Change afoot at Sea Ranch

On an open meadow near an ocean bluff, tall two-by-fours and yellow ropes mark the proposed roof heights for an expanded and more luxurious lodge complex at The Sea Ranch.

The operators of Sea Ranch Lodge have placed the "story poles" just off Highway 1 to give design officials and residents a sense of the elevations of 44 lodging units that would be grouped in the meadow, plus another cluster of rooms nearby and a three-story main building that would replace the current lodge's rooms.

In all, the lodge would expand to 60 rooms from 20 today, plus offer a treatment spa and separate swimming pool.

The four-decade-old lodge is a landmark at The Sea Ranch, an exclusive 5,000-acre coastal development known for its stylish, weathered-wood-and-glass homes and for the historic battle over public access to its beaches. That battle helped spur the passage of a 1972 state initiative creating the California Coastal Commission, and eventually ended with limited access to the Sea Ranch's nine miles of coastline.

New lodging is rare along the Northern California coast, especially on such a prime piece of oceanfront property. While Sea Ranch residents are known for giving such plans careful scrutiny, the lodge proposal initially has received support as well as criticism.

"I wish those poles weren't quite as high," Martha "Dibby" Tyler, a Sea Ranch Association board member, told a lodge representative last week at the end of a 90-minute tour of the markers. She was pointing to the poles showing the height of the proposed three-story main building.

Tyler nonetheless acknowledged that the designers had done a sensitive and "pretty careful job" in their proposed placement of the lodging structures.

The lodge proposal, which was reviewed by The Sea Ranch's design committee over the weekend, would leave the original post office building but remove later additions and the nearby lodge rooms.

The units in the meadow would be grouped together at the scale of a typical Sea Ranch home, lodge representatives said. No cars or asphalt would enter the meadow. Instead, special carts would transport guests and their luggage along a path most likely built from crushed granite.

Passport Resorts, the lodge's operator and part owner, also operates Cavallo Point: The Lodge at the Golden Gate at the former Fort Baker near Sausalito, as well as properties in Big Sur, Maui and Fiji.

The company says it intends for its Sea Ranch project to receive at least a gold level in the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design, or LEED, certification program, the second best of four designations, established by the U.S. Green Building Council.

A county planner said the lodge could expand to 100 units under existing provisions. But lodge officials said they have opted for quality over quantity.

"You've got to have every room be great," General Manager Greg Hagin told nearly a dozen residents during last week's tour. The rates for the nightly rooms would run in the low $300s, he said, compared with current rates starting in the high $100s.

Over the years, various Sea Ranch developers have put forth proposals to add more lodging, including some plans that were poorly received by residents.

Nonetheless, both the lodge operators and the residents say a 20-unit inn and restaurant is no longer economically viable there. The two groups also acknowledge that each side relies on the other. The residents frequent the restaurant and its bar, and the lodge enjoys their business.

"There's a strong desire to see a successful lodge," said Leigh Mueller, chairman of the Sea Ranch Association's board of directors.

Mueller said to date, most residents seem optimistic about the expansion. During the tour he noted that the units in the meadow wouldn't block the ocean view of the houses on the hillside east of the highway.

Among those on the tour was Bob Hartstock, the chairman of the Sea Ranch Association's planning committee. Speaking as a resident, Hartstock said that he would prefer that the project stay clear of the meadow's center and instead put more units to the south near the post office.

The current placement, he maintained, runs counter to the original approach by Sea Ranch designers to locate the houses on the meadow's edges.

"It's big," Hartstock said of the mass of units in the meadow. "It's very big."

But Peter Heinemann, managing principal of Passport Resorts, said with wetlands and restrictions on building near the bluffs, "physically you can't avoid going out in the meadow."

Still, he insisted, the proposed design is consistent with that used in the Sea Ranch's residential areas, and "we've left a huge amount of open space in the meadow."

As to the concern about the main lodge's height, Heinemann said that designers specifically added a third floor with three lodging rooms for the disabled in order to keep more units out of the meadow. Even so, an existing cypress hedgerow will screen the building from the highway and nearby homes.

"We're very much about an environmentally sensitive development," Heinemann said.

Dave Hardy, a county supervising planner, said the development could go before the Board of Zoning Adjustment by early next year.

You can reach Staff Writer Robert Digitale at 521-5285 or robert.digitale@pressdemocrat

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