The California Coastal Commission is set to decide whether to allow a controversial 29-acre site in southeast Huntington Beach to be developed into housing and a hotel.
The commission, which meets Thursday, July 13, needs to approve rezoning the property to allow a mixed-use development to be built, which is just 2,000 feet from the shoreline. Coastal advocates and the commission’s staff argue that the area should not be developed because it will be susceptible to future flooding from sea level rise.
The site, called the Magnolia Tank Farm, once held oil storage tanks and now lays empty. It has garnered wide support from state representatives, local labor unions and business groups who foresee the project supplying new jobs and needed housing.
Shopoff Realty Investments bought the site in 2016. The company hopes to build up to 250 homes, a 215-room hotel, parks and retail and dining space.
Despite the political backing, coastal commission staff, in a late June report, recommended denying the rezoning application, warning that there are future climate change-driven hazards that aren’t accounted for.
The report also highlights that the developer has said the project will fund off-site parks and city libraries, among other amenities, but hasn’t provided details to commission staff beyond a brochure. The city-approved plan for Magnolia Tank Farm also doesn’t require affordable housing, which the project’s website says will be built, according to the report.
Shopoff Realty Investments’s vice president of marketing, Corynne Gordon, declined to comment for this story.
Neither Orange County nor Huntington Beach has “identified any comprehensive plans” to address flooding from future sea level rise brought by climate change, according to the report. Allowing Magnolia Tank Farm to be rezoned “would not minimize risk to life and property in this flood-prone area, and could instead contribute to the destruction of the surrounding…
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