A proposed 29-acre housing and hotel development in southeast Huntington Beach will go before the California Coastal Commission again this month seeking approval.
The commission, at its July 10 meeting, will look at a request to rezone the former site of the Magnolia Tank Farm, where oil storage tanks once stood. The storage tanks are gone and the site’s owner, Shopoff Realty Investments, proposes to build 250 homes, a hotel and park space.
A year ago, the commission put off deciding whether it would grant zoning changes to allow the development to go through, raising concerns about future flooding caused by sea level rise.
Now commission staffers are recommending that the commissioners approve the project with some changes related to affordable housing and hotel room rents.
If approved with modifications, 20% of the homes would be affordable, with half of them to be offered to income-qualified workers at the hotel on a right-of-first-refusal basis.
The hotel would also need to have 25% of its rooms be offered at affordable rates. Those affordable hotel rooms would likely rent for around $150 a night if built today, according to a staff report.
The commission’s staff found that these changes would support the Coastal Act’s goal of increasing housing equity in the coastal zone.
The Magnolia Tank Farm site is in a low-lying area just 2,000 feet from the shoreline. A new study submitted in the application says recently improved flood walls for the Huntington Beach Channel would help protect homes built from future flooding. However, there remains possible risks in future decades should a major storm surge event hit the area, combined with several feet of sea level rise, according to the study submitted on the flooding risk by a consulting firm.
Shopoff Realty Investments bought the Magnolia Tank Farm site in 2016. The Huntington Beach City Council approved the project in 2021.
Next to the development site is the former Ascon landfill, which until 1984 received industrial, oil field and construction waste, and is the subject of a cleanup project. The California Department of Toxic Substances Control has concluded that the development is safe from contamination from the former private landfill.
The California Coastal Commission’s meeting on the Magnolia Tank Farm project will take place in San Rafael on July 10 beginning at 9 a.m. The public can watch the meeting online.
People can comment on the project via email until Friday, July 5. Those wishing to speak virtually during the meeting’s public comment period can submit a speaker request form online. Speakers are encouraged to submit by 5 p.m. the day before the meeting at coastal.ca.gov/meetings/request-testimony/wednesday.
