Arson Fire Ignites Heated Debate in Half Moon Bay

HALF MOON BAY, Calif. —  Months ago, as they watched the Conservatory Hotel’s skeletal structure rise on the gentle curve of beach that gave this town its name, neighbors began grumbling to each other that the building was an outrage, a monstrosity that would forever ruin the ocean view they love. Somebody, they said, should just burn it down.

Then, on a warm spring night two weeks ago, with a stiff breeze blowing from the east, somebody did just that.

When the fire erupted shortly after midnight, dozens of people who live directly behind the hotel on a piece of San Mateo County unincorporated hillside called El Granada, came out of their homes to cheer.

As firefighters battled to contain the conflagration, El Granadans, by eyewitness accounts, clapped and poured each other glasses of champagne and beer in celebration of what most had come to see as the quintessential example of developer insensitivity to the California coastline and the people who live near it.

Now, ever since the arsonist poured gasoline on the three-story Conservatory’s wood frame and set it ablaze, this small coastal community has been consumed in a bitter debate between those who view torching the hotel as an act of terrorism and those who believe it may have been a misguided--but understandable--act of desperation.

Owner Charles Keenan, a Palo Alto developer who has clashed before with preservationists and community groups elsewhere, called the fire a “terrorist act” and vowed to rebuild the hotel exactly as designed. To do anything different, Keenan said, would be to give in to terrorism.

No arrests have been made in connection with the fire, although a $50,000 reward is being offered by anonymous donors and the hotel’s insurer for information leading to a suspect.

Investigators say their efforts to track down the culprit have been complicated by the vast numbers of people who openly confess to welcoming the building’s destruction.

“The trouble is we’ve got 2,000 suspects,” said Ed Gleba, spokesman for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, which is investigating the blaze. “Everybody we interviewed said, ‘We didn’t do it, but we’re glad they did it.’ ”

Leonard Woren, an antihotel activist, said he believes “there are actually 10,000 suspects. All the people living from Montara to Pescadero hated that thing.”

Woren, a systems programmer from West Los Angeles who bought a house in El Granada two years ago, counts himself among the most ardent hotel haters. He makes no apologies for people rejoicing over its destruction.

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“The real tragedy is that the building was allowed to be built in the first place,” Woren said. “People who move out to that part of the coast are people who want to get away from the mad crush and are willing to deal with a lot of inconveniences for a more peaceful way of life. But certain small groups of people are hellbent on destroying what most of us were interested in running to.”

As the hotel’s third floor was being built, its neighbors say they began to feel what impact the building would have on their views. Drivers passing by along California 1 might only be aware of the structure for a few seconds, but those inside the houses on the hillside above would forever face the hulking structure standing between them and the blue waters of the bay.

Although no view would be completely blocked, dozens would lose the sense of wide-open vistas they thought they had secured in El Granada.

The 54-room hotel became an emotion-laden symbol of an issue that for years has divided people who live along this sparsely developed stretch of the Northern California coast: How much can their communities be developed without destroying the natural beauty that drew them there?

For many who live there, the communities lining the 25-mile stretch of coast south of Montara through the fishing village of Pescadero are the last unspoiled jewels of an increasingly crowded, traffic-choked San Mateo County. Only 20,000 people live in the region, most in small bedroom communities such as El Granada, with a population just over 3,000.

The largest town in the chain is Half Moon Bay, with a population of 10,000. Subdivided in 1908, it still has a Main Street with traffic controlled by stop signs, where parking is free and storefronts are well-kept. Acres of farmland stretch between housing tracts to the sea, and the annual Art and Pumpkin Festival, celebrating locally grown pumpkins, is the highlight of the year.

But gradually, the makeup of Half Moon Bay changed from farmers to merchants, small- businessmen owners and, more recently, urbanites willing to make the sometimes difficult commute 20 miles north to San Francisco or east to San Jose or San Bruno in return for a slice of small-town living.

Now both those who favor development and those who fear it wonder how the town will heal the bitter divisions laid bare by the Conservatory fire.

“We have to develop a spirit of compromise, where one side gives to the other side,” said Larry De Young, a slow-growth activist in Princeton-by-the-Sea, a neighborhood just north of the Conservatory site. “You can’t dictate to people. But you can talk to developers and tell them that if they don’t build community-sensitive projects, they are going to be fought.”

De Young said the tendency on both sides of the growth debate to demonize each other disturbs him. He says some fellow activists have castigated him for meeting with local developers in an attempt to work with them on projects.

The increasingly harsh public reactions to projects, De Young said, “are symptoms of a disease caused by the terrible planning we have on the coast, where the local communities’ needs are not considered at all. Residents have been getting short shrift for years and they are frustrated.”

Opinions on the Conservatory Hotel’s destruction and reconstruction have intruded into a special City Council election scheduled for June 4. After a councilman who favored growth resigned last November despite surviving a recall attempt spearheaded by antigrowth activists, the council was split, 2-2, between growth advocates and believers in either slow growth or no growth at all.

Three candidates are vying to become the fifth, tie-breaking vote on the council. One is seen as strongly favoring continued development, another strongly favors strict controls and the third is a relatively unknown private investigator presenting himself as a middle-of-the-road peacemaker.

“I have sat on the planning commission for 16 years,” said David Mier, the pro-growth candidate. “I have watched numerous outcries for and against projects. I have never seen a project end like this one did. I was shocked, I was sickened by the attitude of people who could take enjoyment in that sort of thing.”

As a planning commissioner, Mier voted in favor of the hotel. He is quick to point out that the commission approved a two-story, two-building project that would have fit in better with the only other structure nearby, a single-story restaurant. But the California Coastal Commission overruled the panel, requiring the developer to design a narrower, higher building to preserve a view corridor from California 1.

“I didn’t like their design,” Mier said. “But I felt we had no choice but to go along with it.”

The city, he points out, has no legal right to stop the developer from rebuilding the hotel exactly as planned.

But some say Keenan should voluntarily redesign the project as a way to achieve community peace.

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“There are better ways for Mr. Keenan to conduct his project,” said Dennis Coleman, who with Mayor Deborah Ruddock forms the slow-growth bloc on the City Council. “Even if he has no legal obligation to consult more with the community, it just makes good business sense to do so.”

Coleman and other slow-growth advocates say they will be shocked if a slow-growth activist is arrested in connection with the fire. Keenan and others, they say, have seized on the fire to try to discredit slow-growth advocates.

“This is a community in political transition,” said Coleman. “For 40 years, developers were in control. It was the nobles and the serfs. The nobles were very surprised when the serfs studied the law and called their bluff.”

Coleman cites measures passed by voters limiting residential growth, last year’s ballot defeat of a redevelopment plan calling for a golf course and luxury housing in Half Moon Bay, and his and Ruddock’s election to the City Council as examples of the shifting power balance.

“There is no anger in the politics of this community,” he insisted. “Just a sense of resolution and determination.”