Activists act up at Crystal Cove meeting

Paul Clinton

CORONA DEL MAR -- Facing a hostile crowd, developer Michael Freed

tried to describe Thursday night where on the beach he would put some of

the amenities of his luxury resort project for Crystal Cove.

“Put it in Riverside,” one man yelled.

The California Parks and Recreation Department held the public meeting

Thursday to inform community members about the status of Freed’s project,

a resort that has yet to undergo public review. State parks officials

joined Freed at Corona del Mar’s Lincoln Elementary School, where more

than 600 people crammed into an auditorium to listen and voice their

opinions.

Freed’s plan to charge first-class room rates for the rental of the 46

cottages in Crystal Cove put him on the firing line for the nearly

three-hour meeting.

But Freed wasn’t the only one who walked into a hornet’s nest

Thursday. State Parks Director Rusty Areias fought off his share of

criticism.

Areias, who said the state’s 60-year concessionaire contract with

Freed was signed under Gov. Pete Wilson’s administration, has thrown his

department’s support behind Freed’s $35-million resort.

“There is a very peculiar dissonance coming from this room,”

Democratic Party activist Jim Toledano said to Areias. “For the life of

me, I can’t figure out why you’ve embraced this project.”

More than one speaker criticized the state’s contract as a “back-room

deal” designed to cut the public out of the approval process.

In response, Arias said there was nothing secretive about the

contract, which gives Freed a five-year window to start construction.

Environmental groups of all stripes have been mounting a grass-roots

campaign against Freed’s project, saying it would price out the average

beachgoer.

Members of the groups -- such as the Sierra Club, Alliance to Rescue

Crystal Cove, League of Coastal Protection and Natural Resources Defense

Council -- reiterated their resistance to the resort at the meeting.

“Hopefully, [Areias] will go back to Sacramento with the message that

this resort is not going to fly no matter how long Michael Freed decides

to hang on,” Sierra Club spokeswoman Jeannette Merrilees said Friday. “We

think the pressure should be on him to withdraw” the proposal.

Opponents of the resort found a powerful ally Tuesday, when old-line

heiress Joan Irvine Smith joined their ranks. Smith said she would help

to form a nonprofit conservancy to fund the restoration of the cottages

in an alternate project.

The cottages, which were placed on the National Register of Historic

Places in 1979, must be restored to stricter standards.

Freed, who has already spent $1 million developing the project, said

he would consider other plans. He has said it would cost about $30

million to restore the cottages.

“If the community can find the $30 million, we’ll give up our

profits,” Freed said.

Some groups set up registration tables outside the school, awash in

red hand-held signs opposing the resort. Milling around the auditorium

entrance before the meeting, some held other placards with messages such

as “Listen well to citizen pleas, we won’t take fait accomplis.”

Shortly after the meeting, Areias said the massive outcry against the

resort project gave him something to think about.

“I’m looking for alternatives that make sense,” Areias said. “You

can’t go through a meeting like this and have it not affect your

thinking.”