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Gaviota property may become park

The owners of the Dos Pueblos Golf Links property and their old antagonist, the Surfrider Foundation, are negotiating the potential sale of 200 acres on the Gaviota coast for a public park, participants in the talks said Monday.

The golf course proposal was unanimously rejected by the state Coastal Commission in March, on the grounds that it would harm sensitive wildlife species including monarch butterflies, white-tailed kites, California red-legged frogs and tidewater gobies. The owner, Makar Properties Inc. of Newport Beach, then sued the commission, seeking $35 million in damages.

Last week, a court-ordered mediation got under way; now representatives for Surfrider, a statewide organization that intervened in the lawsuit, say they are optimistic. "There is a real chance that the entire property could be saved," said Bob Keats, vice chairman of the local Surfrider chapter and an opponent of the golf course project for the past 11 years. "If it can be acquired for conservation, it would set a precedent for all the coastal parcels between Goleta and El Capitan. It would show the other property owners that we are trustworthy and willing to do business with them. It would also set a price for land."

Rusty Areias, a former commission chairman and state assemblyman, was hired by Makar to help find a resolution to the conflict. The solution, he said, may come in the form of state bond money set aside for land preservation.

Ties between Makar and the incoming Schwarzenegger administration could help pave the way for the sale. Hadi Makarechian, the owner of Makar's parent company, Capital Pacific Holdings, contributed $100,000 to Mr. Schwarzenegger's gubernatorial campaign. Mr. Areias works for a consulting firm headed by a key strategist in Mr. Schwarzenegger's recent campaign.

"If there was ever a piece of property that should draw public money, it's this one," Mr. Areias said of Makar's 200 acres west of the Bacara Resort & Spa. "It sells itself. There are two things there is no shortage about here -- natural beauty and passion on all sides in terms of what should be done with the property."

Mr. Areias will be in a position to make a case to the new governor because he now works for California Strategies, a San Diego-based consulting firm owned by Bob White, who helped run the Schwarzenegger campaign.

To date, the state has spent nearly $8 million buying and preserving property on the Gaviota coast, a region deemed worthy of preservation by the National Park Service. Because of landowner opposition and a lack of funds, the federal agency decided earlier this year not to get involved.

Conservationists now say they favor a unified approach for the eastern end of the coast to prevent a domino effect where properties west of the Bacara would be developed. The terms of a public purchase of Makar's property could involve the transfer of landowners' rights to build homes to other, less visible locations on the north side of Highway 101, they said.

Mark Massara, a spokesman for the Sierra Club, another environmentalist group that fought the golf course proposal, said: "I've been enthusiastically encouraging them since last January to do this. I thought they could have had it done before Davis was recalled. From Day One, I have said, 'If you keep this under $10Êmillion, we can go to Sacramento and I'll be your biggest cheerleader.'

"Everybody agrees that the golf course property is a hugely significant endangered-species refuge. There is virtually no development that is now appropriate for it. It's in everybody's interest to hurry up. But they've already frittered away a year." Mr. Keats has long proposed that several coastal landowners on the eastern end of the coast be allowed to transfer their development rights to the north side of 101 at Naples, just west of Makar's property.

"We're opposed to development west of the urban boundary," Mr. Keats said, "but we're not so intransigent that we can't compromise."

Matt Osgood, the owner of Naples, wants to build 54 homes on both sides of 101 -- a plan that Surfrider opposes, saying the coastal side should be kept free of development. At the same time, Mr. Osgood said he is reaching out to his neighbors to find a regional solution, something that could preserve the rural character of the coast and also allow the owners to extract some value from their land.

"Does it make more sense to fight parcel by parcel -- or for the property owners to come forth with a collective vision?" Mr. Osgood asked. "Naples has some strengths that others can rely upon. But everything has to fall in line. The only thing that will keep it back is the 'all or nothing' mentality."

This story contains reports from The Associated Press.