Wither the Headlands?


By Brian P. Devine
Exclusive for Dana Point On-Line

 

If you are one of those folks who climb barbed wire, ignore No Trespassing signs, tolerate dog droppings, co-exist with transients withstand prickly weeds that scratch through jeans, and live in Dana Point, you probably know about the most spectacular piece of dirt in Southern California: The Dana Point Headlands. Otherwise you don't - unless you've heard about the Headlands or seen it from afar. Very far. Because besides occupying 121 acres of blufftop coastland in Dana Point, the Headlands is also just about impossible to visit.

"It could be the most beautiful spot in Dana Point, but its not now," said Mike Rodarte, firefighter and resident of Dana Point. "Most of it is closed off, behind barbed wire. The only people using it now are transients and teenagers who like to build fires and leave trash, and dogs, who like to leave things even more unpleasant all over the trails."


This summer, that could change.

The Headlands is located north of Dana Point Harbor, the land above and below the spectacular cliffs. Surrounded on all sides by houses, restaurants, parking lots, nurseries, a harbor, roads, and other outposts of urban living, the Headlands sits behind barbed wire, unused and unavailable; a prisoner of its own reputation. New owners want to turn more than half of this property into parks and public open space. New plans are attracting support from unusual quarters. "Let us make walking on the Headlands by the year 2000 come true," planning commissioner Bob Nichols told the Dana Point Sentinel. (*) But first the new owners have to convince a wary city council to go ahead with their plans for custom homes, a European-style spa, and small-scale retail development that will in effect, pay for what could be -- in truth as well as fantasy -- the nicest public spot in Southern California.

That's the way it used to be, at least according to Henry Dana when he first sailed into the harbor more than 100 years ago, even though, from the beginning, the Headlands were a center of commerce. In a story that has long since passed into the lore of Dana Point, sailors would anchor their ships, and row ashore with manufactured goods from eastern ports of call. Scaling the cliffs, they traded for cow hides, slinging them over the side of the bluff to their shipmates on the beach, hundreds of feet below.

Today, its not unusual for the scavenging dogs who litter the Headlands to find bones from the makeshift slaughterhouses that were the first popular uses of the Headlands. By the 1920's, Americans were getting their leather in a more orderly fashion and the Headlands found another patron: Sid Woodruff.

Woodruff "discovered" the Headlands fresh from a business triumph in Los Angeles called Hollywoodland. It wasn't long after the "land" fell away from the sign on his hillside development that he turned his sights to Dana Point, carving up the Headlands into 285 lots for a planned residential community.


The stock market had other plans, however, and Woodruff's dream of the Headlands as a real estate mecca for Hollywood stars ended with the Depression, during which lots were selling for $25 a piece to pay for back taxes. One of Woodruff's investors during this time was the Chandler family of Los Angeles. Yes the same Chandler family that published the Los Angeles Times. The same Chandler family whose water-related larcenies inspired the movie China Town. As Woodruff's fortunes declined, the Headlands were turned over to the investors in what would become a partnership led by Chandler family trust.

And there it sat. As Dana Point grew with man-made harbors, roads, cliffside hotels, piers, and condos surrounding the Headlands, plans for developing the Headlands came and went. By 1994, the Dana Point Headlands had descended into such a badlands of "weeds, beer cans, sofas, and trash," Martha Poinise and her husband told the city council, that she and other residents were literally begging the city council to do something with the land, even if it meant approving plans for 370 homes and a 400-room hotel. Which is what the council did. Voters made quick work of those plans - along with parks, trails, vistas, and open space -- with a referendum that overturned the council's action.

"People wanted more open space and fewer homes," said resident Tim McMahon. "They weren't too crazy about a hotel on the beach either." So there it sits today. Most people in Dana Point are familiar with the Headlands as a political issue - the people who live on the bluffs next to the Headlands, including a member of the city council, made sure of that. But only those adept at scaling barbed wire or sheer cliff faces have experienced the thrill of the Headlands, and what could be public land there.


New owners are trying to change that. Six months ago, after fifty years on the Headlands, the Chandler family finally gave up the ghost. (A development many in Dana Point praised if only because they were tired of reading the tortured disclaimers about how the Headlands is owned by a company that owns a company that runs the Los Angeles Times.)

The new owners, Master Plan Development sled by Sanford Edward, have developed a plan they will complement a city-approved plan passed earlier this year called Alternative A. "We agree with the spirit and intent of Alternative A," said Edward. "Which is less density, more open space, better use of the beach, and revenue to the city. But we can do better than Alternative A. Our plan features more public open space, larger lots, and a European-style spa away from the beach, overlooking the harbor, as opposed to the city's plan for a larger hotel structure on the beach."

Edward's plans call for less density and more public open space than the previous owner's plans. It also has more public open space than the city's plans - which call for 70 acres of open space, with fewer than five acres open to the public.

"We can do better than that," said Edward. "Once the local political and business leaders learn about how we are going to increase public open space, increase the size of residential lots, and turn the city's plans of a hotel on the beach into a smaller, European-style spa overlooking the harbor, we think people will be pretty happy. This is after all, exactly what most people said they wanted during the referendum that overturned the last plan. And it will finally open the Headlands to the people of Dana Point."

This summer, the new owners will be asking the City Council to revisit their plans for the Headlands. Some folks are afraid of re-opening a can of worms; others say a hotel has no place on the beach anyway, and open space is not really open space if the public is not allowed to use it. Many of those who opposed the previous owners plans are taking a wait and see - if not positive -- attitude toward Edward's new plans for the Headlands. The Los Angeles Times - the company owned by the company that owns the company that used to own part of the Headlands, whew! -- said news of new owners and smaller-scale development drew "immediate praise from at least one local (Anti-Headlands) activist. " "If he is going to downsize, that would be a benefit to the city," said Geoffrey Lachner, chairman for the Committee to Save the Headlands, told the Times.

And they would know.


(*): The quote attributed to Mr. Nichols was initially "unattributed," in an OC Register commentary on the Headlands. The same quote was subsequently attributed to Mr. Nichols by the Sentinel.
The Dana Point Sentinel, for those readers who have never heard of it, is published by Mr. Leighton Rawlings, at POBox 691, Dana Point, CA 92629. Email: dpsentinel@aol.com
Information provided by the author.


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