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The matter has now passed to the Coastal Commission, which is considering the master land-use plan already approved by the county supervisors. Thousands of coastal residents and environmental activists are expected to turn out for a mid-January public hearing that the commission has scheduled in San Luis Obispo.
But the battle has been fully engaged for months. Hearst is flooding San Luis Obispo County with four-color brochures and promotional videotapes touting the riches sure to flow for all if the resort is built, and underscoring its corporate commitment to environmental responsibility. The company has sent county voters a mass mailing containing not one, but two, postage-paid postcards pre-printed with statements of support for the project. Citizens are being asked to sign the cards and mail them back to a San Luis Obispo law office that Hearst is using as its local beachhead during the campaign.
Hearst is buying chunks of time on San Luis Obispo cable channels, and plans soon to begin airing a half-hour special extolling the virtues of Hearst and its resort plan.
Certain of being outspent, resort opponents have banded together into a group calling itself the North Coast Alliance, and have put out a call for help from environmental organizations across the country. The national Sierra Club has jumped into the fray, and San Francisco-based Patagonia is making its stores available for evening slide shows to enlist opposition to the plan. Environmental groups from across California and the nation have issued alerts to their members, urging them to write letters to the commission weighing in on the issue.
In San Luis Obispo County, local activists are setting up card tables at farmers markets to pass out fliers, and waging their battle one phone call at a time.
"The stakes are very high, and this is a really important battle," says Pat Veesart, chairman of the Sierra Club's Santa Lucia chapter. "It's hard for us to know what Hearst is really doing [since] they're a private company and they don't have to disclose anything about themselves."
To date, Veesart says, the Alliance has raised about $12,000 to fund its campaign against the resort. "I would suspect Hearst spent more than that on their first mailing," he says.
Jay Rockey, one of the Los Angeles attorneys representing Hearst during the development fight, says he's unsure how much money the company is spending. But Rockey argues that the giant Hearst Corp. is the one being picked on, forced to defend itself against a gaggle of overzealous, misguided environmentalists who do not appreciate the company's commitment to protect the coastline.
"We have been reluctant to become engaged in this battle of public opinion, but we've been drawn into it because of the gross misrepresentations of fact that Mark Massara, the Sierra Club, and a small band of local antagonists have been spreading," Rockey says. "The opposition has to lie and has to misrepresent the facts, or else they wouldn't have any support.
"Now that they've spread so much misinformation around the county, we have to get involved," Rockey says. "It's very unfortunate they feel they have to lie to get support."
By his reading of the coastal regulations, Rockey says, the Hearst plan is in full compliance with the law, both spirit and letter. "It is consistent with the Coastal Act," he says. "The purpose of the Coastal Act is to bring people to the coast, not to prevent development."
Seated around Betty Fiscalini's kitchen table are seven of the "liars" Jay Rockey is incensed about, a cross section of the North Coast Alliance including ranchers, coastal residents, and environmental activists. Among the group are Kat McConnell, a former contract screenwriter who has abandoned her career to battle Hearst, and Bill Allen, a quiet man in a crisp shirt and bluejeans who has been named president of the Alliance.
Pushing aside a plate of Oreos and chocolate chip cookies, they spread out maps and charts showing what Hearst is planning just a few miles up the coast from the Fiscalini ranch.
They don't like what they see. Altogether, Hearst is proposing 650 hotel rooms, the golf course, stables, stores, restaurants, and campgrounds scattered about four different locations on both sides of Highway 1. The idea is to construct a "destination" resort, a place where tourists and visitors will stop, stay for a night or two, play golf, and spend money, instead of just spending the day at Hearst Castle and then leaving the area.
If built, the resort will need anywhere from 600 to 1,000 employees to keep it operating, depending on the season. Those people will need to be housed. They will need groceries, doctors, and social services. Their kids will need to go to school. Only about 200 people now live in San Simeon Acres, a strip of modest hotels along the highway that is the closest thing to a town near the ranch. A few miles farther south, the town of Cambria has only about 5,600 residents.
The Hearst resort plan, its foes say, is just too big for the area, and it will be plopped down in the middle of the ranch, far from any existing development. It is exactly the kind of project that the state's coastal preservation act is supposed to prevent, they say.
Betty Fiscalini's husband, Louis, was born on the family ranch 77 years ago. His forebears started buying land in the area in 1873, and the Fiscalinis have been here, raising cattle, ever since. "This is mostly family-owned farms and ranches," says Betty's son, David Fiscalini. Coastal laws, he says, are supposed to protect agricultural land, not make it disappear.
