Crystal Cove residents face eviction

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.”