http://www.sacbee.com/content/politics/ca/

Sacramento Bee
10 May 2005 - 2:15 am PDT

Opponents teed off over Pebble Beach plan

By Herbert A. Sample

PEBBLE BEACH - Ted Hunter stood outside his home gazing across the street at a stand of Monterey pines, sorrow and aggravation coloring his face.

Many of the stately trees within Hunter's sight, if the Pebble Beach Co. has its way, would be destroyed to realign a major road and, a stone's throw away, build a new golf course.

"Everything you can think about that we enjoy here now, it's going to be completely changed when this project is all done," said Hunter, 86, co-chairman of Concerned Residents of Pebble Beach.

The ire felt by Hunter and many others in and around this gated seaside community is directed not only at the Pebble Beach Co., but also its iconic owners: actor and director Clint Eastwood, golfer Arnold Palmer and businessman Peter Ueberroth.

The trio constitute the public face of a firm whose 800-acre project would sacrifice 15,400 Monterey pines and 1,750 coast live oaks for a new driving range, an equestrian center, 170 hotel rooms and nearly three dozen homes, as well as Pebble Beach's eighth golf course.

The proposal - and Eastwood, in particular - has been the subject of unfavorable media coverage from as far away as London and Sydney, Australia.

Despite the negative publicity, the project was approved by a unanimous Monterey County Board of Supervisors. It is headed for a showdown later this year at the California Coastal Commission, whose staff has voiced hostility toward the project.

The Sierra Club and other environmental groups vow years of litigation if the commission permits the project. And they are pressing their case in the state Capitol.

But Eastwood and his allies, who say their plan would protect many more trees than it would destroy, are not backing down. One way or the other, they insist, there will be fewer trees in Pebble Beach - felled by either their project or more single family homes.

The Del Monte Forest once covered the Monterey Peninsula west of Highway 1. But growth in the cities of Monterey, Pacific Grove and Carmel and the privately held Pebble Beach, has left it a shadow of its former self.

The Pebble Beach Co., which traces its roots to 1919, long has desired to develop more land. But it wasn't until after Eastwood, Palmer and Ueberroth bought the firm in 1999 that a viable proposal took shape. In 2000, the company sponsored Measure A, an initiative designed to amend the county's Coastal Commission-certified development plan. The firm spent more than $1 million on the measure, and Eastwood, a former mayor of Carmel, touted its preservation elements in television ads. Monterey County voters approved it handily.

Not until March, however, did county supervisors vote to submit the amendment to the Coastal Commission for certification. They paired it with Pebble Beach's development plan, hoping the two would be considered together.

The supervisors' action came despite admonitions from the commission's staff and Chairwoman Meg Caldwell that submitting the documents together would make them legally suspect.

"Because Measure A had not been certified, the (county's) approval of much of the project is without legal foundation," Charles Lester, commission deputy director, wrote supervisors in February.

Beyond the procedural issue, the company's plan includes other controversial elements. It proposes a new, larger equestrian center at an abandoned quarry called Sawmill Borrow that was supposed to be preserved in perpetuity as mitigation for the company's Spanish Bay development almost two decades ago.

Alan Williams, who heads the Carmel Development Co. and is Eastwood's right-hand man, claims reforestation efforts haven't succeeded and thus the quarry's preservation agreement should be scrapped in exchange for barring development at other locations in better ecological shape.

"If you're looking at a disturbed site to place an important equestrian center, (the quarry) became an ideal location to do that," Williams said. But doing so would allow the company to renege on a promise, critics complain. Further, they contend the firm someday could backtrack on the nearly 500 acres within the Del Monte Forest it is proposing to protect, as well as an additional 400 acres outside the forest.

Opponents also assert that the destruction of more Monterey pines and the habitat of imperiled species, such as Yadon's piperia and the California red-legged frog, is not worth yet another golf course. Seven courses operate in the forest, including three owned by the Pebble Beach Co., and a dozen more are within 20 miles.

"You don't tear down a 10,000-year-old forest for golf courses," said Janice O'Brien, a 30-year Pebble Beach resident.

Environmentalists also worry about how another thirsty golf course would affect a regional water system already stressed by overuse.

But Dave Potter, a Monterey County supervisor who sits on the Coastal Commission, said he backed the project in part because he'd rather see the golf course than scores of new homes that "punch holes in the forest."

Pebble Beach's plan proposes "the end of residential build-out, for one thing, which I think is priceless," he said. "I don't necessarily think it's the end of the forest."

Besides, some portion of the forest is going to come down, said Jack Kidder, president of the Del Monte Forest Property Owners Association, which supports the proposal.

"Someone might say, 'Well, gee, why not dedicate the whole thing to open space?' " Kidder said. "But that would be unrealistic."

But Hunter, whose residents group opposes the plan, said, "The loss of 17,000 trees in this forest is going to affect the environment very adversely."

The dispute over the proposal reaches into the state Capitol. Potter's fourth term on the Coastal Commission ends this month, and Assembly Speaker Fabian Núñez, D-Los Angeles, could reappoint him or seek additional candidates. The Sierra Club is pressing to have him replaced. But Eastwood has friends in high places in the Capitol - most notably, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. Eastwood, Palmer and Ueberroth could not be reached for comment.

Perhaps as a measure of the power of celebrity, some Sierra Club officials worry about publicly berating the popular Eastwood, although Rita Dalessio, chairwoman of the club's local chapter, slapped the environmental record of both the actor and his company.

"This is a for-profit operation," she said, "and they plan to spend half a billion dollars to decimate the forest."

About the writer:

* The Bee's Herbert A. Sample can be reached at (510) 382-1978 or hsample@sacbee.com.