment.
Opponents have long held that the proposed development — one of the largest ever in Montecito — should require a full EIR.
Caruso, the third developer to own the property since 2000, has been unwilling to do a full EIR because he says all of the necessary studies already have occurred. A full EIR, he argued, would take up to a year to complete and cost him about $18 million just to hold the abandoned property for that duration. (Early on, his project did undergo a partial EIR to study historic resources.)
Caruso — and county staff members — have said that an EIR is not legally necessary because a similar proposal at the same site under the owner who first abandoned the project, Ian Schrager, already had received county clearance. (He abandoned the project in 2000.)
The Schrager plan did not undergo an EIR because the county staff at the time determined it was unnecessary because of the lack of perceived substantial effects. In place of an EIR, the project received a less extensive study known as a “negative declaration.”
All of this has meant that a central question throughout the debate has been whether Caruso’s project would create any more of an impact than Schrager’s.
Caruso and the county staff argued that it would not.
They noted, for instance, that Caruso’s Miramar would include 192 rooms vs. Schrager’s 213, would involve no changes from Schrager’s approved plans when it comes to features such as spa use and lack of lighting on the tennis courts, and would offer 135 more parking spaces than Schrager’s plan. That, they said, means Caruso’s plan would generate less traffic than Schrager’s, and no more light pollution. Plus, they said, Caruso’s project would include the added bonus of public walkways to the beach through the hotel property.
Opponents pointed out that Caruso’s project is larger than Schrager’s and, unlike Schrager’s, would include aspects such as filling in the floodplain and the noisy activity of driving piles into the ground. They also argued that changing circumstances have made water use a significant issue. Montecito began experiencing a water shortage last spring, and opponents of Caruso’s project said it could significantly affect the water supply, whereas Schrager’s plan was approved when there was no such shortage.
These issues, they argued, by law need to be put under closer scrutiny by outside experts as part of an EIR.
Attorneys for the CPA noted that the Montecito Planning Commission sensed the significance of the water issue in August, and even decided in a 4-1 vote to require a partial EIR to study the water issue. But attorney Marco Gonzalez said the commission “flip flopped” shortly after and reversed its decision. Gonzalez attributed this change of heart to pressure put on the commissioners by Caruso’s surprising reaction: He begged them to deny the project.
“They simply changed their mind because the applicant played hardball,” he said Tuesday.
As for the flooding issue, Woocher, the attorney representing the Harfenists, cited a legal case in which a condo complex was built inside a floodplain just east of the Miramar in 1985, over the objection of neighbors who feared it would cause flooding. In 1995, he said, a major flood occurred, and two of those neighbors — a father and son — had to be rescued from their home by firefighters. The father, who had pre-existing health issues, died in the hospital.
The undisclosed settlement, he said, was “huge.”
“Here we are now, 20 years later,” he said. “There’s a saying, that ‘those who ignore history are doomed to repeat it.’”
Woocher said that one of the engineers of a private firm who signed off on the idea to build in the floodplain in 1985 was John Frye. Frye now serves as the county Flood Control District’s engineering manager.
Woocher said that Frye apparently learned a hard lesson in 1995. It was Frye, Woocher said, who wrote in an internal e-mail a year ago that the initial hydrology study performed by the Caruso-hired engineering firm, Penfield & Smith, contained a “fatal flaw.”
On Tuesday, Tom Fayram, Frye’s boss and the deputy director of Santa Barbara County’s Public Works, reiterated his explanation for Frye’s statement, saying the “fatal flaw” issue brought up last December had been resolved, namely by how Penfield & Smith conducted a subsequent study in March using a different methodology.
Woocher and other opponents remained unconvinced on Tuesday. One CPA attorney described Frye’s absence from the meeting — Fayram said he was out of town — as “convenient.”
— Noozhawk staff writer Rob Kuznia can be reached at .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address).
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