Three Arch wall approved

Testimony by a team of highly regarded professionals assembled by designer-builder Gregg Abel convinced a council majority March 23 to approve a retaining wall in a blufftop setback and the variance needed to make it legal.

The council’s 3-2 vote overturned the Design Review Board’s unanimous decision that the proposed retaining wall was not needed to prevent soil erosion on a Three Arch Bay oceanfront parcel or to protect the safety of people using the beach access next to it.

The variance required legal justifications for construction of the wall in the setback and to raise the grade of the side yard adjacent to the wall. The votes for and against the project and the variance were based on information not presented to the board and no one on the council was completely at ease with the process.

“I can only speculate what the board would have done if it saw what we are seeing, but I would be more comfortable if they saw it,” said Councilwoman Verna Rollinger, who voted against the approval.

Rollinger said information presented at the meeting was compelling, and it would have been easy to move the project forward, but she feared a precedent would be set and not a good one.

Mayor Pro Tem Toni Iseman, who also voted against the project, and Councilwoman Jane Egly and Mayor Elizabeth Pearson, who voted for it, also expressed concern that the board was not privy to information provided to the council.

However, Pearson said she could make the required findings for the variance — a unique site, a property right enjoyed by others, protection of public safety and of no detriment to others — after hearing the testimony of geologist Hannes Richter, who worked with the city on the restructuring of the Bluebird Canyon landslide.

“I trust Hannes’ judgment implicitly,” Pearson said. “And I believe there is a public safety issue. Hundreds of people use that staircase and I don’t think plants will hold up that slope.”

Besides Richter, the professionals brought to the meeting by Abel included former Design Review Board member Steve Kawaratani, civil engineer Neno Grguric and former Mayor and landscape architect Ann Christoph.