Monterey Bay Shores Resort 2

The Commission held a lengthy hearing regarding the CDP application to build a ten-story, 368 unit luxury condo and hotel complex on 39 acres of coastal sand dunes in Sand City (Monterey County). The project was conditionally approved in April 2014 after many years of court battles resulting in settlement conditions. Numerous special conditions must be met before the Applicant can proceed, including to produce documentation/plans to protect habitat, scenic views and public access. Nearly one year after approval, the Applicant has still had not met required conditions.

As noted in Staff report: “Staff has requested certain materials to be able to assess compliance with the conditions and the Applicant has refused to provide these because it claims that they are unnecessary. Second, staff has concluded that the materials that have been submitted show the project to be inconsistent with some aspects of the Commission’s approval.”

The Applicant requested a ‘dispute resolution hearing’. Procedurally, during a dispute resolution, the Commission’s Executive Director will determine if there is a lack of documentation/evidence, or not. Once the Executive Director makes a determination, the Commission must vote to uphold the Executive Director decision, or not. In this case, the Executive Director found the application to be incomplete.

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The Monterey Bay Shores “Eco” Resort will be constructed on fragile dunes. This is not a suitable area to build a massive hotel/condo/residential development. The mega-hotel complex will devastate critical coastal resources, sensitive habitat, and will be subject to high coastal erosion rates and impacts from sea level rise. The project represents almost everything the Coastal Act was created to prevent and illustrates how poor coastal development can result from the failure to adequately update LCPs. Furthermore, the reports are disconcerting that the Applicant is not working well with Staff and thus perhaps not in good faith.