Paraiso Hot Springs Developer Apologizes For Demolishing Historic Buildings, County Mulls Fine

A drunk guy on his honeymoon walks onto a cottage porch and falls through the railing. No, it’s not a joke; it’s the beginning of the story of how a hot spring resort in the Santa Lucia foothills came to be red-tagged.

As Salinas attorney Tony Lombardo explained to the county’s Historic Resources Review Board Sept. 5, Paraiso Hot Springs’ insurance carrier paid out some $300,000 to the man who fell. It also told the owners to demolish the offending cottage – along with at least a dozen others – or lose their coverage.

So it was that owner-developer Thompson Holdings LLC tore down the Victorian cottages, nine of them historic, without a demolition permit.

“We sincerely apologize for having offended anyone in the county,” partner John Thompson of Horsham, Penn., told the board. “We are not typically people who do anything like that. We have very good reputations in business, and in our communities.”

Reputation is one challenge Thompson, who’s in the electronics business in Philadelphia, faces as he proceeds with a proposal to rebuild the ancient hot springs site. The first step: lifting the red tag that came from the illegal demo work in 2003.

“Unfortunately I can’t come up with a mitigation – none of us can – that makes it [a] less than significant [impact],” Lombardo told the board. “You just can’t do it… It just is what it is.”

The Historic Resources Review Board created a subcommittee to dig deeper into proposed mitigations for the demo work and will present its findings Oct. 3. That’s the day before public comment is due on the draft environmental impact report (EIR), which includes the cultural impacts of the project.

Also weighing in are other historic groups, including the Alliance of Monterey Area Preservationists. They have calculated it would cost roughly $1.7 million to build those nine Victorian-style abodes today. (The draft EIR calls for calls for a historical exhibit in the lobby and a $10,000 grant to the Monterey County Historical Society to counter the effects of the unpermitted demolition.)

About 30 neighbors gathered on Sept. 18 at a house on Paraiso Springs Road, barely a mile before it ends at the locked chain link fence where the resort property begins, for a presentation by Amy White, executive director of local watchdog group LandWatch. She ticked off a long list of concerns with the draft EIR: water, traffic, fire safety, erosion from construction on slopes.

Lois Panziera, who hosted the meeting, worries there’s not enough water to build. Wells have gone dry, she says, and cattle are an increasingly rare sight.

“I’m not a huge nature lover,” she says, “but paving over something we can’t undo is sad.”

In Thompson’s view, the best way to protect the property is to reopen it to the public. “The site is very spiritual, very calming, very stress-relieving,” he told the board. “The waters are very special there.

“While we’re certainly asking forgiveness, we need support,” he added. “The ultimate mitigation is allowing people to come back.”