Standing above the spectacular Links at Spanish Bay, Pebble Beach Co. officials announced they would pursue a slightly shrunken version of their plan to build hundreds of homes and another golf course in the Del Monte Forest.
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But critics called the announcement a mere public relations ploy and vowed to continue fighting the $30 million project, which they say will threaten rare pines, guzzle water and clog roads.
“They’re really trying to sell an enormously dense development as environmentally superior,” said Robert Green, a Pebble Beach resident and president of Friends of the Forest. “There’s really no reason for another golf course in Pebble Beach.”
Pebble Beach Co., world famous for its luxurious golf courses and exclusive subdivisions along 17-Mile Drive, proposed plans in 1992 to build 350 homes and another 18 fairways. The new Forest Course would be the company’s fifth and the eighth in Pebble Beach.
The revised version lowers the number of homes to 316 and relocates the golf course to a less sensitive location. Company officials note that current zoning would allow up to 889 homes on the land and that the plan would still leave Pebble Beach with lower density than surrounding communities.
The company’s decision to pursue the reduced plan sets the stage for public hearings before county planners this fall. The board of supervisors is expected to vote on the plan early next year. The project must satisfy the California Coastal Commission.
The new plan was offered as an “environmentally superior alternative” in a 1995 revised study on the project. County officials ordered the company to revise the study after critics complained the project threatened a choice stand of Monterey pine, which grows in only three places worldwide.
Company officials said they were hesitant to endorse the reduced alternative until they heard residents opinions and hosted a series of community meetings earlier this year.
The revised project would actually fell more trees–42,000 instead of 38,000–according to the environmental report. It would sacrifice more live oaks in order to spare 100 more Monterey pines, and the felled trees would be in more diseased and disrupted stands, the report said. The company would devote 400 acres to parkland.
Water for the project already has been promised under a deal with local water officials in which the company helped finance a $34 million wastewater reclamation plant. The company has been promised 365 acre-feet of water a year, while the plant is saving about 600 acre-feet a year, company officials say. Each acre-foot is enough to satisfy the yearly needs of four families.