Parkside goes to state agency

Jenny Marder

The fate of the highly contested Parkside Estates is now in the

hands of the California Coastal Commission.

It has taken five long years to get this far and developer Shea

Homes president, Les Thomas, predicts that an approval by the

commission will take at least a year.

The proposed Parkside Estates would build 170 single-family homes

on 35 1/2 acres on Graham Street south of Kenilworth Drive in

southeast Huntington Beach. Plans designate the remaining land in the

50-acre lot as a public park.

Some of the first hurdles came from the Federal Emergency

Management Agency, that said the project did not meet flood control

standards and developers would have to raise the site in order to

build on it. This required Shea to develop new plans. Research and

redrafting plans took two years.

Shea met all the requirements and added two pumps to the pump

station to improve the drainage system, said Ron Metzler, vice

president of Shea Homes.

The additional pumps will also benefit 7,000 homes that would no

longer be required to have flood insurance, Metzler said.

“We performed an exhaustive flood and watershed study that covered

4,000 acres,” Metzler said.

With those issues all but solved, the developer continues to face

an environmental battle of another kind.

Neighbors who have contested the project saying it will pose many

adverse impacts such as noise and traffic congestion, also believe

the site is in a wetlands area and would like to see it restored as

such.

They have formed the Neighbors for Wintersburg Wetlands

Restoration.

They argue that the site meets criteria that would designate it as

a wetlands area.

There are three criteria for determining wetlands, said Mark

Bixby, spokesman for the group. The first is the presence of ponding

water, water that collects and stays on the property for at least 18

consecutive days, Bixby said.

Bixby, who routinely scours the site with a camera to document

pond activity, said that there has not been enough rainfall yet this

year to meet the criteria.

“But photos from previous years meet 18 days and beyond,” he said.

Other criteria include the presence of wetland type vegetation,

such as pickleweed and hydric soil -- soil that is highly

water-based.

Bixby said that in California, meeting any one of these criteria

would be enough, and added that he feels his group has a very good

case for why the city should preserve this land.

But biologists, as well as the California Department of Fish and

Game and the Army Corps of Engineers have concluded that the site is

no longer on a designated wetlands area, said Metzler.

City Council approved the project on Oct. 21.

Thomas and Metzler predicts that if the project is approved,

construction would take at least three years.

* JENNY MARDER covers City Hall. She can be reached at (714)

965-7173 or by e-mail at [email protected].