CRA News September 2001

Downtown commercial changes --
what will be their real effect?
by Melanie Billig

Several CRA members have studied and commented on the new commercial guidelines and ordinances. The city says that the changes will protect the district. Our review sees it differently. We believe that the economic incentives resulting from the increased building heights, floor area and coverage in the ordinance are so powerful that they will not protect but will lead to requests for demolitions and wholesale modifications which will change forever the face of the village. The ordinance has not had sufficient review or public workshops to encourage public input and understanding. As of CRA News press time, the September 11 City Council agenda was not available. Please check it and if this item is coming up, attend, learn more and comment.

Local Coastal Plan

At the August 8 Planning Commission meeting, Principal Planner Brian Roseth briefed the Commission and the public on the steps involved in finalizing the Local Coastal Plan (LCP). The city wants to get the first draft to the Coastal Commission by the end of this year.

The Local Coastal Plan is composed of the Land Use Plan (LUP) and the Coastal Implementation Plan (IP). The LUP has been completed and has appendices including the Forest Management, Beach Master, Shoreline Management and Mission Trails Park plans.

The IP includes the reorganized Zoning Code, the new Commercial Design, Parks and Open Space and Storm Water Runoff ordinances, as well as residential and commercial design and public way guidelines. It also has a chapter on Historical Preservation and Local Coastal Permits and Procedures.

Many of these critical portions of the LCP will be coming before the City Council and Planning Commission during September. It is vital that CRA members attend these meetings. Brian Roseth is doing an excellent job of coordinating all these many activities to arrive at a first draft of the LCP. The following are the necessary steps in the process:

This can be time consuming depending on the nature of any required changes. The Planning staff estimates that it could be completed by next spring if all goes well. Steps 3 and 4 are estimated to be completed in November of this year. The schedule of the remaining steps is unknown at this time.

President's report on CRA volunteers in action this summer

Many members have been involved in our core activities--education, community events, and advocacy--and in social get-togethers. Education activities included preparing the newsletter for mailing and passing out extra copies at the post office. July handout volunteers were John Ambro, Helen Dietz, Frankie Laney and Trudie McEwen. The mailing committee included Shirley Humann, Anne Bell, Brie Tripp, Sally Williams and Nina Bayer. Linda Anderson, editor, prepares the CRA News with help from Melanie Billig, Connie Wright, Howard Skidmore and Mary Condry.

Community activities involved preparation for the Sept. 19 CRA/CBA fund raiser by Chairperson Melanie Billig, Anne Bell, Alice Englander, Richard Peterson, Lisa Budlong, Diane Flanders, Mary Pankonin, Laurel Whorf, Lou Ungaretti and Beth Wright. Scores of members participate in the monthly beach cleanup organized by Clayton Anderson.

During August CRA board members Jim Wright, Anne Bell, Diane Flanders, Melanie Billig, Laurel Whorf, Peggy Purchase and Monte Miller spoke on important issues at City Council and Planning Commission meetings.

In August, Monte and Roberta Miller initiated a new member coffee. After all the new members have been invited, longer-term members will be included. Other committees are Membership, chaired by Laurel Whorf, which includes Lisa Budlong, Helen Dietz, Carol Hilburn, Bobbie Jungnick, Mary Pankonin and Richard Peterson, Telephone, chaired by Catherine Bell, with members Nina Bayer, Jane Holmes, Susie Carr, Fran Vardamis, Sue Jarman, Shirley Humann, Peggy Jorgensen, Frankie Laney, Barbara Lachmund, Wies Norberg, Dorothy Nye, Peggy Purchase, Dorene Rodocker, Gwen Rohr, Harriet Shanner, Zaza Skidmore, Lou Ungaretti, Paula Weber, Laurel Whorf, Connie Wright, Gloria Eldred, Carol Hilburn, Denise Vidmar and Patricia Van Kirk, and Entertainment, composed of Mark Christensen, Regine Godfrey and Marv Silverman.

OLD CARMEL
by Connie Wright

Argyll Campbell, a man who truly loved Carmel

"The City of Carmel-by-the-Sea is hereby declared to be primarily, essentially and predominantly a residential city wherein business and commerce have in the past, are now, and are proposed to be in the future, subordinated to its residential character ..."

Ordinance 96, quoted here in part, was drafted by Argyll Campbell, City Attorney for Carmel from 1920 to 1937 and adopted by the Board of Trustees in 1929. This ordinance, the city's Magna Carta, was the work of a man who truly loved Carmel. It appears on the east wall of City Council Chambers, behind the council seats.

Argyll Campbell was born in San Jose in 1892, the son of a leading jurist, James Havelock Campbell. He attended Northwestern University, but did not graduate. Subsequently, he passed the California bar examination and opened an office. During World War I, he abandoned his legal career and joined the Army, serving as an instructor in law at the University of Santa Clara and at the Presidio. Upon his separation from the Army, he moved to the Monterey Peninsula and resumed his legal career.

Perry Newberry was co-publisher of the Carmel Pine Cone, playwright, actor, producer, "gatherer-in of actors" for the Forest Theater and general gadfly to the Carmel community. He was also a close friend of Argyll Campbell, and together they battled against progress and overcommercialization. Newberry characterized the two groups of Carmel as "the art element" and the "business men." He and Campbell were firmly entrenched in the first group. Main Street, now Ocean Avenue, was an unpaved, rutted thoroughfare, which Carmelites voted to have paved. To Newberry, Campbell and other members of the "art element," paving the street was progress and that was unthinkable. They took the issue to court in Salinas. The judge invalidated the election on the grounds that it had been improperly noticed. The notices of the election had been posted by the town marshall from his horse and were, consequently, so high that no one could read them. This situation did not last and Main Street was paved in 1922.

Campbell suggested to Newberry that the city of Carmel should be surrounded by a wall with limited entry. Newberry quickly took up the idea and said that "toll gates should be erected." Pebble Beach had already done it. This idea did not come to fruition.

In 1929 Newberry and other members of the "art element" were elected to the Board of Trustees with Newberry as mayor. This group passed Ordinance 96, and Campbell, although thwarted in his attempt to wall in Carmel physically, did wall in the city legally by drafting many of the zoning laws and ordinances which affect us today. His zoning ordinance limited the business district and restricted the size of houses and of lot coverage in the residential area. Many other policies that the city has adopted -- no streetlights, no stoplights, no sidewalks in the residential area, no commercial development on the beach -- are the result of the legal basis that his zoning ordinance provided. Seen in this light, it should not surprise us that trees have legal rights in Carmel. If they are injured by a reckless motorist, it is a crime.

Campbell also served as city attorney for two other communities and directed the dance movement for the actors at the Forest Theater. His thinking about civic matters, while scarcely startling in our current context of city planning and environmental concerns, was extremely farsighted for his age, farsighted by about sixty years. His obituary in the November 26, 1943, Pine Cone read, "His love for Carmel was almost fanatical and he was always a leader in the fight to keep the town from radical change, to preserve the simplicities."

Statewide Coastal Cleanup Day

Saturday, Sept. 15
9 a.m. - noon
Foot of Ocean Avenue

The CRA Beach Cleanup for September will join the statewide effort. [Note: This is the third, rather than the fourth Saturday and begins one hour earlier.] Larry Rodocker and Kay Kuffner will be in charge of the day's activities. We join volunteers throughout California in collecting debris, weighing and recording it. The information is used by the state and other environmental groups in promoting cleaner, safer beaches. For information, call Larry at 626-4179.

CRA Beach Cleanup featured in Herald Editorial

A fine tribute to CRA's beach cleanup was paid in a July 29 Herald editorial entitled, Human negligence pollutes beaches. Executive Editor Laurel Shackelford wrote about the serious environmental problems caused by litter right here in our Monterey Bay and recognized the nine-year effort of the Carmel Residents Association in cleaning the beach each month. One of her interesting points: "Even one cigarette butt can kill a seagull, because the material can't be digested but can make the bird feel so full it stops eating." CRA volunteers pick up thousands of cigarette butts each month!

A SIGNIFICANT OUTCRY
by Alice and Bill Englander, CRA members

A local real estate broker was quoted in a recent Herald article as saying she thinks the Coastal Commission's decision about demolitions in Carmel was politically driven and she hopes property owners will let their feelings about the issue be known. "It seems to me that there should be some significant outcry from people who are affected by this if they feel it's unfair."

Yes, there are property owners in Carmel who have strong opinions about the demolition situation. We are appalled at the loss of older homes and their replacement with out-of-scale, stylistically overdone houses that show no sense of place or relationship to the village. We are appalled at the seemingly endless emphasis on "property values" from people who make money when houses are torn down and rebuilt. We are appalled at the owners and their paid representatives who beg and plead at Planning Commission and City Council meetings because they aren't being allowed to build their "dream home" -- only to see a "For Sale" sign pop up on the property after it is built.

We do not wake up every morning wondering what the value of our house is. We wake up feeling privileged to live in one of the most special places on earth. We walk along the coastline and admire the birds and sea life (and the occasional whale) … and walk into town to run errands and get our mail … and visit with friends and neighbors we meet along the way. We applaud the many improvement projects that don't get press or political coverage, but do enhance our lives and the ambiance of Carmel. We revel in our enjoyment of a beautiful place.

We recognize change is inevitable. Carmel has been fighting this battle for all of its years as a city. And it has managed to resist many of the changes other towns and cities have succumbed to. But it is a constant battle and the people on the front line of the preservationist movement are giving us a great gift by at least slowing the process.

Anyone involved in real estate knows that the three most important things that affect property value are location, location, location. Real estate values will rise because Carmel maintains its village character, not because we provide property owners with expensive lots on which to build houses that look like the ones where they used to live and have no identification with Carmel-by-the-Sea.

Preservation chief draws standing-room-only crowd

Saying he has worried about historic preservation in Carmel for a long time and been "somewhat more concerned lately," Dr. Knox Mellon added at the August 30 CRA meeting that the large turnout of interested people made him feel "more optimistic." Knowledgeable and articulate, the director of the State Historic Preservation Office (SHPO) held the audience spellbound as he described his work and shared his views on the challenges facing Carmel.

Following meetings with Carmel officials and preservationists shortly after his appointment to SHPO, Mr. Mellon said, "One thing clear to me was the absence of agreement about preservation policy within the city. It was obvious some action at the state level might provide assistance." SHPO can be of most assistance acting as an adviser and mediator to local government and citizens, helping them to understand and appreciate the advantages of pursuing preservation goals. His staff provides technical assistance but is not an advocacy group. Stressing that he was seeking consensus, not pointing fingers, he came armed with specific recommendations "to bring [Carmel's] disparate groups together to secure a common preservation goal."

Among his suggestions to the city:

Dr. Mellon said several cities--Orange, Pasadena, Sacramento, Colusa and San Francisco--have viable preservation programs. Among their innovations: preservation training classes for city personnel, a broad-based preservation constituency, adaptive reuse of historic sites, a community preservation advisory board and incentives that promote preservation. All five cities had reached out to non-preservationists.

Despite changing demography, economics, values and insensitivity playing havoc with our village, Dr. Mellon ended his talk saying that because there are "people in city government, preservation groups and citizens in general who care enough to make a difference," sizeable portions of our historic identity can be preserved through "good will, consensus and responsibility."

During the question period, Dr. Mellon said the largest roadblock for Carmel is to reach consensus on diverse positions. People have to "put aside their differences--which takes courage." He felt that the most essential, sensitive aspect of a preservation ordinance is its treatment of demolitions.

Vouchers for energy-saving light bulbs

Carmel recently sponsored a popular "Light Bulb Replacement Program" for city residents. Although the original funds are depleted, City Hall has a waiting list for possible City Council funding of more vouchers. Bring a photo ID and two items indicating your residence location, e.g., a PG&E, garbage or water bill. Brinton's in the Carmel Rancho Shopping Center and Knapp's Mill & Cabinet Company, NW corner of Mission and 8th, accept the $60 vouchers. One per household is allowed. For more information, please call City Hall at 620-2000.

Twilight barbecue a big hit!

Although the day began with rain, the CRA's Pebble Beach barbecue was blessed with a perfect warm, clear evening. Stillwater Cove lived up to its name with water as quiet as a lake--the only movement was twinkling boat lights, an occasional sea lion swimming by and pelicans flying overhead. A group of members was heard agreeing that no matter where in the world they had traveled, there was simply no view more breathtakingly beautiful than the one before them that evening. Even the tide cooperated by not coming in until well after the party ended!

As always, the hors d'oeuvres, dinner and dessert were delicious and the camaraderie as warm as the weather. The hard-working barbecue committee, chaired by Clayton Anderson, included Linda Anderson, Steve and Barbara Brooks, Lisa Budlong, Tony Budlong, Don and Barbara Burnett, Don and Susie Carr, Mark Christensen, Bob and Mary Condry, Lee and Gloria Eldred, Diane Flanders, Regine Godfrey, Bob Kohn, Dick and Frankie Laney, Barbara Livingston, Al and Ali McDaniel, Monte and Roberta Miller, Richard Peterson, Carol and Pierre Prodis, Dorene and Larry Rodocker, Marv Silverman, Howard and Zaza Skidmore, Lou Ungaretti, Laurel Whorf and Loretta and King Williams.

CRA members honored

Several CRA members were honored by the City Council in July for their service to the city. Laurel Whorf received a Certificate of Appreciate for her membership on the Bikeways Committee. CRA members of the Design Traditions Steering Committee given certificates were Anne Bell, Melanie Billig, Barbara Brooks, Pope Coleman, Bob Kohn and Frankie Laney.

CRA has a new e-mail address

The Carmel Residents Association now has an e-mail address which can be used to contact the organization. Messages will go to President Monte Miller. The address is: cra_carmel@juno.com