Crystal Cove residents face eviction
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Paul Clinton
CRYSTAL COVE -- The state parks department is set to take the first
step toward evicting the residents of the historic cottages at Crystal
Cove State Park Beach.
The department, which owns the 46 cottages on the beach, has set Feb.
15 as the day it will mail out 30-day eviction letters to the residents,
a state parks spokesman said.
The state will remove the tenants of the 40 occupied cottages so the
department can replace aging septic tanks at the dwellings. Parks
officials said they must replace the tanks because they have been
suspected of leaking waste water into the water at the cove.
On Nov. 16, the Santa Ana Regional Water Quality Control Board slapped
a cease and desist order on the department and others to stop discharges
of urban runoff at Crystal Cove.
The state agency, which will install a sewer network to stop the
leaks, must comply with the order within two years.
“The eviction notices are set to go out Feb. 15,” state parks spokesman Roy Stearns said. “We need to get the infrastructure work
done.”
Any improvements to the cottages, built between 1921 and 1940, raises
thorny questions, because the area is listed on the National Registry of
Historic Places. The designation, put in place in 1979, requires strict
preservation of the cottages.
That upkeep will be lost if the residents are booted, Crystal Cove
resident Al Willinger said.
“If the cottages are vacated, it would be destruction by abandonment,”
Willinger said. “I don’t think that’s what the state wants.”
While the beach is state-owned public land, Willinger said, the
state’s Parks and Recreation Department collects about $480,000 in
revenue from leases with the tenants -- about $1,000 per month from each
occupied cottage.
The looming eviction comes as the state is reassessing its plans to
develop Crystal Cove.
At a Jan. 18 public meeting, hundreds of locals voiced their
opposition to a luxury resort plan for the beach.
That plan has been in the works since September 1997, when the state
signed a contract with San Francisco developer Michael Freed to act as
the concessionaire of a $35-million resort.
Stearns said the state has begun to reassess the deal, which was
signed under the administration of former Gov. Pete Wilson.
“We’re taking a hard, long look at where we are headed from here,”
Stearns said. “And I think Michael Freed is too.”
Under one option, the state could buy out Freed, who has said he has
spent more than $1 million in design costs. However, Stearns said the
public agency would have to find the funding, and it isn’t clear if the
state could pull the plug on the deal because the contract is legally
binding.
Locally, environmental groups have been marshaling their efforts to
oppose Freed’s plan, even while looking into other alternatives for the
cove.
Groups opposed to the plan include the Alliance to Rescue Crystal
Cove, Sierra Club, League for Coastal Protection, the Surfrider
Foundation and Orange County Coastkeeper. Heiress Joan Irvine Smith,
whose family sold the cove to the state in 1979 for $32.6 million, has
also joined the fight.
The 67-year-old Smith has hosted strategy meetings with the groups at
her San Juan Capistrano ranch.
“My position is of a conciliatory position,” Smith said. “The first
thing we need to do is bring all the groups together. . . . This thing is
something I’ve watched for 30 years. It’s become an obsession.”
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