BOBBI HIGUERA contemplated the crumbling white limestone walls of the long-vacant Rockaway quarry as if trying to picture something beyond her grasp. "I just don't see them building a hotel back here," she said.
As improbable as it may seem to the Pacifica residents who visit the former quarry every day with their dogs, bicycles and baby carriages, this open vista of rocks and wild scrub likely will be filled someday with not just a hotel, but shops and apartments as well.
Pacifica residents narrowly rejected such a vision for the quarry last year, as proposed by Florida-based owner and developer Donahue Peebles, when they defeated Measure L, a local ballot measure that would have given Peebles the legal right to build up to 355 housing units in the 86-acre quarry, as well as a 350-room luxury hotel.
But the ballot measure failed by only 509 votes, and Peebles never gave up on building a walkable "town center" — a place filled with green space next to retail, restaurants and other amenities. He spoke of the need for a meeting place for locals unlike anything available in Pacifica.
The Peebles Corp. still is crafting its second development proposal and has shared preliminary design ideas with the city manager and members ofthe city's Planning Department staff, which has offered some advice, according to Daniel Grimm, senior vice president with Peebles Corp.
Really makes me sick that when it all comes down to it, it is all about $,$,$. D.P. has no history here, doesn't live out here, and doesn't care one whit about the "personality" of our city, what we value, our connection to the land. It's all about just putting more big-bucks boxes and getting people (especially realtors, contractors and lenders) all jazzed up in hopes of getting the average Joe (who doesn't benefit) all jazzed up, with lively, slick brochures with made-up phrases like livable/walkable.
My livabilty is just fine the way it is, although as is, my driveability is really sucky when I have to sit in HWY1 during commute hours, and I don't think anything has magically changed about the "add more houses/people + more cars + more driving" equation.
All that stuff about how people will drive less if they can walk to their little subdivision playground/fountain dealie and traffic turnabouts was a bunch of horse&^it , and it still is.
Posted by: Natural State | April 01, 2008 at 10:37 AM
The Peebles Corporation paid a little over ten times the amount of a Linda Mar rancher for 89 oceanfront acres. Isn't there an old saying along the lines of "If it's too good to be true, it probably is"? It is rather unfortunate for The Peebles Corporation that it unknowingly bought endangered-species habitat. I am not a businessman, but it seems to make the most sense to donate the property to the Golden Gate National Recreation Area (GGNRA). Couldn't we all use such a lucrative tax writeoff?
Posted by: Jim Currie | March 24, 2008 at 07:04 PM
There is a general misconception that property owners have a right to develop their property. They don't. Every property owner has a right to submit an application and to expect an impartial hearing; beyond that there is no legal right to expect anything.
Whether or not anything ever gets developed in the quarry is outside the scope of reason. There are so many limitations on the property that anything that gets permitted, even a flagpole, must go through a lengthy, expensive process.
Last year the quarry owner installed No Trespassing signs at great expense, only to be ordered to remove them and apply for a development permit from the Coastal Commission. And because the State Mining and Reclamation Board requires the property to be reclaimed before a development permit of any kind can be processed, there possibly will never be any No Trespassing signs in the quarry, which makes the idea of a mixed-use development with 250-plus units of housing very unlikely, no matter how green, sustainable, or whatever ideology du jour you can think up to sell it to the local population.
Peebles Co. has a few options: 15 years of regulatory hell for a mixed-use development, or 7 years of regulatory hell for a mitigation bank alternative to development, or a lucrative tax credit for donating the property for habitat and species restoration, or find another buyer.
Posted by: todd bray | March 24, 2008 at 08:25 AM
Gee, what a curious and incomplete description of the situation. The only objection to development of the Quarry that Julia mentions is a concern about traffic; there isn't a single line about the endangered-species issue, the conclusion of Peebles' biologist that any development there would have a detrimental environmental impact, nor the inevitable involvement of regulatory agencies in any development proposal on the site. For someone unfamiliar with the context (and one would hope that a journalist would make an effort to understand the context before writing about it), it would be difficult to understand why anyone would oppose a benevolent developer's attempts to provide "a place filled with green space next to retail, restaurants and other amenities" and "a meeting place for locals unlike anything available in Pacifica." That's the article's factual layer. I guess the philosophical layer is represented by the curious and incomplete selection of interviews presented, epitomized by "The developer bought this land. He deserves to see something built."
Posted by: Larry Arndt | March 23, 2008 at 10:22 AM