Mercury News
February 26, 2006

Bayside Fight: Plan to build golf course has strong opposition

By S.L. Wykes

Environmentalist Lennie Roberts has a high opinion of the 160 acres of bayside land that is Menlo Park's Bayfront Park.

There, she said, the city “has something that most cities would die to have — the only place on the western side of the bay to look out from a promontory. On a beautiful day you can see all the way to Napa.”

But instead of protecting its glorious natural asset, she said, the city is considering a development deal that would take what she called the heart of the park away from the people who stroll, bike and hike it every day.

Since a 3-2 city council vote in November, Menlo Park city officials have been negotiating with a Southern California developer who would like to build a combination golf course and playing fields that would consume almost half the park.

A large group of residents organized as Friends of Bayfront Park to collect petition signatures against the idea. And now, some of the Bay Area's most respected and powerful environmental groups, including the Committee for Green Foothills, have joined the campaign.

“The goal is to stop it,” said Roberts, CGF's legislative advocate for San Mateo County. The committee, formed in 1962, has a long history of successful battles to save open space. In a decades-long effort, it blocked a Caltrans plan to cut through Montara Mountain and McKnee Ranch with a Highway 1 bypass around Devils Slide. It helped form the Midpeninsula Regional Open Space District, which now holds 50,000 acres in 25 open space preserves.

Roberts wouldn't talk about all the avenues being pursued to block the Bayfront plan, but she and others involved in the effort lay out a long list of possible problems — and options they say haven't been thoroughly pursued.

“Sometimes you have to go out and do not-easy things,” said Menlo Park City Council member Lee Duboc. “I believe I have done my homework on this. I believe that staff has done its homework. I'm not just going to be a naysayer at this point.”

On purely environmental grounds, the golf course represents a danger to wildlife, groundwater and the bay, said Melissa Hibbard, director of the Loma Prieta chapter of the Sierra Club. The park is built on landfill whose contents over the years were covered with liners of clay or plastic. But older landfill liners are not as secure as contemporary ones are, Hibbard said. “If you throw on top of that the kind of watering and all the chemical input from herbicides and pesticides golf courses require, you're creating a strong brew of nastiness that could leach into the bay.”

Intrusive lights

If playing fields and a driving range are lighted at night — as is part of the current proposal — that could disrupt the behavior of migratory birds trying to get to adjacent wildlife refuges, said Eileen McLaughlin of Wildlife Stewards, a citizen partner to the Bay Area's national wildlife refuges.

The Don Edwards San Francisco Bay National Wildlife Refuge wraps partially around the park. Another edge borders a tidal slough adjacent to Greco Island, home to an estimated 100 California clapper rails, which were declared an endangered species in 1970. Local birders say Bayfront Park draws many bird-watchers to catch sight of a large variety of avian residents.

Multiple agencies

The environmental issues and the nature of the land where playing fields are being considered — a tidal lagoon — mean a formidable list of local, state and federal agencies will have to agree to the project. That list includes the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the state Department of Fish and Game, the Regional Water Quality Control Board San Francisco Bay Region, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the state's San Francisco Bay Conservation and Development Commission.

Steve McAdam, deputy director of the last agency, was concerned enough by the preliminary Menlo Park staff report on the golf course proposal to write to city manager David Bosch.

His Nov. 14 letter reminded Bosch that the permit signed with the agency in 1970 authorized the city to fill 69 acres of a salt pond for refuse disposal and ultimately a park — and that the park would be for passive recreation use only.

A golf course would not be consistent with that, McAdam said. He suggested in his letter that the city staff and his staff should meet to discuss the possible conflict, so everyone would understand the implications of the proposal.

McAdam said Menlo Park public works director Kent Steffens replied to the letter a month or two ago and declined the invitation to meet until more of the project's details had been worked out.

Representatives from two other state and federal agencies were also concerned enough to attend the November meeting at which the city council voted to let staff continue negotiations on the proposals.

Steffens said Friday that the developer is the one responsible for knowing the environmental requirements and how to meet them. Developer Richard C. Price did not return a phone call seeking comment.

Page last updated September 13, 2010.