The site visit will serve as a precursor to a public hearing on Big Wave, which is being “postponed to a date uncertain,” Leung wrote in her announcement.
A provisional timeline set in November to move the vetting process forward through March has been the subject of multiple cancellations and reschedules in the past two months. Last week’s indefinite delay places story pole construction, the site visit and release of a final Environmental Impact Report in limbo.
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The proposed project consists of a three-story, four-building office park paired with a live-in wellness center for developmentally disabled people to be built on Airport Street in Princeton, adjacent to Half Moon Bay Airport and Pillar Ridge Manufactured Home Community.
The first draft Environmental Impact Report for the project drew more than 300 letters, e-mails and in-person presentations during a two-month public review process that ended in December. The deluge of public opinion is overwhelming county planners and consultants tasked with issuing responses, Leung says, and is ultimately the cause for the time delay.
“It’s taking much longer than we thought,” to digest the stack of comments, she said.
The series of cancellations is disappointing to Big Wave developers, advocates and skeptics alike.
“I would love it if we had a timeline,” said Big Wave spokeswoman Nicole DeMartini. “We’re as disappointed and frustrated with the delays as anyone.”
Half Moon Bay resident Michal Settles, a proponent of Big Wave, is “disappointed but not disillusioned” with the delays.
“I do think it’s important to get everyone’s comments and give (county) staff a time to do their research,” Settles said.
Midcoast Community Council member David Vespremi, who lives in the Seal Cove area of Moss Beach, is skeptical in his analysis of the process. Vespremi points to the developers’ refusal to erect story poles during the public review period, the county’s inaction in levying a mandate or disproving what he says are bogus reasons for holding off on story poles, and the requirement that only a subset of the story poles for the project be erected as indicative of a general lack of clarity surrounding the county’s review of Big Wave.
“At the end of the day it needs to be an open and transparent process that serves the interests of the community, which is just to show the project for what it is,” Vespremi said.
The county is requiring Big Wave developers to produce story poles for the first phase of the project, which includes only three of the six largest structures proposed. Three of the four buildings comprising the office park would be phased in depending on cash flow once the project gets off the ground. Leung says poles for those buildings aren’t necessary in the short term.
When asked why developers are holding off on erecting story poles, DeMartini said they’re waiting on the release of the final impact report, which may contain mitigation measures they’d need to incorporate into building designs.
“It doesn’t make sense to put them up for a site plan that people haven’t seen,” she said. “It’ll lead to confusion.”
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