Hopes and Fears Are Building : Development: Huntington Beach officials see all the construction as a good thing, but some residents are anticipating problems.

HUNTINGTON BEACH —  Bounded by the ocean on one side and thickly settled cities on the other, this 80-year-old beach town would appear to have been built out long ago.

But appearances are deceiving. The city, the third-largest in the county, expects to add about 35,000 residents over the next 20 years--as many as the entire population of Brea.

“The city currently has a population of about 189,000,” said Hal Simmons, senior planner for the city. “By the time we reach build-out, which we forecast in 2010, the city will have a population of about 225,000.”

Plans call for former oil fields in the southwest corner of the city to be cleared for for a 768-acre housing and commercial development called Holly-Seacliff. North of the city, a development proposal for the Bolsa Chica area, long in dispute between builders and environmentalists, has been settled, clearing the way for several hundred homes to be built. The blighted downtown area is being redeveloped, and construction of new condominiums and apartments throughout the city is accelerating.

The growth spurt--expected to add about 15,000 homes by the year 2010--will mean more taxable income. It also is expected to bring more children to the city’s school districts, which have suffered declining enrollments over the past decade.

Joyce Riddell, executive vice president of the Huntington Beach Chamber of Commerce, said the new growth “is very exciting.” The new housing will “bring increased tax increments to the city,” Riddell said, “and the new residential areas will be nice additions to the city. The future is very bright for Huntington Beach.”

Diana Peters, superintendent of Huntington Beach City School District, whose elementary schools are in most of the areas targeted for growth in the 1990s, also was enthusiastic about the new residential developments.

Until last year, the district had been losing pupils for more than a decade. Peters said at least one new elementary school for 650 children may be needed to accommodate the expected jump in enrollment.

“It’s certainly more stimulating to be thinking about growth than (about) those years of declining enrollment, which brought about painful things such as cuts and layoffs,” Peters said.

But there is also a downside to all the growth, some residents say.

“I see large problems,” said Loretta Wolfe, president of Huntington Beach Tomorrow, a residents group concerned about planning in the city. “This growth will bring an infrastructure problem--things such as water availability and sewer capacity. The sewers are already at max in that area, and Coast Highway, which is the main link to the freeways from that area, is already overloaded.”

Dianne Easterling, a director of Huntington Beach Tomorrow, calls traffic “a major concern.”

“We’re also concerned about density and open space,” Easterling said. “The Holly-Seacliff development is so big it’s like a city within a city.”

The final master plan for Holly-Seacliff is scheduled to go before the City Council at its Jan. 8 meeting. That plan, which the city staff has urged the council to approve, calls for 5,330 housing units, a neighborhood shopping center and business offices. The project would be built in the area bounded roughly by Ellis Avenue on the north, Huntington and Main streets on the east, Yorktown and Clay avenues to the south, and the bluffs west of Edwards Street on the west. The site is now mostly vacant except for a number of oil pumps that are scheduled to be removed.

Mayor Thomas J. Mays is bullish on the project.

“Holly-Seacliff will convert basically degraded land covered with oil wells and make it into one of the most beautiful areas of the city--complete with at least four new parks in that area,” Mays said.

To the west of the Holly-Seacliff area, about 5,000 new houses have been proposed for the bluffs near the Bolsa Chica Ecological Reserve.

Last year, after years of legal wrangling between environmentalists and Signal Landmark Corp., the principal landowner and developer, a settlement was reached that will allow development to proceed. The terms of the agreement call for Signal Landmark to donate a large share of the land for use as wetlands.

Mays is also optimistic about this project.

“Bolsa Chica will go from 300 acres of restored wetlands to 1,150 acres--one of the largest wetlands on the California coast, while still allowing development on the bluffs,” Mays said. “The restored wetlands are going to be such a tourist attraction that we expect people will be coming from all over to see this area.”

Bolsa Chica is outside the city limits, but Huntington Beach intends to annex the area as development gets under way. James Colangelo, director of the county Local Area Formation Commission, said that the Bolsa Chica has already been placed in Huntington Beach’s “sphere of influence,” a step leading to eventual annexation.

In the downtown area near the pier, about 336 acres along Pacific Coast Highway and Main Street are being redeveloped to include luxury condominiums, hotels and a shopping area.

“Many of the old dwellings have been replaced by higher-density residential units,” Simmons said. “We expect an increase of about 5,000 more units of housing from the recycling that is going on in the downtown area.”

Mays said planning is the key to coping with the changes expected to occur with the new growth of the ‘90s.

“We want to maintain the level of service we now have for our residents while growing to handle the new residents,” Mays said. “I think planning is very important, and I’m working for a strategic plan that would look at a 10-year period of time.

“If we can plan for growth in a proper fashion, then the up side of that growth will be that we will be able to develop an economically viable base for the city, with enough revenue to maintain and improve the current services of that city.

“It’s going to be city with a redeveloped downtown that is the real hub of activity--the most viable downtown in the entire county.”