MEASURE 91 : Showdown Arrives for Rival Seal Beach Hellman Proposals

On Tuesday, voters will close the latest chapter in the Hellman Ranch property saga when they decide between two hotly contested proposals for how the land should be developed.

Mola Development Corp. has been trying to build a housing project on the 149-acre property for the past five years. When the City Council overturned its approval of Mola’s project in June, 1990, the developer provided financial support for a committee that collected enough signatures to place the project before voters in a special election.

The Mola-backed Measure A-91 calls for developing 329 houses, 26 acres of parks and 41.4 acres of wetlands on the property between the San Gabriel River and Seal Beach Boulevard. Mola’s plan has been approved by federal and state agencies, including the California Coastal Commission.

Measure B-91, a competing advisory proposal placed on the ballot by the council majority, suggests that the 149-acre parcel be turned into a golf course, wetlands and commercial development. The non-binding B-91 is applicable only if A-91 fails.

Council members Joe Hunt and Edna Wilson, who support A-91, say the second plan was created hastily in a deliberate bid to confuse voters. But the council majority--Frank Laszlo, Marilyn Bruce Hastings and Gwen Forsythe--say B-91 was offered to voters as an alternative to a large-scale housing development.

Mola-backed Seal Beach Citizens for Parks, Open Space and Responsible Government has spent more than $200,000 on the campaign for A-91--about 37 times the amount spent by Seal Beach Citizens United in support of B-91 and in opposition to A-91, according to the most recent campaign finance statements.

The developer-sponsored A-91 supporters have taken a homespun approach to cracking the small-town politics of this city of 25,000 people by sponsoring neighborhood coffees to extol the economic and environmental benefits of the project. But they have also distributed more than 1,000 professionally produced videotapes, in which local residents and politicians voice support for A-91.

B-91 supporters have sent mailers warning that the Mola project will bring water shortages and more traffic congestion to the community. A recent newsletter from the Wetlands Restoration Society featured a cartoon in which a crying seal was run over by a car with a Mola license plate.

In addition to the campaign literature, voters have had to wade through a 54-page sample ballot filled with pages of maps and bureaucratic planning terms.

A major point of debate is the economic potential each proposal would hold for the financially strapped city. Former Seal Beach finance manager Denis Thomas estimates, based on a consultant’s report, that the Mola development would generate $38 million for the city over 20 years.

“To forgo such (economic) benefits will leave the city not only vulnerable to the uncertainties facing all California cities, but may well expose Seal Beach to a financial plight curable only by higher taxes or lower service levels,” Thomas wrote.

The Hellman family, which owns the property, last week endorsed A--91 and called B-91 “economically unfeasible.”

There is little information about the economic consequences of B-91, because no study of the proposal’s impact has been conducted.

Former Mayor Victor Grgas, an A-91 supporter who heads a professional development association, said a study he conducted indicated that the city would have to spend more than $3.7 million per year to make B-91 work.

Proponents of A-91 dispute that figure but have none of their own to offer because they are uncertain about the exact configuration of the golf course-wetlands-commercial complex.

“We do not know yet what we would like to see on the property,” Forsythe, a B-91 supporter, said at a council meeting after Grgas presented his report.

But the economic issue should be secondary to the safety concerns of building houses on an earthquake fault, argues Seal Beach Citizens United, the committee supporting B-91.

Forsythe cited seismological concerns in casting her swing vote to overturn approval of the Mola project in June, 1990. While a city planning commissioner, Forsythe helped draft the Mola proposal, but she said she changed her mind after learning more about the Newport-Inglewood Fault that runs beneath the property.

Richard J. McCarthy, a former Coastal Commission geologist who reviewed the project, said the developer has identified and addressed seismic problems sufficiently. Mola would deal with the fault by placing some houses on pile foundations and taking other measures to lessen the hazard, said McCarthy, who now works for the Seismic Safety Commission.

Regardless of what voters decide Tuesday, the debate over the project is expected to continue. Both sides have predicted lawsuits will be filed, no matter how the election goes, and there is talk of a mounting a recall of some or all of the City Council.

Councilwoman Hastings said last week that she has been advised that if A-91 passes, she and Forsythe will be targeted for recall.

“I hope there is no repeat of the recall movement of a couple of decades ago, which was very divisive,” Hastings said. “Are we going to allow history to repeat itself? I say no!”