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The golf course will lie along the coast north of the hotel.
Environmentalist Geof Land says moving the hotel provides only nominal protection for the point itself. The hotel will still be nestled right against sensitive habitat -- including the trees where migrating monarchs nest -- and thousands of guests will be tromping about on trails. "If [the hotel] isn't on the point, it's certainly strangling the point," Land says.
Hearst counters that it has conducted extensive studies of the point to ensure that it will be protected. The corporation has repeatedly pledged that the point development -- indeed, the whole resort plan -- will enthusiastically embrace all environmental regulations to protect the coastal habitat.
But Shirley Bianchi has been dealing with the Hearst Corp. for so many years that she's not willing to accept blanket statements of good faith.
The 68-year-old rancher and Planning Commission chair, in fact, has grown so incensed at Hearst that she is planning to run in the next election for the county Board of Supervisors.
Like many opponents, Bianchi charges that Hearst is trying to win approval for its resort before working out all the gritty details that could allay -- or confirm -- the fears of residents. The coastal-use plan approved by the current Board of Supervisors and forwarded to the Coastal Commission does not lay out Hearst's plans in detail. It merely endorses the general concept of allowing Hearst to build in the areas specified.
But the devil is in the details, Bianchi says, and she possesses little faith in Hearst's execution of its plan. "The community has been lied to so many times by the corporation that they could look us in the eye and tell us the gospel truth and we wouldn't believe them," Bianchi says.
Bianchi claims the company has misled residents about the water supply, the impact the resort will have on the local economy, and the true extent of what its plans will do to the wildlife and archaeology of San Simeon Point.
Even if the Coastal Commission approves the plan, Hearst will someday have to return to the county Board of Supervisors to obtain its actual building permits. Bianchi hopes to be on the board when that happens. "I'm not anti-growth," she says. "What I am is pro-agricultural. Growth belongs in the communities, not on open agricultural land."
The Hearst Corp.'s desire to plunge into the resort business is hardly new. In the early 1960s -- just a few years after the castle opened as a state-run park -- the company came forward with incredibly grand plans for its coastal property. According to newspaper clips, old planning documents, and the memories of longtime residents, Hearst proposed building an entire city in and around San Simeon. As envisioned back then, the town would have had as many as 65,000 residents, a college, and an airport built from the ranch's private airstrip.
The plan never made it far, and in hindsight it seems quaintly delusional -- no one would argue now that a project of that scale would be economically feasible, or good for the coast. It certainly would never pass muster under environmental regulations set up during the past 30 years.
Still, William Randolph Hearst built a media empire on deluded ambition, quite successfully, beginning when he took over the San Francisco Examiner in 1887. The corporation Hearst begat, of course, is now a media monolith, owning 12 daily newspapers and 16 national magazines including Esquire, Cosmopolitan, Good Housekeeping, Popular Mechanics, and Redbook. Alone or in partnership, Hearst also has a hand in 17 television stations across the country, as well as cable channels such as A&E, the History Channel, Lifetime Television, and ESPN.
Earlier this month, Forbes magazine ranked Hearst 47th among the top 500 privately held companies in the country with an estimated $2.8 billion in annual revenue. The firm, whose stock is held primarily by Hearst heirs and executives, employs an estimated 14,000 people in more than 100 separate businesses.
Though its weekday circulation has dwindled to about 121,000 -- unremarkable for a major metro daily -- the Examiner remains a sentimental keepsake for Hearst. San Francisco's afternoon newspaper charts a liberal course on its editorial pages, and has a news reporter assigned to cover the environment, but the paper has yet to publish either opinion pieces or news stories on its parent company's controversial plans to develop San Simeon.
The Hearst Foundations maintains an office in San Francisco, and descendants of William Randolph still live in the area. But the bulk of the corporation's business interests in California are real estate. Its national media holdings, though, still make for plentiful money and influence. The company appears willing to bring both to bear on its efforts to finally break ground at San Simeon. Hearst has retained lawyers in San Luis Obispo and Los Angeles to fight for its development, and has made a point of hosting local and state officials at ranch tours and barbecues, including members of the Coastal Commission. Gov. Pete Wilson, Assembly Speaker Cruz Bustamante, and Senate President pro tem Bill Lockyer each have four appointees on the commission.
The efforts paid off most handsomely last November, when campaign contributions from two Hearst family members and other would-be coastal developers helped shift the balance of power on the San Luis Obispo County Board of Supervisors by financing the election of pro-Hearst candidate Mike Ryan.
In the November election, Ryan spent a whopping $117,000 -- or about $14 for each vote he received -- to narrowly defeat eight-year incumbent David Blakely. Ryan's win tipped the board to a 3-2 majority more favorable to development in the county. Blakely, who lost by just 388 votes out of more than 18,000 cast, claims that Ryan's campaign was largely funded by developers who wanted Blakely off the board. "The money poured in the last week or two of the campaign," Blakely says.
