Committee: No Downtown Buildings Higher than 2 Stories

The committee tasked with coming up with the rules that will direct development in San Clemente for decades said no buildings higher than two stories should be allowed in the Del Mar-Camino Real zone.

The General Plan Advisory Committee voted 10-7 with several abstensions to include zoning rules prohibiting buildings three stories and taller in what planners call the "T" zone. The zone includes the length of Avenida Del Mar and several blocks of El Camino Real to the north and south of its Del Mar intersection.

Alan Korsen, one of the spokesmen for the panel, said that polling and focus groups showed residents liked the "human scale" of the city and wanted to preserve it.

"We wanted to stay away from the Huntington Beaches and the Newport Beaches," he said in a phone interview Thursday. "We don't know exactly how they're going to word it, but the GPAC made it clear that it wanted to keep the height limit on Del Mar."

He said the vote was partly in response to Olen Properties' planned 27,000-square-foot retail/restaurant/residential building on El Camino Real across from the Avenida Del Mar intersection.

Project architects assure that the street frontage of the building would be two stories, only increasing to three stories in the center and back where it has frontage on Estrella. Many remain unsatisfied, however, saying the project dwarfs the historic City Hall next door, known as the Easley Building.

"I think the project to go next to historic City Hall is a good idea of what might happen, and I think it was the feeling of the group that this is not what we wanted," Korsen said.

The dissenters who spoke opposed the measure largely on the grounds of property rights, Korsen said.

The completed General Plan is expected to go before the City Council for approval later this year.

The Olen project will go before the San Clemente Planning Commission this month.