SAN DIEGO (CN) — California’s Coastal Commission Wednesday approved a change in land use designation that will allow developers to start building a controversial hotel and affordable housing project on property that sits next to an old toxic landfill in Huntington Beach.
“We followed where the best available science and information led us, and that was to recommendation of approval of this land use change today, and we do not take the change of our recommendation lightly,” said Kate Huckelbridge, the executive director of California Coastal Commission, at their monthly meeting.
The bottom line is that the project “will not substantively make things worse or better in terms of hazards for the city, so in other words we don’t really see any evidence that this project would create new problems for this city, nor would it solve many problems the city already has,” she added.
With only the Pacific Coast Highway separating it from Surf City’s famous Huntington State Beach, the 29-acre lot known as Magnolia Tank Farm, because it was used to store three, 25-million-gallon fuel tanks from 1972 to 2013, is prime real estate in the notoriously expensive Orange County.
In January 2021, the city council approved zoning amendments to allow developer Shopoff Realty Investments to build residential units, a park, and a hotel on the site. However, due to the the site’s location along the coast, the California Coastal Commission had to approve the zoning changes before the project could move forward.
Last year, the commission tabled the project, citing concerns that the land could be prone to flooding if sea rising caused by climate change continues, the lack of affordable housing included in the developers plan, and that the site borders an old toxic landfill site called Ascon, which was used to store oil waste.
At the initial meeting with the commission, the developers said they were willing to set aside some apartments for affordable housing and housing for people who worked at the hotel, but they didn’t have any specifics.
Since last year, the developers offered to set aside 20% of apartments at the project as affordable, half of which will be for low-income hotel employees.
For months, a steady stream of hotel workers, many of whom members of UNITE HERE, the hotel workers labor union, spoke during the public comment section of the commission’s monthly meetings to voice their support for the project.
“It represents hope for families like mine,” said Jimena Baclomena, a housekeeper at a hotel in Anaheim, and a member of UNITE HERE, who spoke in Spanish at Wednesday’s meeting about the project.
Living closer to her work — she currently lives in Hawaiian Gardens — would allow her to spend more time with her family.
Other speakers talked about the appeal of being able to live next to the beach, in a neighborhood with parks, and the chance to live in a neighborhood with people of various socioeconomic classes.
But other speakers, including residents of nearby housing tracts, mostly urged the commission to reject the zoning change, saying that building housing so close to a former toxic dump, and now a Superfund site was dangerous.
“Why should the commission approve this project when the city of Huntington Beach opposed so many other truly affordable options?” said Charming Evelyn, the chair of the Sierra Club’s water committee. “Is it because this is for people of color? Low income workers? Is it because it is historically acceptable to place people of color in harm’s way? We really must take a closer look at this because this stinks of racism, segregation, and red lining.”
Evelyn referred to the area as a “toxic triangle,” affecting the health and safety of nearby residents, since the site is near the Ascon landfill, a power plant, and a sewage treatment plant.
A representative from the California Department of Toxic Substances Control who spoke to the commission on Wednesday said that the Ascon landfill isn’t currently releasing harmful chemicals, but that remediation on the site to prevent it from releasing harmful chemicals in perpetuity would take about 22 months.
Remediation stopped in 2019 after residents of nearby tract homes experienced “health concerns due to hazardous volatile organic compounds,” the commission wrote in a report released last month in advance of their vote.
After a lengthy hearing Wednesday, more than 80 public comments, discussion with the developer, commissioners, and the California Department of Toxic Substances Control, the commissioners approved the zoning change, with all commissioners voting yes, except for Justin Cummings, who abstained.
Following a break late in the day, developers agreed to test the apartments with air and soil monitoring equipment and allow the Department of Toxic Substances Control to monitor for toxic substances before people move in. They also agreed to build a 50-foot buffer between the affordable housing units and a chain link fence that separates the lot from the landfill. Furthermore, they will deed the apartments as affordable in perpetuity.
The commission is often at the frontline of climate change and land use questions
“It’s not an easy place to be,” Huckelbridge said.