City OKs Annexing Site for 353 Homes

City Council members voted this week to annex land north of 5th Street for North Shore at Mandalay Bay, a proposed development of 353 upscale homes.

Developer Ron Smith reached a last-minute agreement with the state Department of Fish and Game on issues concerning cleanup of contaminated soil and plant preservation.

The council voted 4 to 0, with Mayor Manuel Lopez absent, to annex the area north of 5th and east of Harbor Boulevard, and approve development permits and a tentative subdivision map.

The vote came after representatives of several environmental groups voiced concern about the viability of preserving the Ventura marsh milk vetch--a plant once believed extinct--and other beach vegetation at the site.

The developer has set aside a nearly six-acre protected habitat for the endangered plant, just inside the planned entrance off 5th.

Smith will also have to arrange the cleanup of soil contaminated by nearly 30 years of oil-field waste dumping.

Fish and Game officials have outlined several requirements for preserving and restoring the plants and dunes, such as creating and maintaining two additional off-site milk vetch habitats, each containing 75 to 100 adult plants.

“After five years, we’re just very happy to get to this point,” Smith said. But not everyone is as pleased.

“I think the city is sending a project forward that will ultimately be denied by the [state] Coastal Commission,” said Alan Sanders, a Sierra Club representative.

Sanders and representatives of two other environmental groups said the environmental impact report on the project is flawed.

“There are impacts to biological resources off the site,” he said, explaining the people who would live in the 353 homes would also affect adjacent areas of wildlife.

“We feel that we’ve gone above and beyond the call of duty,” Smith said, “but we still want to be fair and continue to protect the plants.”