Features

Investors, residents clash over Pebble Beach

By Brian Bergstein Associated Press Writer
Saturday October 28, 2000

PEBBLE BEACH – This is some of the world’s most prized real estate – looming Monterey pine and cypress trees, top-caliber golf courses and achingly lovely mansions, all giving way to a pristine, rocky shoreline. 

But the celebrities and other investors who paid $820 million last year for 2,600 acres of this land say beauty alone can’t pay the bills. They want to build a new golf course and expand resorts in the area – and some residents and environmentalists say they’re tricking voters into going along with it. 

The Pebble Beach Co. – whose investors include actor-director Clint Eastwood, former baseball commissioner Peter Ueberroth and golfer Arnold Palmer – is making an intriguing offer in its development plans. The company says 425 forested acres it owns, now zoned for housing, should be preserved forever as open space. 

“We’re doing this because we love the area and we want to keep it always great,” said Eastwood, who has lived in Monterey County for nearly 40 years and served two years as mayor of nearby Carmel in the 1980s. “I guess everybody has a little bit of nostalgia. I’d like to see Pebble Beach remain the same, as much as it can in the real world.” 

The company has placed an initiative on the Nov. 7 ballot in Monterey County, asking voters to change zoning rules so the company can carry out both its expansion and the forest preservation. 

The initiative, Measure A, is supported by the local residents’ association and endorsed by the local newspaper, the Monterey County Herald. If the measure passes, parts of the development itself could still be vetoed by county officials and the California Coastal Commission. 

But critics say a ballot initiative is the wrong way to carry out complicated changes in land-use plans, which usually require laborious public hearings and environmental impact studies. The company says all such procedures will still take place before it begins its expansion. 

The opponents say the company has given voters a deceptively titled ballot measure – the Del Monte Forest Preservation and Development Limitation Initiative – and are using Eastwood’s reputation to present itself as a bunch of preservationists, rather than golf course builders. 

“Clint and Ueberroth and Palmer want some return on their big, big investment, and I don’t blame them,” said Ted Hunter, co-chairman of the opposition group, Concerned Residents of Pebble Beach. “We’re saying they’re getting too greedy, they ought to do it the right way, the way any other developer would.” 

Though the opposition consists mostly of well-off residents of Pebble Beach and nearby communities, they clearly are outgunned. As of Sept. 30, the company’s campaign already had spent $734,235, while the opponents had spent just $4,224. Pebble Beach Co.’s executive vice president, Mark Stilwell, said the company is willing to spend “whatever it takes.” 

The company wants to send at least four mailers to every voter in the county and might air commercials with Eastwood, to draw the interest of far-away county residents who might never cruise the area’s famed 17-Mile Drive or tee up at Spyglass Hill. 

Gillian Taylor, who chairs the local Sierra Club chapter, said Measure A contains provisions that restrict the ability of county officials and the Coastal Commission to refine certain elements of the company’s plans. She fears that if the initiative passes, other developers will feel emboldened to try the same tactic. 

Pebble Beach Co. contends nothing sneaky is going on. The company says the initiative merely lets it know now, rather than years down the road, whether it will be able to carry out an expansion that Stilwell estimates will cost more than $100 million. 

The previous owner of the Pebble Beach Co. – Taiheiyo Club Inc., a Japanese company – had proposed 315 new homes in the area, though it is zoned for as many as 890, in addition to a new golf course. 

Under the new plan, the company could only add 38 new residential units, adjacent to existing streets, though it could add as many as 210 new guest rooms at the resorts. An equestrian center in the area would be moved to an old quarry, with the new golf course in its place. 

The opponents say they fear increased traffic from big events at the new golf course and effects on their water supply. 

They also say Measure A does not save as much forest as it purports. While it blocks residential development, some areas will be rezoned for “recreational open space” – meaning a golf course that will require cutting down some trees. 

Alan Williams, a developer who has worked on other Eastwood properties in the area and is advising Pebble Beach Co. on this project, said trees removed for the golf course can be moved elsewhere on the property. 

“We try to educate people in what we’re trying to do,” Eastwood said. “And I think if we let them down, we deserve to not have their faith, and not have the project.”