Pacific Grove's American Tin Cannery hotel approval appealed to Coastal Commission.

After years of effort to replace the aging and underutilized American Tin Cannery with a 225-room luxury resort hotel, it appeared just one month ago that developers were on their way with a 6-1 vote to approve by the Pacific Grove City Council on Jan. 12.

Any progress made toward starting construction was brought to a halt on Jan. 29 with an appeal filed with the California Coastal Commission by two commissioners, Vice Chair Caryl Hart and Linda Escalante. 

The project is now out of the hands of the Pacific Grove Planning Department and will be reviewed at a date to be determined by the Coastal Commission.

The commissioners appealed the project stating the council's approval raised several questions about its consistency with the city's Local Coastal Program. Specifically they question the hotel's water supply, access to lower-cost rooms to travelers, public access to the site, public views and community character.

In their written appeal, Hart and Escalante questioned whether the hotel will have access to an "adequate and sustainable long-term water supply," and faulted the city for using an analysis of water allocations and credits "from over 30 years ago." The commissioners said there were "numerous issues" with that approach, "because such analysis is not rooted in an LCP evaluation regarding coastal resource protection."

It's not the first time water was raised as an issue by someone from the Coastal Commission. Comments by a Coastal Commission staff member last fall about the hotel and water prompted the deputy director for water rights for the State Water Resources Control Board, Erik Ekdahl, to send an ominous-sounding letter to the city just hours before a Planning Commission hearing.

Ekdahl pointed to the cease-and-desist order that prohibits Cal-Am from using Carmel River water as a primary reason for his concerns. The strongly worded letter was enough to give some P.G. planning commissioners pause. The city's attorney, David Laredo, assured them that the letter was only a reminder to follow state water rules.

At a subsequent Planning Commission meeting on Nov. 18, P.G. Planning Director Alyson Hunter told commissioners that neither the Coastal Commission nor the state water board are the regulatory agencies when it comes to water. The Monterey Peninsula Water Management District is the one authorized to issue the project's water permit. Water district officials had already determined the hotel would be able to function within its allotted credits. 

(The P.G. Planning Commission voted 4-2 against the project that night, citing environmental concerns mainly around protection of nearby harbor seals and trees on the property, as well as concerns over size and compatibility. One commissioner, Claudia Sawyer, brought up water as an issue.)

Hart and Escalante also took issue with the Council's approach to providing lower-cost accommodations for visitors, as required by the city's LCP to encourage greater coastal access.

The LCP requires of new hotels that 25 percent of their rooms be offered at a lower cost. In the ATC hotel's case, that would be 56.25 of its total rooms. The council worked its way around that requirement by adding in that 56 of the rooms would be offered in a "heroes" program for people such as health care workers and fire fighters. The remaining .25  would be addressed by an in-lieu fee paid by the developer.

Hart and Escalante called it an "interesting approach," but objected to the "heroes" program only targeting some people and not the general public. They also said the methodologies used to calculate in-lieu fees underestimated what needed to be mitigated.

As to public views and community character, the pair argued that the resort would dwarf everything around it. They also pointed out that the proposed resort was about the combined size of three nearby structures in Monterey: Monterey Bay Aquarium; InterContinental Hotel; Monterey Plaza Hotel. 

"The approved development appears to oversubscribe the site in relation to its mass, size and scale, where this issue is exacerbated at this critical 'gateway' site into the city, and it is not clear that it can be found LCP consistent in terms of public views and community compatibility," they said.