Big Sur Land Use Plan gets a draft and an ad hoc committee, but much work remains.

The year 1986 was a big one for Monterey County: 55-year-old Clint Eastwood was famously elected to his two-year stint as mayor of Carmel-by-the-Sea and the county government passed a heavily restrictive land use plan for Big Sur that successfully blocked much new development. In the 35 years since, Carmel has had six other mayors; Big Sur has had only one land use plan.

Now, the pressure created by tight land use restrictions, environmental protection and heightened demand for new housing and wildfire prevention has forced Big Sur residents and county and state planning bodies to reconsider the region’s rules for what can be built and where. The Big Sur Land Use Advisory Committee in July submitted a new land use plan draft to the county’s Planning Commission.

The Planning Commission responded on Aug. 11 by creating a four-person ad hoc committee to review the plan as nimbly as is possible. The plan will then go back to the commission, then to the Board of Supervisors and finally on to the California Coastal Commission for final approval.

Martha Diehl, a member of the ad hoc committee, says the timing for a final approval is “fairly uncertain” and it could be years before a new plan reaches the Coastal Commission for final approval. She says efforts to update the plan began in 2003 but the process has been plagued by delays and disagreements. A more concerted effort began in 2013 when the Big Sur Land Use Advisory Committee began to draft its own update, which now sits in the hands of the county Planning Commission.

The major tension driving this plan is the desire to maintain and protect the unbroken view of the coast from Highway 1, and the need to open up the region to more housing so the community of businesses can sustain a workforce.

“You essentially have to be a multi-millionaire to buy a home here. Most are second or third homes,” says Dick Ravich, a Big Sur resident since 1992 and member of the Land Use Advisory Committee. “We want to protect this community and see it survive. To do that, we need housing an ordinary person can afford.”

Diehl, a Big Sur resident since 1985, says the demand for Big Sur’s existing housing plots is “international.” The plan, she says, will aim to open up more areas in Big Sur for more housing that could be reserved for local employees and subsidized by the business owners who would benefit from having a more local workforce.

Ravich and Diehl say the Big Sur Land Use Plan of 1986 was considered the “gold standard” of land use plans in California for its ability to keep the region mostly wild and protected. Its foundational aspect was preservation of “visual access.”

The Coastal Commission, which will get final say on the plan, emphasizes physical coastal access – something that has some Big Sur residents worried, says Butch Kronlund, executive director of the Community Association of Big Sur. He says the region needs more housing but that a final plan needs to be “more ironclad that the primary form of access in Big Sur is visual access.”

Ravich says he expects the Planning Commission’s committee to take four months before coming back to the public with proposed amendments.