Half Moon Bay Mayor Mike Ferreira has an idea that could be a traffic solution for Terrace Avenue and Highland Park residents, but it will require the cooperation of area residents who seem unimpressed with his proposal.
Ferreira envisions a backwoods, country lane as a secondary-access road to the embattled Pacific Ridge development. He says the road could disperse some of the traffic from 63 new homes and ease traffic on Terrace Avenue.
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As it stands now, Lewis Foster Drive runs up to Half Moon Bay High School after hitting a junction that leads along the southern perimeter of the school and then around the back.
Ferreira hopes this back road can be developed with minimal improvements to about the width of one-and-a-half lanes.
"You want to be able to say there's no impact to anything, so there's nothing to mitigate," Ferreira said, adding that a significant hurdle lies in the city's ability to persuade the adjacent property owners.
The Pacific Ridge residential development has been in the queue for more than two decades and through those years it's been scaled down in size significantly.
When Ailanto Properties purchased the land in 1985 it was zoned and tentatively approved for 228 homes. However, after years of legal battles with the city and California Coastal Commission, the agreement reached last March allows for 63 homes with a traffic light at Terrace Avenue or 40 homes without a light.
But residents in this neighborhood - or at least those on their newly formed steering committee - aren't excited about Ferreira's proposal and won't be pleased until their residential streets are taken out of the plans all together.
"Our interest is in keeping this neighborhood from being the access to Pacific Ridge. We want them (the city) to find a different access other than our neighborhood. That's what we expect them to do," said Richard Parness, a Terrace Avenue resident and member of the steering committee.
"We don't see it as our job to offer alternatives. We don't have expertise in that area," he added.
"Promises about something that might happen in the future - we'll take that exactly as it appears," Parness said of Ferreira's proposal.
"What the mayor is proposing wouldn't be any benefit to this neighborhood," said Lucy Lopez, a Terrace Avenue resident and chairperson of the steering committee.
"It will still greatly affect everyday life here," said Tim Moran, who's building a home in the neighborhood. Moran is a member of the six-person steering committee and also president of the Half Moon Bay Fire Protection District Board of Directors.
Residents in the neighborhood aren't convinced that the city pursued all of its alternatives thoroughly. They said they've specifically asked to see all the city's documents on the project and access to the development, but have gotten nowhere with those attempts.
The city has provided little documentation, residents say.
"Our principle objection with the city is that they've been slow to respond to our request for information," Terrace Avenue resident Edward Daniels said. "We're having less success than we might have hoped for. We're still waiting."
Residents made their first request for documents in early April, according to Daniels, and have since made a formal request through the California Public Records Act - to no avail, they said.
One idea still fresh in their minds is Foothill Boulevard. They want to see the studies done on this previously proposed major thoroughfare that would have connected with Highway 92 and met up with the road that Ferreira is now proposing for a country lane.
The Foothill Boulevard proposal was wrought with environmental impacts and a minimum $13 million price tag, Ferreira said, adding that his proposal is an attempt to meet both parties in the middle.
The residents maintain that they aren't opposed to the development, just the use of their neighborhood as access to the multimillion dollar homes.
But residents in this neighborhood haven't always been so united. Just a couple of months ago, there was a deep divide among residents on Terrace and Silver avenues.
Each group of residents, arranged by street, wanted the other to be used as the primary access road to Pacific Ridge. Only recently has the neighborhood put on a united front with a new Web site and signs on residents' front lawns.
The times of internal strife are over, the steering committee now says. Members realized that each group would get played against each.
"Whether we win or lose, we're not fighting each other," Moran said.
"There's more of a sense of community now than before this began," Parness said.
As for how this three-party settlement between the city, Ailanto Properties and the Coastal Commission will play out, remains unclear.
"The city seems to have itself in a position that we don't really understand," Parness said.
How can the city listen to residents input impartially if they're obligated to approve the Coastal Development Permits for the project, Parness asked?
"They gave in a lot," Lopez added.
"I really think why the city is in this predicament is because their ideology was non-growth during those years," Moran said, adding that Ailanto sued the city enough to corner them into a settlement.
"We weren't allowed to be in the process. That's one of my main gripes, somehow that doesn't seem legal to me," he said.
"They made decisions that they thought were in the city's best interest, but they weren't in this neighborhood's best interest and that's where the conflict is," Parness said.
The residents are focusing their efforts on appealing two Coastal Development Permits coming up for a traffic light at Terrace Avenue and a new water pipe.
"Those are our only two alternatives,"
Lopez said.
Environmental review on the development has already been completed and agreement was reached following the three-party settlement last March. The only two components of the project that still require environmental review are the traffic light and water pipe.
Regardless, residents now say that a traffic light isn't a solution, but rather a distraction. They say that a traffic light will cause more traffic jams than it will alleviate traffic.
"They're just moving the bottleneck," Parness added, citing a long history of relatively safe traffic at the intersection of Terrace Avenue and Highway 1.
Furthermore, a traffic light and improved surface on Terrace Avenue would likely tempt future development proposals, such as Beachwood, to pursue access in this neighborhood, Daniels said.
John Ward, who's been hired as a spokesperson for Ailanto Properties, said the company is determined to honor the public's opportunity to participate in the process, adding that the environmental review process allows ample time for such participation.
"If the mayor wants to suggest any ideas, those can be put forth in that process," he said. "Our position is that we want to maintain the schedule, so we don't really have a position on any alternatives."
The city council is expected to choose a consulting firm to conduct the environmental review at its next meeting Aug. 17. During that process, residents will be given the opportunity to appeal the Coastal Development Permits for the traffic light and water pipe, and also raise concerns about access to the development.
"We never thought we would get to this point where something so devastating would come ... where our whole way of life would be changed," said Lopez, who has lived in the neighborhood for more than 30 years.
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