A lawsuit challenging a Southern California water agency's purchase of a private water company has been reinstated by the Second District Court of Appeal. The unanimous three-judge appellate panel ruled that Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Dzintra Janavs did not consider all the questions before her when she ruled that the Castaic Lake Water Agency could acquire the Santa Clarita Water Company. If the water company became the alter ego of the public water agency, the transaction would violate state law, the court held. Because the lower court did not decide that question, the appellate panel returned the lawsuit for further proceedings. The Legislature created the Castaic Lake Water Agency to acquire water and water rights, and to provide that water at wholesale only. The agency sells water to four utilities in the Los Angeles County's fast-growing Santa Clarita Valley, including the sight of the proposed 21,000-home Newhall Ranch subdivision. The provision of water to Newhall Ranch is a central issue in ongoing litigation over the project. The Santa Clarita Water Company is the largest utility served by the Water Agency. The company has 21,000 customers, as well as rights to 15,000 acre feet of groundwater. On August 11, 1999, the Water Agency approved a retail service agreement with the company. Under Water Code § 12944.7, a wholesale water agency can sell water directly to consumers if the agency has a contract with a company that is subject to Public Utilities Commission (PUC) regulation. The Water Agency said it was following that law, which overrode the original act that created the Agency. The next day, the Water Agency filed a notice in court to condemn and acquire all outstanding stock in the Santa Clarita Water Company. On August 23, four residents from the Water Agency's territory filed suit on various grounds to halt the transaction. But the deal went forward anyway, and by September 3, the Water Agency had acquired all shares of the company for $63 million in cash. Afterward, the Water Agency wound up the company's business, dissolved the corporation, distributed the assets to the Agency, and accepted the resignation of three company directors and the secretary. When the residents who protested the transaction got a court hearing, they argued that the transaction merged the two entities into one, in violation of § 12944.7. They also contended that there was no longer a company subject to PUC regulation, so the retail service agreement approved in August no longer complied with § 12944.7. The Water Agency argued that the company is subject to PUC regulation, but denied that § 12944.7 requires the company to remain subject to PUC control during the life of the retail service contract. Judge Janavs ruled that § 12944.7 overrode the legislative act that created the Water Agency. The appellate panel concurred with Janavs regarding the applicability of § 12944.7. The appellate panel also said the Water Agency had the authority to take through eminent domain "any facility reasonably required for the importation and transmission of water." However, the appellate court ruled that the Water Code requires an arm's length contract between two separate entities. " o comply with § 12944.7, whenever a wholesaler agency sells water directly to the consumer, it must be doing so pursuant to a contract with a water company that exists as an entity, be it a wholly owned subsidiary or otherwise, independent from the wholesaler agency," Justice Richard Aldrich wrote. "For these same reasons, we also conclude that a water company, with whom the wholesaler agency contracts, must remain subject to PUC regulation throughout the life of the contract. The Agency argued that there is no 'continuing obligation to be regulated by the PUC' once the transaction is closed. We reject this 'nanosecond' argument because it renders § 12944.7's requirement of PUC regulation pointless and surplusage." Because the trial court did not address whether the company continues to exist as a separate entity subject to PUC regulation, the appellate court did not rule on the question. Instead, it directed the Superior Court to consider the issue. But the appellate court clearly had concerns. " f at any point the Agency actually merged with the Water Company or the Water Company became the alter ego of the Agency ... the Agency would no longer have a contract pursuant to § 12944.7 by which it could sell or deliver water at retail without violating its own enabling act, Aldrich wrote The Case: Jill Klajic v. Castaic Lake Water Agency, No. B137258, 01 C.D.O.S. 6194, 2001 DJDAR 7567. Filed July 20, 2001. The Lawyers: For Klajic: Jennifer Kilpatrick, (323) 852-1000. For the agency: Robert H. Clark, general counsel, (661) 297-9132.

A state appellate court has greatly reduced the amount of damages that San Diego County must pay to a landowner in an inverse condemnation case. The court reduced a jury's award of $646,000 by $187,000 and directed the trial court to reconsider other costs included in the award. The decision came in a Fourth District Court of Appeal, Division One, ruling that was only partially published. In 1988, Dana Ferrell purchased land in Lakeside, 90% of which was in a floodplain. Although the land was zoned for agricultural and residential uses, Ferrell planned to develop a construction material recycling center on the site. After Ferrell bought the property, his neighbor Reid Enniss began developing his own property by placing 800,000 cubic yards of fill dirt on the site to raise it above the floodplain. Enniss' construction increased the flow of water onto Ferrell's property. Enniss also did not grade his property according to approved plans and ended up grading the slope for a drainage channel on Ferrell's property. Ferrell then sued Enniss and the county. Enniss paid Ferrell $60,000 to drop the suit. But Ferrell's inverse condemnation claim against the county went to trial. The trial court found that the county was liable for approving and accepting for public use Enniss' drainage improvements that increased the flow of water onto Ferrell's property. However, a jury awarded Ferrell no damages. On appeal, the Fourth District ruled in a 1998 unpublished opinion that the jury should not have had the option of awarding zero damages, and the Fourth District sent the case back to the Superior Court. A second jury trial resulted in Ferrell winning an award of $646,000, including $189,000 for mitigation damages, $6,600 in ordinary costs, $1,890 in stipulated damages, $196,000 in prejudgment interest, and $252,000 for costs and expenses, including attorneys, appraisal and engineering fees. Ferrell appealed again, arguing that the trial court improperly excluded his appraisal expert and that he was due additional costs and attorney's fees under Code of Civil Procedure § 1036. The county also appealed, contending that the trial court should have granted its request for a "judgment notwithstanding verdict." The county also argued that the jury awarded Ferrell excessive prejudgment interest and excessive costs and attorneys fees. A unanimous three-judge appellate panel rejected Ferrell's appeal and accepted most of the county's arguments. In considering Ferrell's appeal, the court held that Superior Court Judge Thomas R. Murphy correctly rejected Ferrell's request for $12,200 in "costs, disbursements and expenses" for such things as mileage, postage, telephone charges, meals and parking. In an unpublished portion of the opinion, the appellate court ruled that Murphy properly excluded Ferrell's appraisal expert - and eliminated his fees - because the expert's opinion "was based on an improper factual assumption." Also in the unpublished part of the case, the court held that Ferrell's request for $17,000 in attorneys fees from the first trial was too late. In turning to the county's appeal, the court addressed the request for a "judgment notwithstanding the verdict" (JNOV). Most of this part of the ruling is in unpublished sections of the opinion. The jury had awarded Ferrell $189,000 for costs he incurred while unsuccessfully applying for a use permit to develop his construction material recycling plant. Ferrell said the legal, engineering and environmental specialists' costs were incurred while he tried to mitigate the damages caused by the county's inverse condemnation. But the appellate court said Ferrell's claim was bogus because he had intended to pursue the recycling facility all along. The use permit application would have allowed Ferrell to remedy the drainage problem created by Enniss, "but those features were merely incidental to the sole purpose of the application from its inception - to allow Ferrell to develop the property for use as a recycling center as he intended on, and even before, the date he brought the property," Justice Alex McDonald wrote in the unpublished part of the ruling. Because Ferrell did not prove that he suffered any economic loss or diminution of property value, the appellate court directed the trial court to award Ferrell $1 for nominal damages, plus the county's stipulated damages of $1,890. The appellate panel also directed to lower court to re-determine other costs and the prejudgment interest award. The Case: Dana K. Ferrell v. County of San Diego, No. D034864, 01 C.D.O.S. 5757, 2001 DJDAR 7029. Filed June 8, 2001, certified for partial publication July 9, 2001. The Lawyers: For Ferrell: Michael H. Fish, McKenna and Cuneo, (619) 595-8088. For the county, William A. Johnson Jr. and Timothy M. Barry, deputy county counsels, (619) 531-4847.

Everybody knows there are lots of lots in California. And there's always been lots of controversy about what you can do with your lots. But now there's lots of controversy about the more basic question of what is a lot and what is not. Jurisdictions all over the state are dealing with the question of how to handle old parcels that don't meet current standards. Increasingly, however, localities are facing big property owners who are asserting something a little different – the idea that big chunks of land they have always owned in a block were really subdivided in the 19th century. The so-called "magic subdivision" issue has been around for the past decade or so, but it's heated up again in the last couple of months, as the Hearst Corp. has moved forward with an effort to assert that the famous 80,000-acre Hearst Ranch in San Luis Obispo County is actually made up of 279 lots that were subdivided in 1852. Hearst isn't interested in developing the new lots; the company's development proposal is concentrated on a tiny portion of the ranch along the ocean at San Simeon Point. But by legally affirming the existence of the lots by obtaining a "certificate of compliance," the company will be able to get more money from land trusts and government agencies that might buy either conservation easements or the property itself. Nevertheless, the Hearst gambit has galvanized environmentalists and local governments – especially on the Central Coast – in a renewed effort to prevent the validation of newfound subdivisions, which cannot only increase the value of property but also allow landowners to evade the Subdivision Map Act under some circumstances. Many land speculators who acquire property and obtain post-hoc validation of a subdivision then maximize property value by using a lot-line adjustment – which is exempt from the Map Act so long as the number of number of lots does not increase. Hearst has not tried the lot-line adjustment idea yet. But the high-profile nature of the case has led environmentalists and local governments to attack the magic subdivision issue in Sacramento – even attempting to put some kind of brake on the process in this legislative session. The Hearst scheme is the latest twist on a very old game in California – and, indeed, in the United States: If you want to make money easily, buy some land, subdivide it, and sell it off. This is a pretty basic rule of land economics, especially in a desirable place like California. As a commodity, lots are no different than oranges. You can sell one at a higher per-unit cost than you can sell a dozen. So land speculators have always been highly motivated to subdivide their property into smaller lots in order to make money. Thus, it is not surprising that subdividing property has been a basic planning policy question in California for many decades. The question used to be: What do we do with old, substandard lots – those dating from 1910s or 1920s — that don't meet today's requirements for community-building? Now the question is: Do very old lots – those dating from the 19th century — even exist? This is a fundamental question for the future of California planning because there is a big difference between the people who own tiny, substandard lots they can't use and the people who own large pieces of property which they now assert were subdivided long ago. The first group of property owners is not very powerful – they are generally unsophisticated "little guys" unlikely to put much pressure on counties or the state to create change. But the second group of property owners is powerful. They're not all Hearsts, but they are generally old-line property owners with enough resources to make their case in court. At the center of this whole controversy is that complicated and often arcane law, the Subdivision Map Act – a law that requires every local government in the state to regulate the subdivision of land by private property owners. The Map Act is one of planners' biggest sticks in dealing with developers. It gives local governments power over what the law calls the "design" of subdivisions and the "improvements" associated with those subdivisions. In practical terms, it gives local government planners leverage to demand exactions from developers. But that was not the intent of the Map Act. Originally, the Map Act was designed as a consumer protection ordinance so that unsuspecting lot purchasers would be sure to wind up with property they could actually access and build on. All through the late 19th and early 20th Century, land speculators would simply subdivide property into small lots and sell it off – without setting aside property for roads or any other necessities of urban development. Often, neither subdivider nor buyer had ever seen the property before it was cut up and sold. If you want to see what this type of subdivision looks like on the ground, go to Clear Lake sometime. It's a vacation area where houses and lots are scattered willy-nilly across the landscape, often connected by informal, unpaved roads that technically trespass across somebody's property. It's often impossible to discern a logical pattern of subdivision. To the extent that the question of subdivided lots has been a policy issue in California, it has dealt with the question of antiquated lots and what to do about them. Some years ago, a report to the Senate Local Government Committee concluded that there were somewhere between 400,000 and 1 million "antiquated" lots in California that were undeveloped. The Hearst gambit, however, reminds us that there's another angle to the question of old subdivided lots – and that has to do with the question of whether subdivisions created before the Subdivision Map Act was first adopted in 1893 exist at all. Under the Subdivision Map Act, property owners can request local governments to issue "certificates of compliance" verifying that parcels met the legal requirements in place at the time the lot was created.Of course, it is still fuzzy what pre-1893 process for subdividing land should be considered legal. In many cases, property owners have argued that simply recording a plat map with the county is sufficient. Better still appears to be a federal patent establishing the lots. It is a federal patent from 1852 on which the Hearst Corp. is relying in attempting to split its ranch in 279 parcels. And once a property owner produces this kind of evidence, it is hard for the local government – or the Coastal Commission, in the case of coastal property such as Hearst Ranch – to say no. According to one recent Coastal Commission staff report, San Luis Obispo County has issued 363 certificates of compliance in the county's coastal zone during the last 20 years, and the Coastal Commission has a hard time simply tracking them all, much less reviewing them and putting restrictions on them. The Hearst Corp. appears to be using the "magic subdivision" approach as a way of establishing the highest possible property value. The company is negotiating with two national conservation groups about selling the conservation easements to them. For the conservation groups to buy the land, the land has to have a value – and that value is related to development potential, which, in turn, is related to the number of lots. Once the certificates of compliance are issued, Hearst Corp. will have an opportunity to employ yet another gambit to increase its property value by using the lot-line adjustment loophole in the Subdivision Map Act. Once it has established that its ranch is really 279 separate parcels, Hearst then could rearrange those parcels however it likes on the map – ensuring that they all have frontage along Highway 1 or the ocean, for example – to maximize their theoretical value. That would jack up the price that the conservation groups would eventually have to pay. It often seems as if we are in an "end game" situation in rural California. Large landowners who have held property for decades – sometimes centuries – are finally moving to dispose of their land, either into urban development or permanent conservation. Environmentalists and slow-growth activists often complain that big landowners sometimes feign a proposed development project (or, in the case of Hearst, development "potential") even when they intend all along to sell to the government or land conservancies. The result of this process obviously costs Californians a lot of money. This issue will move front and center in land conservation and development in California in the years ahead. Property owners have rights. Those include the right to get certificates of compliance, lot-line adjustments, and other legal means relating to subdivisions.

A federal court has ruled that San Diego's adult business zoning ordinance violated the First Amendment because the city did not prove that there are enough sites available for adult businesses. The Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the city's 1,000-foot buffer requirements are constitutional and that the city can treat adult businesses differently from other commercial operations. The city lost the case because it did not show that it provided "reasonable alternative avenues of communication." The controversy started in 1997, when George Isbell Jr. purchased a building with the intention of providing adult entertainment. San Diego's zoning requires 1,000-foot buffers between adult businesses and residential zones, churches, schools, public parks and other adult businesses. Isbell's building was 900 feet from a residential zone. He applied for a variance, arguing that the freeway separating his property from homes would dissipate any secondary effects. The city denied the variance, so Isbell, claiming that the city's ordinance violated the First Amendment and that the city's standards for variances violated the equal protection clause. Southern California District Court Judge Irma Gonzalez ruled for the city. The Ninth Circuit overturned a key portion of Gonzalez's decision. A zoning ordinance that requires separation of adult businesses was upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court in Young v. American Mini Theatres, Inc., 427 U.S. 50 (1976) and has been upheld recently by the Ninth Circuit (see CP&DR Legal Digest, August 2000). The U.S. Supreme Court has further ruled that dispersal ordinances intended to control secondary effects of adult establishments, such as prostitution, are constitutional so long as they are "designed to serve a substantial government interest and allow for reasonable alternative avenues of communication." City of Renton v. Playtime Theatres, Inc., 475 U.S. 41 (1986). In court, the city presented a list of 110 parcels totaling 92 acres where adult businesses could be located. Isbell argued that many of the sites were not economically suited to his business, so there were only three locations actually available. The court disagreed with both sides. The commercial feasibility of a site is not a factor, the court ruled, striking down Isbell's contention. The issue is whether a site is part of the actual real estate market for commercial enterprises in general. More importantly, the court ruled that the city's list of sites ignored the requirement for a 1,000-foot separation between adult businesses. "There is no question that, when this separation is taken into account, far fewer than 110 adult businesses could operate at the City-identified sites," Judge William Canby wrote. Because of the city's oversight, the court assumed that the city has 45 sites - the number of existing adult businesses in San Diego. Because there are 45 existing businesses and demand for at least one more - Isbell's application - the city does not have adequate sites for adult businesses, the court held. The city should have conducted a comprehensive analysis of the theoretically available acreage, the number of sites in relation to the city's population, community needs and the incidence of adult businesses in comparable towns, the court ruled. The court did not go so far as to strike down the 1,000-foot rule. The ordinance serves a substantial government interest - so long as adequate sites remain available, the court ruled. And the court ruled that the city's rejection of Isbell's variance application did not violate his equal protection rights. The Ninth Circuit returned the case to the district court for further proceedings. The Case: George Isbell Jr. v. City of San Diego, No. 99-55591, 01 C.D.O.S. 6436, 2001 DJDAR 7923. Filed July 31, 2001. The Lawyers: For Isbell, John Barriage, (858) 874-7692. For the city: Carra Lassman, deputy city attorney, (619) 533-5800.

The state Department of Conservation has sued the City of Elk Grove for approving a 295-acre commercial development on farmland at the edge of town. The year-old city approved the 3 million-square-foot Lent Ranch Marketplace project in late June. One month later, three environmental groups, including the Environmental Council of Sacramento, filed a lawsuit claiming that the city did not mitigate the loss of farmland and failed to address the safety of building a massive retail project near two large propone storage tanks. The Sacramento Bee reported that Westfield Corporation, an Australian shopping center developer that owns the Downtown Plaza in Sacramento, bankrolled the lawsuit. The state filed a lawsuit based on similar concerns in early August. State officials called the project "leapfrog development" that would encourage further urbanization of area farmland. Gov. Davis has signed a bill that limits the use of Marks Roos bonds. The bill, AB 457 (Canciamilla), requires that the local government entity with land use jurisdiction over a project must be part of any Marks Roos bond issue. The bill effectively outlaws the creation of "roving" joint powers authorities. Lawmakers have tried to block roving JPAs for several years, but developers took to creating mutual water companies for their projects. These water companies then joined with cities or other public agencies—often hundreds of miles away—to issue Marks Roos bonds to fund project infrastructure. However, as some developments failed, bonds have gone into default. In 1999, Davis vetoed AB 1511 (Flores) that would have barred mutual water companies from participating in roving JPAs. The Presidio Trust released a draft implementation plan and associated environmental impact statement for the 1,450-acre San Francisco park in late July. The plan focuses new development in the former Army base's northeast corner, near the Palace of Fine Arts and recently restored Crissy Field. The plan limits total structural space to 5.6 million square feet. The Presidio now has about 6 million square feet of structures; some of those buildings will be razed and others remodeled (see CP&DR Local Watch, March 2001). Environmentalists, civic leaders and neighborhood representatives quickly criticized the plan as one that would generate too many visitors and employees, harming the natural resources and congesting streets. Some people also said the plan lacked adequate detail. Less than a month after the plan's release, the Presidio Trust signed an agreement with moviemaker George Lukas's Lucasfilm Ltd. to allow the company to develop a 23-acre office and movie production campus at the site of an abandoned hospital and annex. About 2,500 workers are forecast at the 900,000 square-foot-Lucasfilm campus, which Presidio Trust officials see as the park's financial backbone. The Presidio Trust Implementation Plan and the draft EIS are available at http://www.presidiotrust.gov/ptip . A person may not serve simultaneously on a school board and a city planning commission if boundaries for the school district and the city overlap, according to a state attorney general's opinion. National City Prosecuting Attorney George Eiser III said he raised the question when a local school board member applied for a planning commission appointment. Deputy Attorney General Gregory Gonot said that public offices are incompatible if there is a "clash of duties or loyalties." Such would be the case here. "What the school district considers to be in the best interests of the public with respect to its land use decisions may differ from that of the planning commission in its determination of whether the decisions are consistent with the city's general plan," Gonot wrote. Opinion No. 01-307 is available at http://caag.state.ca.us/opinions/published/01jul.htm . Fresno County and the cities of Fresno and Clovis in August approved a conceptual agreement that redirects urban growth in metropolitan Fresno. The pact provides the two cities with about 18,000 acres for urban expansion during the next two decades, with growth occurring in the cities' southeast ends before northward expansion could resume. For decades, both cities have marched north toward Madera County. The agreement ends several years of bickering and threatened litigation. Under the pact, both cities will share sales tax revenue from new growth areas with the county. The agreement appears to allow Clovis to pursue its 1993 general plan, which focuses growth in two urban centers in the southeast as the town of 68,000 doubles in population during the next 20 years. The agreement also roughly matches Fresno's proposed general plan, which emphasizes infill development, downtown redevelopment and higher densities as the city grows to nearly 800,000 people by 2025. (See CP&DR Local Watch, September 2000). Two water contracting coalitions and several individual water agencies have filed a lawsuit over East Bay Municipal Utility District's plan to divert water from the Sacramento River just south of Sacramento. East Bay MUD, the City of Sacramento and Sacramento County worked out the agreement less than a year ago after fighting for three decades over East Bay MUD's plan to take water from the American River. U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein and many environmentalists hailed the agreement. It would allow East Bay MUD to take up to 133,000-acre-feet of water from the Sacramento River during dry years, leaving the American River untouched. But in their lawsuit, other water agencies that rely on the Sacramento River and the Bay Delta argue that the diversion could decrease the amount of water available for farms and cities outside East Bay MUD, and could raise the salinity level of Delta water. The suit claims East Bay MUD and the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation did not prepare an adequate environmental impact report. Representatives of East Bay MUD said the suit was premature because a supplemental EIR is in the works. The suit was filed by the 32-agency San Luis and Delta Mendota Water Authority, the 27-member State Water Contractors, the Contra Costa Water District, Santa Clara Valley Water District, Kern County Water Agency and Westlands Water District. The Bay Area Discovery Museum has indefinitely postponed the groundbreaking of its planned expansion because of a lawsuit filed by the City of Sausalito. Although no injunction is in place, museum leaders said they did not want to move forward during litigation. The 10-year-old museum is located at Fort Baker, on the edge of San Francisco Bay just north of the Golden Gate Bridge. The expansion calls for 12,500 square feet of classrooms and a theater, plus a 2 1/2-acre outdoor exhibit about the Bay's environment. The city contends that the project amounts to unnecessary commercialization of Fort Baker, whose historic sites should be restored. The Sacramento Local Agency Formation Commission has determined that incorporation of Rancho Cordova is "marginally feasible." The study suggests the proposed city along Highway 50 east of Sacramento would have to impose additional taxes. The Rancho Cordova Incorporation Committee said the study confirmed that the community could make it on its own and discounted the need for higher taxes. County officials said the study did not account for the full impacts on the area if Rancho Cordova were to become Sacramento County's seventh city. Incorporation backers hope to place the issue before voters in March. Voters in Moreno Valley rejected a proposed $20 annual parcel tax to fund construction of a new library. Only 9.5% of registered voters in the Riverside County town of 142,000 people participated in the July 31 special election, according to the City Clerk's office. Thus, only 2,541 votes (55.6% of those cast) were enough to defeat the assessment. A San Francisco ballot measure that bars landlords from passing along the cost of capital improvements to tenants has been invalidated by San Francisco Superior Court Judge James Robertson Jr. The judge said that Proposition H, approved by voters in November 2000, violated landlords' rights to a fair return on their investments. The City of Sacramento, Union Pacific Railroad and the owners of the Sacramento Kings will jointly fund a $150,000 feasibility study of a basketball arena and entertainment center on an old rail yard next to downtown. The Kings currently play in Arco Arena, which was built 15 years ago in part to spur development in North Natomas, several miles north of downtown.

Much of the history of architecture consists of architects making copies of notable buildings, and planners making copies of town plans, all while altering the originals to fit the situation at hand. Thus, Roman temples become Midwestern banks, the Palladian villas of Vicenza, Italy, become the Colonial buildings of the Eastern Seaboard, and a French monastery designed by Le Corbusier becomes the Sunkist building in the San Fernando Valley. It goes without saying, perhaps, that the copy is not always an improvement on the original. A particularly striking example of architectural transformation — and one in which something is definitely gained — is Sailhouse, a 90-unit residential infill project in Corona del Mar, an upscale neighborhood in the Orange County city of Newport Beach. The developer is John Laing Homes. The acknowledged basis of this design is the well-known Rosemary Beach, a residential community in the Florida panhandle designed by Andres Duany and Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk. Far from a literal copy of Rosemary Beach, architect Mark Scheurer of Scheurer Arhcitects actually borrowed only the basic arrangement of the block: the fronts of the homes face a pedestrians-only walkway, while the houses back onto a service alley for parking, deliveries and trash collection (although the architects are quick to point out that they designed the alleys to be usable open space, as well). The architects also borrowed the St. Augustine style of housing found at Rosemary Beach, which consists of updated versions of the historic, 17th century stucco houses built by Spanish settlers, which were later taken over and enlarged with wooden second stories by English settlers. What is notable, however, is what the designers did not borrow from Duany and Plater-Zyberk. They did not borrow, fortunately, the convoluted street plan of Rosemary Beach, which was designed to keep through-traffic out of quiet residential streets, many of which end in archetypally suburban cul-de-sacs. (There is little that is traditional in this plan formulated by the self-proclaimed inventors of Traditional Neighborhood Design, but let it pass.) Unlike Rosemary Beach, which is "leapfrog" development, the Corona del Mar project is essentially urban infill, in which the short streets in the northern (upper) portion of the plan line up with the existing pattern of surrounding residential streets. The short streets consist of small-lot, single-family homes, while the larger units on the curving, east-west street are triplexes designed to look like single-family dwellings. Sailhouse, therefore, gets better marks in both urban design and sustainability than Rosemary Beach. Beyond those elements in the Floridian project that Sailhouse did not include, the project introduces its own new ideas, which actually make it quite different from the Duany original: Unlike Rosemary Beach, where the housing stands at street level, the houses at Sailhouse sit atop eight-foot "podiums." The decision to elevate the housing partly reflected both the land economics of this small-lot site plan, and partly the developer's desire to preserve the views of homeowners on a sloping site. In essence, the developer and the architect have created a two-level way of life, with housing (and much of domestic life) on elevated pedestrian "paseos" while cars and garages trash at street level, eight feet lower than the paseos. In this transformation, the pedestrian paseo, which was already a pleasant pubic space, becomes something like a linear courtyard, where children can move freely without fear of wandering into traffic. As in Rosemary Beach, each of the single-family streets ends in a cul-de-sac. The difference at Sailhouse, however, is that the cul-de-sac is designed as a small courtyard or outdoor room. (Each of these courtyards, block after block, has a unique design.) It is easy to imagine block parties, with a barbecue in one yard and an inflatable swimming pool in another. With their front yards and living rooms facing the paseo, people can expand the square-footage of the party simply by opening their front gate, which makes the front yard temporarily into a public space. Or they can maintain privacy by keeping the front yard gate closed. Sailhouse is not gated, and visitors can climb a set of stairs to enter the elevated blocks freely, which is desirable. (If the same scheme were to be built in a more urban area, conceivably a key-card system or some other type of security arrangement could protect the housing, even if such a scheme would involve a loss of sociability.) The alleys are also cul-de-sacs. Because they are narrow and blocked at the end turning around a vehicle is difficult, unless you can head the car into an open garage first. This is a smart security measure, but it probably complicates deliveries and trash collection; those vehicles are obliged to back out the full length of the block. My concerns about Sailhouse primarily regard the elevation of the housing. The question here, and I do not think it is entirely academic, is whether this is the best possible urbanism. A narrow, didactic type of theorist might hold that removing housing, and, hence, some pedestrian activity from the street, subtracts from the vitality of the street. I wonder if the streets might not feel a little lonely when residents lack the ability to glance over a fence to see somebody watering their lawn, scolding their husband or carrying papers to the trash. For better or for worse, however, if we try to alter the scheme, we lose its advantages. We could lower the elevated courtyard until it was only a few feet above the sidewalk, and hence more "transparent" to passers-by, but then the parking would have to be undergrounded, and the street-level front facades of the housing would become a row of ugly tunnels leading into subterranean darkness. And, although the paseos encourage walking, I wonder how pedestrian-friendly the streets will be. Maybe the presence of shopping one block away from Sailhouse will encourage people to walk and bicycle on the public streets. Those questions aside, Sailhouse is an example of a designer choosing a good model and actually improving it. The project is the most recent example of the reinvention of courtyard housing in the name of density. As an urban housing type, the elevated paseo is an example worthy of further study and experimentation.

The Port of Oakland is scheduled to begin work late this month on a $260 million dredging project that will expand the port's capabilities and cement the facility's position as the cargo shipping center for Northern California. The project is only one of many the port district is pursuing that could eventually bring more than 10,000 industrial, retail, service and white-collar jobs to Oakland. A new intermodal terminal is set to open this fall, providing much improved rail access to ships. The port district is also scheduled this month to select a developer for 60 acres of waterfront along the Oakland Estuary. Two heavyweight developers submitted proposals for mixed-use projects along the water. Additional commercial development of the Port District's Jack London Square is also in the planning stages. The projects are part of the transformation of Oakland's waterfront. While San Francisco's waterfront is a mix of industry, offices, tourist-oriented retail offerings and public parks, Oakland's waterfront is dominated by industry. The Port of Oakland handles about 98% of goods shipped into and out of the Bay Area. But the port district also owns about 600 acres east of the port itself that many people believe could be key to the city's economic future. Two years ago, the port district adopted an Estuary Plan for its holdings along the estuary that separates Oakland and Alameda. The area now contains offices, restaurants and shops at Jack London Square, numerous industrial users, and a mix of artists lofts, warehouses and other businesses. The plan reinforces Jack London Square's orientation as a regional attraction and community gathering place, and it protects many industrial uses. But it also calls for extensive mixed-use development and a string of parks connected by bikeways � all of which is intended to connect the waterfront and downtown Oakland, which are separated by the I-880 Freeway. The port's Board of Directors took a step toward implementing the Estuary Plan in April when it voted to work with a private partnership (composed of Cargill and local developers Ellis Partners and James Falaschi) on further development of Jack London Square. The port and the private developers continue to negotiate but are close to reaching an agreement, said Steve Hanson, the port's project manager for Jack London Square. The project will replace surface parking lots, a failing mall that has already been demolished, and vacant lots with 300,000 square feet of offices, 90,000 square feet of retail shops and a 250-room hotel. Although Jack London Square gets a reported 6 million visitors a year, the knock is that it has no real connection to the water. The Jack London Square Phase II project aims to change that. "We intend to create a project that will enhance public access to the waterfront, pedestrian uses, alternative transit and expand neighborhood, city and regional-serving retail," said Hal Ellis, one of the partners in the $200 million development. "It will enhance Jack London Square," added the port's Hanson. "We don't think Jack London Square has the density that it really needs. There's just not enough retail synergy." Farther east lies 60 acres where the Estuary Plan envisions extensive mixed-use development along the Embarcadero. Two teams have submitted proposals for the "Oak-to-Ninth District," and the port's Board of Directors could select a developer as early as this month. Shorenstein Co. and Interland Corp. submitted one proposal to the port district, while a partnership of Signature Properties and Reynolds & Brown submitted a competing plan. The four companies are among the Bay Area's biggest developers, demonstrating the site's potential. The Signature/Reynolds & Brown proposal calls for low- and mid-rise development. It emphasizes condominium development and a large retail complex similar to Seattle's Pike Place Market. The Shorenstein/Interland plan contains a tower of up to 24 stories. There would be extensive office space, public plazas and links to the Lake Merritt district next to downtown. "We feel we can create a famous destination address," said Richard Reisman, an Interland vice president. Shorenstein/Interland propose realigning the Embarcadero so that it matches the rest of the Oakland street grid and does not feel like an isolated loop, Reisman said. That helps tie the project to the rest of town, he said. "So many cities have brought themselves up by their bootstraps by revitalization of their waterfront, and then extending that revitalization further into town," Reisman said. Oakland waterfront activist Sandra Threlfall said the port district appears to be on the right track. She said the ideal development along the waterfront would phase from industrial at one end, to commercial, to mixed-use, to residential, to nonprofit facilities, to parks. Threlfall, who chairs the Waterfront Coalition, a collection of environmental and civic groups, said she had no confidence the port district would do the right thing for the community when she became active seven years ago. "I am very confident in the port today, and I believe they have come an incredible distance in seven years," Threlfall said. Threlfall said developers should build a waterfront that serves locals first. A thriving waterfront district that matches the community will naturally draw tourists, she argued. And she cautioned against glitzy buildings. "Let's not try to compete with San Francisco. We are our own place," Threlfall said. How exactly the port district's development plans jibe with the City of Oakland's view of the waterfront is uncertain. Mayor Jerry Brown has spoken about increasing public access to the waterfront. The port has allowed the city to extend its land use jurisdiction to the waterfront, so projects on port property will need city approval. There is a potential for conflict over tax revenue from some port district properties that lie within a city redevelopment zone. (City officials did not return telephone calls.) Of course, the port's shipping facilities remain its economic centerpiece. In July, the port district signed an agreement with the Army Corps of Engineers that amounted to the final approval for the dredging project. The port now has 42-foot-deep channels, and the project will deepen those to 50 feet, allowing the port to accommodate the largest container ships and prevent the port from losing business to facilities in Canada and Mexico. The project will take about five years and also will require annual funding allocations from Congress, said port spokesman Harold Jones. The port and the federal government are sharing equally the $260 million project. Port officials estimate the project will lead to the creation of 8,000 direct and indirect jobs, a 50% increase over current job levels. Maybe as important as the channel deepening is the intermodal terminal that is nearing completion on the former Oakland Army Base. The project provides direct rail access to shipping terminals, making handling more efficient and expanding capacities, Jones said. The rail line runs 11 miles to a large rail yard in Richmond. Contacts: Steve Hanson, Port of Oakland, (510) 627-1218. Sandra Threlfall, Waterfront Coalition, (510) 339-9233. Richard Reisman, Interland Corp., (650) 574-9200. Port of Oakland website: www.portofoakland.com

A project proponent can eliminate previously adopted mitigation measures so long as the proponent provides a reason for the change that is supported by substantial evidence, the First District Court of Appeal has ruled. But the court also decided that the lack of mitigation measures created a conflict with the general plan, so the court invalidated the project. The ruling appears to be the first that specifically addresses when and how a project proponent can drop mitigation measures that had been identified in an earlier environmental impact report and included as conditions of approval. In the case at hand, the Napa County Board of Supervisors adopted an updated specific plan and a "final subsequent EIR" (FSEIR) for 2,945 acres surrounding the Napa Airport in October 1998. The updated plan did not include a number of traffic mitigation measures contained in the original specific plan that supervisors adopted in 1986 because the county later found them to be infeasible. "The claim that once a mitigation measure is adopted it never can be deleted is inconsistent with the legislative recognition of the need to modify land-use plans as circumstances change," Justice William Stein wrote for the court. "It also is true that mistakes can be made and need to be rectified, and that the vision of a region's citizens or its governing body may evolve over time." The county's attorney, Arthur Coon, of Miller Starr and Regalia, said that the California Environmental Quality Act does not hold the county to old, infeasible mitigation measures. "With changing times and changing circumstances, may not be feasible," he said. The court's ruling, Coon said, "is the clearest statement of what we thought the law always was." But J. William Yeates, an attorney for project opponents, said that the court appears to have opened a loophole in CEQA. "They addressed an issue that had never really been addressed before, and that is what happens when a project applicant just walks away from approved mitigation measures?" Yeates said. This case suggests that if the applicant can prove that mitigations are infeasible, "he would be off the hook. Yet he never would have gotten the project built without approval of the mitigation measures. That could be the future rub of this decision," Yeates said. Despite its loss on the CEQA question, the project opponents did win the case. The court ruled that the updated specific plan's lack of mitigations for traffic and housing, and the FSEIR's inadequate discussion of water and sewer treatment made the updated specific plan incompatible with the general plan. Coon has requested a rehearing, arguing that the court made a number of factual errors. In 1986, the Napa County Board of Supervisors adopted a specific plan and EIR for the Airport Industrial Area. The plan called for about 1,900 acres of industrial development around the Napa Airport, which lies between the City of Napa and the community of American Canyon (which has since incorporated). In 1994, the county began updating the specific plan. Because of intense interest and complex issues, the county prepared a draft subsequent EIR, a supplement to the draft subsequent EIR and an addendum to the draft subsequent EIR. The board adopted the updated specific plan and new EIR in October 1998. As in 1986, the county had to make overriding findings because there were environmental impacts--including traffic congestion--that could not be fully offset. Two groups - Napa Citizens for Honest Government and North Bay Citizens for Responsible Transportation - and the City of American Canyon filed a lawsuit alleging that the new EIR was inadequate in several ways, and that the specific plan conflicted the county general plan's circulation and housing elements, creating an internal inconsistency that invalidated the general plan. Napa County Superior Court Judge Richard Bennett agreed that the EIR was inadequate and he invalidated the specific plan, but he ruled that the challenge to the general plan was time barred. A unanimous three judge panel of the First District Court of Appeal, Division One, upheld the ruling but differed with some of Judge Bennett's conclusions. With regard to traffic, the appellate panel ruled that the county had justified its elimination of traffic mitigation measures approved in 1986. The FSEIR said that improvements to Highways 12 and 29 were too expensive, they would require extensive right-of-way acquisition and they would produce visual impacts. The FSEIR contained only one mitigation measure for traffic - preparation of a traffic study and a review of potential funding sources and legislative remedies. The court ruled that this was enough to satisfy CEQA. However, the lack of specific traffic remedies conflicted with the county's own general plan, the court held. "If the Updated Specific Plan will frustrate the General Plan's goals and policies, it is inconsistent with the County's General Plan unless it also includes definite affirmative commitments to mitigate the adverse effect or effects," Justice Stein wrote. "The County cannot state a policy of reducing traffic congestion, recognize that an increase in traffic will cause unacceptable congestion and at the same time approve a project that will increase traffic congestion without taking affirmative steps to handle that increase." The court addressed housing in a similar fashion. It ruled that the FSEIR and an associated market analysis presented an adequate discussion of housing issues. The documents concluded that buildout of the Airport Industrial Area would generate the need for 5,457 housing units and suggested that many of the homes would be built in American Canyon or Napa. But, even though the specific plan area is entirely commercial and industrial, the county needed to make a commitment to provide housing to satisfy its general plan, the court held. " cannot state goals of providing adequate housing to meet the needs of persons living in the area, and at the same time approve a project that will increase the need for housing without taking affirmative steps to handle that increase," Stein wrote. The county argued - and maintains in its request for a rehearing - that the general plan policies in question were advisory, not mandates, and that the lack of specifics that concerned the appellate panel did not set the updated specific plan in conflict with the general plan. Yeates, attorney for the project opponents, said that it may have actually been better for his clients to win on the issue of general plan consistency because now the only way the county can stick with the updated specific plan would be to amend the general plan. And eliminating policies regarding improvements to congested Highways 12 and 29 would not be politically popular, he said. As for water and sewer services, the court ruled that the EIR was too speculative. The EIR assumed that American Canyon would supply water to the project, even though American Canyon is pursuing an agreement with the City of Vallejo to prevent a forecasted water deficit in American Canyon by 2015. The EIR further says that Napa Sanitary District's Soscol Treatment Plant will serve the development, assuming that capacity will become available when American Canyon - which already uses the Soscol plant - will arrange other treatment services. "We conclude that the FSEIR need not identify and analyze all possible resources that might service the Project should the anticipated resources fail to materialize. Because of the uncertainty surrounding the anticipated sources for water and wastewater treatment, however, the FSEIR also cannot simply label the possibility that they will not materialize as 'speculative' and decline to address it," Stein wrote. Coon said that the court got this wrong. American Canyon has a signed contract with Vallejo to receive more water, and American Canyon has committed to build its own sewer plant, he said. The court also overlooked the county's mitigation measure that prevents development if facilities are not available, he added. The court also ruled that the new EIR did not adequately address the project's impacts on endangered steelhead trout in two streams. Finally, the court ruled that opponents' challenge of the general plan's validity was too late. Besides, the court ruled, "if the Updated Specific Plan is inconsistent with the General Plan, the Updated Specific Plan is invalid; but the General Plan is unaffected." The Case: Napa Citizens for Honest Government v. Napa County Board of Supervisors, No. A089095, 01 C.D.O.S. 6732, 2001 DJDAR 8157. Filed August 3, 2001. The Lawyers: For Napa Citizens: J. William Yeates, (916) 860-2000. For the county: Arthur F. Coon, Miller, Starr and Regalia, (925) 935-9400.

Buffeted by competition from lower priced imports, snarled in a tangle of environmental regulations, besieged by sprawling cities and suburbs, America's small family farmers can be forgiven for feeling like members of an endangered species. In Yolo County, farmers may soon have more in common with imperiled plants and wildlife than just their dwindling numbers. In an intriguing twist on implementation of the Endangered Species Act (ESA), a habitat conservation plan (HCP) that has been in the works for more than eight years may soon preserve thousands of acres of development-threatened farmland at the same time it tosses a life ring to dozens of rare species. It will, in fact, link farmers and protected creatures — often regarded as natural adversaries — in a symbiotic endeavor to maintain both the economic vitality of agriculture and the ecological viability of wildlife populations. The plan is not without drawbacks and potential critics. In some respects, it resembles the HCP developed for the Natomas Basin, in adjoining Sacramento County. A federal judge rejected the Natomas HCP in August 2000 for providing insufficient mechanisms to preserve wildlife habitat threatened by urban development. But there are crucial differences, too, which make the evolving Yolo County HCP worth examination by land-use regulators, environmental activists and farmland conservation advocates elsewhere in California's rapidly urbanizing agricultural regions. Habitat Conservation Plans are voluntary agreements negotiated between the federal government and private landowners or states. They allow private parties to obtain "incidental take" permits under the ESA, authorizing them to unintentionally harm or kill listed species during the course of otherwise lawful activity. In return, landowners agree to take steps to protect those species. In theory, an HCP incorporates measures that actually improve a species' chances for survival — allowing destruction of a small amount of habitat in one place, for example, while requiring preservation of an even greater amount elsewhere — while also enabling farmers to continue farming, loggers to continue logging, and builders to continue building. The Yolo County HCP, the most recent draft of which was released in January, is ambitious. It is intended to reconcile all projected urban growth over the next 20 years in the county's four cities (Davis, Woodland, West Sacramento and Winters) and its four unincorporated communities (Esparto, Dunnigan, Knights Landing and Clarksburg) with existing or potential state and federal protections for 26 species of plants, birds, reptiles, amphibians, insects and crustaceans. The HCP encompasses 403,052 acres — 70 percent of the county. City and county general plans project 11,672 acres of mostly agricultural land within this HCP area will be converted to urban uses during the next two decades. The HCP traces its roots to 1993, when the four cities and the county signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU), pledging to develop a regional plan that would allow projected urban growth to proceed within the cities while preserving wildlife habitat in the unincorporated rural landscape. The intent was to avoid the sort of project-by-project ESA mitigation that so often causes long delays in permitting without achieving meaningful protections for rare plants and wildlife whose habitat needs cannot be adequately assured on a piecemeal basis. The first "final" draft of the countywide HCP was released in 1996, and came under sharp criticism from environmental groups and biologists over its scientific underpinnings. They argued that the plan failed to describe adequately the population status and habitat needs of many of the creatures it purported to protect. They also said the plan lacked a mechanism for assuring that its generic mitigation technique — simply requiring that one acre of land be conserved for every acre developed — would accomplish anything. The HCP was revised, and then revised again to reflect new case law and new U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service regulations for HCPs. If the latest "preliminary" draft is adopted by all the government jurisdictions in Yolo County, and approved by USFWS and the California Department of Fish and Game, the permitting agencies in the cities and county will be granted an incidental take permit under the state and federal ESAs. These permits will authorize damage to the covered species and their habitats during urban development, and will also serve as mitigation for impacts to biological resources identified under the California Environmental Quality Act. In general, the Yolo County HCP is much like the hundreds of other HCPs negotiated throughout the nation in the past decade. These plans are vulnerable to criticism on scientific grounds and greeted with suspicion by environmental activists who view the plans as political devices intended to grease the skids for builders rather than genuine blueprints for wildlife preservation. What is most interesting here, however, is the difference between Yolo County's plan and nearly all other HCPs. Strictly speaking, there is very little pristine wildlife habitat left in Yolo County — mostly remnant grassland, scattered vernal pools, wetlands, and riparian woodland narrowly confined to stream and river corridors. The county is intensively farmed, and 82 percent of the undeveloped land addressed by the HCP is planted in crops. Many of the creatures the HCP is intended to protect live or forage in orchards, vineyards, tomato fields, agricultural drainage ditches and other agricultural features, and it is this farmland that the HCP talks about when it refers to habitat preservation. In other words, to save such creatures as the Swainson's hawk, giant garter snake and valley longhorn elderberry beetle, the Yolo County HCP has as its primary strategy the preservation of cropland where those animals feed, burrow, nest and roost. The plan is a biological rescue effort built around a farmland conservation program. It specifies a mitigation fee keyed to the estimated cost of purchasing conservation easements for farmland, and proposes a periodic review of the economic vitality of farms participating in that program. The January draft of the Yolo County HCP resides in limbo; this latest revision was conducted hurriedly, according to John Hopkins, who represents the Davis-based Institute for Ecological Health on the HCP steering committee. The current version has not been reviewed formally by that committee, and the process, he said, is on hold while local agencies prepare to revise the plan yet again to qualify for participation in the state's Natural Communities Conservation Program (California's version of the HCP program). Still, the notion that cropland might effectively be saved from the builder's bulldozers by wedding the fate of farmers to that of rare wildlife offers food for thought as urban pressures continue to build throughout California's agricultural heartland. Many farmers have long thought of themselves as an endangered species. In Yolo County, they are being treated like one. Contacts: John Hopkins, IEH: (530) 756-6455. Yolo County Planning Department: (530) 666-8775. Yolo County Draft HCP website: http://www.co.yolo.ca.us/HCP/hcp.htm

The City of Los Angeles' slum abatement program is categorically exempt from the California Environmental Quality Act, the Second District Court of Appeal has ruled. The ruling is only the latest loss in apartment owners' running battle against the city's broad code enforcement effort. In January, the state Supreme Court ruled that the city's $12-per-unit annual fee on landlords was not subject to the voter-approval requirements of Proposition 218 because it was a tax on business (see CP&DR Legal Digest, February 2001). Apartment owners also lost CEQA suits over the city's temporary slum abatement program at the trial court level and in an unpublished appellate court case. The city implemented a systematic code enforcement program with the goal of inspecting all 750,000 rental units in Los Angeles every three years. The city adopted an interim program in 1998 and made the program permanent in 1999. The Apartment Association of Greater Los Angeles filed suit over the permanent program, claiming that the city improperly exempted the project from environmental review. The association presented two urban planning experts who said the program would lead to widespread closure and abandonment of affordable hosing, and that it could affect the environment by encouraging the transportation, use and disturbance of hazardous materials, such as pesticides and asbestos. Los Angeles Superior Court Judge David Yaffe ruled for the city. On appeal, the Second District, Division Seven, upheld Yaffe's decision but for different reasons. Yaffe held that the landlords could not base their challenge on their experts' testimony. Because the interim code enforcement program and the permanent program were the same, the experts should have testified when the City Council considered the temporary plan, and it was now too late to introduce their testimony now, Yaffe ruled. The appellate court, however, ruled that the two programs are not the same. "The very fact one was temporary and the other is permanent is enough to distinguish them," Justice Earl Johnson Jr. wrote for the unanimous three-judge panel. Plus, the permanent program adds provisions regarding rent withholding, sets inspection fees and includes penalties. But the court gave little credence to what the landlords' experts had to say. One predicted that many building owners cited for code violations would not be able to afford repairs and instead would abandon their properties or remove them from the market. That testimony directly conflicted with the city's study of what happened while the city inspected 99,000 units under the interim program. The city found that it issued abatement orders to owners of 269 properties out of the 7,200 it inspected - about 4%. One hundred of those cited came into compliance during the time of the study. Only 33 tenants were displaced from their rental units. Furthermore, the court noted, not one member of the association - which claims thousands of members - submitted a declaration that the interim enforcement program forced him to abandon a property or imposed a financial hardship. The landlords' other expert talked about the potential construction activity at tens of thousands of housing units, and the potential disturbance of asbestos and lead paint at older buildings - all of which may occur because of the code enforcement program. The court ruled this testimony was too speculative for CEQA purposes. "We do not believe an expert's opinion which says nothing more than 'it is reasonable to assume' that something 'potentially ... may occur' constitutes substantial evidence necessary to invoke an exception to a categorical exemption," Johnson wrote. "'Substantial evidence' is defined in the CEQA guidelines to include 'expert opinion supported by facts.' It does not include 'argument, speculation, unsubstantiated opinion or narrative.'" The code enforcement program did fall within guidelines for categorical exemption, the court ruled. The city's CEQA guidelines exempt projects that consist of rehabilitation of deteriorated structures and facilities to meet current standards of public health, safety and environmental protection. Because the city's program qualified for exemption, it was up to the landlords to prove that an exemption was not warranted. The landlords did not meet the burden of proof, the court held. The Case: Apartment Association of Greater Los Angeles v. City of Los Angeles, No. B144335, 01 C.D.O.S. 6240, 2001 DJDAR 7617. Filed July 23, 2001. The Lawyers: For the association: Lawrence Straw Jr. and Paul Gough, Straw and Gough, (310) 826-7766. For the city, Susan Pfann and Jack Brown, assistant city attorneys, (213) 485-5416.

Faced with big growth pressures, the small coastal community of Half Moon Bay is engaged in high political drama while dealing with a knotty set of planning problems. The city has approved several controversial developments, but it is also considering a way to limit development on thousands of old, substandard lots. Half Moon Bay also continues to struggle with how to operate under growth control initiatives and is receiving pressure from the Coastal Commission to update its Local Coastal Plan (LCP). Growth battles are not new in Half Moon Bay, a city of 11,800 that stretches for six miles along Highway 1 in San Mateo County. Traffic has been the central issue since at least the 1960s. On a map, Half Moon Bay looks like an easy commute from the job centers of Silicon Valley and San Francisco. However, only two mountainous two-lane highways (and some even slower county roads) connect Half Moon Bay with larger cities. The commute has worsened over the years, and weekend traffic can be even heavier, especially in the town itself. "It's an area that has a limited ability to support continued growth," said Chris Kern, supervisor of the Coastal Commission's North Central Coast District. "Highways 1 and 92 are already operating above their capacities. You hear horror stories about people taking two hours to get through Half Moon Bay on a sunny Saturday." Besides the traffic controversy, protection of sensitive coastal habitat continues to arise as an issue for environmentalists and the Coastal Commission. The entire city lies within the Coastal Zone, so Half Moon Bay's LCP and its general plan are practically the same, said Community Development Director Kenneth Curtis. The Coastal Commission certified the land use plan of the LCP in 1985 and approved substantial amendments 10 years later. The city has been in the process of updating its LCP and the general plan for some time, with an eye toward greater protection of coastal resources, Curtis said. Four developments approved by the city have generated much of the recent controversy: a large hotel, a 200-acre mixed-use project, and two subdivisions. The hotel is a six-story, 261-room Ritz-Carlton on 14 oceanfront acres at the south end of town. A hotel was originally approved for the site 30 years ago, but construction stalled. After plans were updated, construction began anew in 1999 and the Ritz opened early this year. Locals say the Ritz is a bad fit for the beach town, which has some modest neighborhoods. San Francisco Chronicle urban design writer John King agreed in a column this spring. "All of the wood shingles in the world can't hide the awkwardness of a 260,000-square-foot structure imposing itself on a bluff that you approach by driving past mobile homes and an RV park," King wrote. While the Ritz might have few local boosters, the proposed Wavecrest Village nearby does have backers, including people normally on the slow-growth side of the aisle. Originally approved in 1995 as 750 homes, a golf course, an RV park and an oceanfront hotel, Wavecrest was shot down by voters in 1995. After the referendum defeat, project backers went to work with two councilmembers to craft a compromise. In 1999, the City Council unanimously approved a revised project that called for 271 homes to be phased in over a decade, a 17-acre office and retail component, a Boys and Girls Club, a site for a new middle school, and sports fields. In all, about half of the 207-acre site would be set aside for open space or public facilities. Mayor Deborah Ruddock, who co-wrote a 1999 slow-growth initiative, said she backed the revised project because of amenities the city would gain, including extension of the coastal trail along a 1,500-foot setback from the bluffs. Still, disgruntled investors appealed Wavecrest to the Coastal Commission, where it has languished for more than two years. During the latest hearing in June, the commission refused to approve the project. Commissioners complained that wetlands were not fully delineated and information on raptor habitat was lacking. City Planning Commission Chairman Mike Ferreira, who is running for the City Council this fall, said the Coastal Commission was correct to demand more information. He also questioned the city's willingness to cut a deal for the project. "There are no replaceable coastal resources. You lose them, they are gone — wetlands, a raptor habitat area … there is no turning back from that loss," Ferreira argued. "If we kept that in mind more, we would probably negotiate differently." Two other substantial projects are tangled in litigation. The 114-acre Pacific Ridge subdivision received formal Coastal Commission approval in August. However, the Commission reduced the project by 25 lots to 120 and conditioned approval on retirement of development rights on an equal number of substandard lots elsewhere in town. The decision generated a lawsuit from developer Albert Fong. Also at issue is the 84-lot Beechwood subdivision. The city initially rejected the development because of impacts to wetlands, but a Superior Court judge ordered the city to approve the project. The city did so early this year, but the Coastal Commission took up Beechwood on appeal and decided to conduct a fresh review, raising questions about the court order. Twice, Half Moon Bay voters have approved growth control initiatives. Measure A in 1991 imposed a 3% cap after a rapid growth spurt began in 1988. Measure D, from 1999, which Ruddock helped draft, imposed a 1% growth cap — about 40 homes a year — with exceptions for downtown. Some voters were angered earlier this year when the City Council voted 3-2 to exempt roughly 500 parcels in already approved projects — including Wavecrest Village — from Measure D's cap. Noting that Measure A's implementation was similar, Ruddock said she supported the exemption based on legal advice. She also hinted that the exemption may not mean a great deal. "All of these particular projects have problems of one type or another, either expiration of a map or all these incredible traffic impacts," said Ruddock, who works as a project manager for the state Coastal Conservancy. The city also continues to wrestle with a huge number of substandard lots, most approved 80 to 100 years ago. Community Developer Director Curtis estimated that 5,000 lots exist in 12 old subdivisions, mostly between Highway 1 and the beach. City officials are considering a transfer of development rights program, which the Coastal Commission is encouraging. The Coastal Commission recently approved the city's "proportionality ordinance," which limits building size on small lots. Also impacting the city is development in the unincorporated "Mid-Coast" north of Half Moon Bay. Ruddock said the San Mateo County LCP for the area allows about 125 new homes a year. The city, however, gets most of the traffic and provides parks for the area without reimbursement, she complained. Contacts: Deborah Ruddock, Half Moon Bay mayor, (650) 726-8720. Mike Ferreira, Planning Commission chairman, (650) 726-3500. Kenneth Curtis, community development director, (650) 726-8250. Chris Kern, Coastal Commission North Central Coast District supervisor, (415) 904-5260.

The federal government is falling far short of meeting its goal of "no net loss" of wetlands, according to a new study by the National Academies of Sciences' National Research Council. While the loss of wetlands in the contiguous 48 states decreased by 77% from 1986 to 1997, about 58,000 acres of wetlands are being plowed up or paved over every year, according to the report. The scientists found that many mitigation projects are not implemented after development is approved, that some new wetlands are not maintained as promised, and that some projects do not adequately replicate a natural system. The scientists urged better data collection and greater enforcement by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which regulates most wetlands development. "A broader geographic area needs to be considered when deciding which wetlands to restore and where to place new wetlands so they continue to serve the ecological needs of the entire watershed and have a higher chance of long-term survival," said committee chairman Joy Zedler, the Aldo Leopold Chair of Restoration Ecology at University of Wisconsin, Madison. The report is available at the National Academies' website, www.nationalacademies.org/webextra/wetlands Before going on summer recess, the Legislature passed a bill that requires the City of Tustin to give a 100-acre parcel of the former Tustin Marine Corps base to the Santa Ana Unified School District and the Rancho Santiago Community College District. The state Senate approved AB 212 (Correa) 21-13 on a party-line vote. Assembly Democrats passed the bill in April. As of late July, Gov. Davis had not indicated his position. Tustin and the school districts, which serve Santa Ana, have fought over base reuse for five years. Tustin has extensive redevelopment plans for the 1,600-acre base and wants the 100-acre site for a commercial project. Tustin offered the districts 39 acres and $20 million. The overcrowded school districts rejected the offer because the 39 acres appear to be heavily contaminated. Tustin contends AB 212 illegally preempts federal law and usurps the city's constitutionally protected police powers. The Correa bill is a companion to SB 874 (Dunn), which would prohibit Tustin's redevelopment agency from issuing debt based on the school districts' share of property tax increment unless the redevelopment agency and the districts sign an agreement. Both houses of the Legislature approved SB 874, but they did not reconcile differences before the summer recess started in July. The Temecula city clerk's decision to block a development referendum from the ballot was upheld by Riverside County Superior Court Judge Sharon Waters. In March, opponents of the 2,000-home Wolf Creek subdivision filed about 4,800 signatures on a rezoning referendum petition, twice as many has they needed to qualify a ballot measure. However, City Clerk Susan W. Jones said the petition backers failed to show signers the entire Wolf Creek development plan, so she refused to certify the referendum. After a three-day trial in July, Judge Waters ruled that referendum supporters should have made all Wolf Creek planning documents available to petition-signers. The Fannie Mae Foundation has identified a new type of suburb that has become commonplace in California. In a report released in late June, Fannie Mae defined a "boomburb" as an area with more than 100,000 residents that has maintained double-digit population growth in recent decades and is not the largest city in its metropolitan area. Fannie Mae found 53 boomburbs nationwide, including 25 in California. Some of the largest in the state are Anaheim, Santa Ana, Riverside, Fremont and Chula Vista. The report painted a contrasting portrait: "Because of their exceptionally fast growth rates, Boomburbs face extreme degrees of development-related problems, such as traffic congestion, strained public services, and sprawl. However, because of their large size and their potential to cooperate with other large municipalities, Boomburbs may prove well-positioned to participate in comprehensive regional solutions to these problems." The report, "Boomburgs: The Emergence of Large, Fast-Growing Suburban Cities in the U.S.," is available at the Fannie Mae website, www.fanniemaefoundation.org/census_notes_6.shtml Playa Vista — a 1,087-acre, mixed-use infill development on Los Angeles's west side — received two major boosts recently. In June, the City Council approved $135 million in Mello-Roos bonds to fund roads, utilities and parks. The council also approved $33 million in Multi-Family Housing Revenue Bonds to fund construction of affordable apartments. Although Playa Vista has been controversial for years because of its location at the Ballona wetlands, the votes came without City Council dissent. In July, influential developer Rob Maguire revealed that he had purchased 60 acres from the principal owner, Playa Capitol Corporation, and that he had hired renowned Santa Monica architect Frank Gehry to design at least four buildings. Gehry told the Los Angeles Times that his design for the commercial structures was inspired by the simple hangar where Howard Hughes built the Spruce Goose airplane shortly after World War II. Hughes formerly owned the Playa Vista site, where the hangar still stands. The California Public Utilities Commission has ruled that the Napa Valley Wine Train does not function as a public utility and therefore is subject to local land use regulations. The ruling, issued in June, is a significant victory for the City of St. Helena, which has fought for years to block a proposed Wine Train depot. The Wine Train carries tourists on a slow, 18-mile ride from Napa to St. Helena but has permission to stop at only one place along the route — a winery in the community of Rutherford. The Wine Train has long argued that it is a railroad and is subject only to the PUC. The Legislature even passed a measure that appeared place the Wine Train under the sole jurisdiction of the PUC. St. Helena and many Napa Valley winemakers and grape growers have fought the Wine Train continuously, saying it does not provide meaningful alternative transportation, blocks roads and driveways, and gives the valley a carnival atmosphere. San Bernardino County Supervisor Jerry Eaves has pleaded no contest to seven misdemeanor counts of failing to report political gifts and voting on issues that aided his benefactors. Under a settlement with the Attorney General's office, which took over the case from the county District Attorney's office, Eaves will pay a $20,000 fine and he cannot re-election in 2004. A former Assemblyman, Eaves failed to disclose that he received three fishing trips to a Canadian resort from an attorney with the firm of Miller & Schroeder. Eaves later voted for $160 million in bonds underwritten by Miller & Schroeder. The funds were used for, among other things, redevelopment of Norton Air Force Base in San Bernardino. Voters in the San Gabriel Valley city of Duarte rejected a special tax to purchase foothill open space during a June 26 special election. Measure A would have raised about $3.9 million over 30 years to help purchase 726 acres. The special tax would have cost homeowners about $48 annually. Measure A required a two-thirds vote but received only 40.1% approval. The year-old City of Elk Grove approved a 295-acre shopping mall in late June. Sacramento County had rejected the proposed Lent Ranch Marketplace before the city incorporated, partly because the project is proposed next to the county's urban services boundary. Elk Grove officials said the city needs the shopping opportunities and revenue that the 3-million-square-foot development will bring. The El Dorado County Local Agency Formation Commission has extended the deadline for the El Dorado Hills incorporation effort until December of 2002. However, the commission and incorporation proponents, who submitted petitions three years ago, disagree over the cost of financial and environmental studies. On the border of El Dorado and Sacramento counties, El Dorado Hills is a growing commuter town.