HUNTINGTON BEACH : Changes Rejected for Jack’s Surfboards

The City Council has rejected changes proposed for the new Jack’s Surfboards building that would have added 4 feet to its four-story tower and included a sheer, 48-foot wall along Pacific Coast Highway.

Having already allowed owner Mike Abdelmuti to add an extra story to a previously approved three-story building, council members, in a 4-3 vote last week, rejected further concessions.

The shop is a key element of the city’s downtown redevelopment. Jack’s, a 70-year-old landmark across from the Municipal Pier, was demolished last year because of structural damage to its brick exterior.

Its replacement will be about twice as tall and extend farther along both Pacific Coast Highway and Main Street. Construction is expected to begin by summer.

The council’s decision limits the new building to 85 feet tall and requires the third floor to be set back from the second floor.

Abdelmuti had requested an 89-foot building, to mirror the 90-foot Pierside Pavilion across the street, and a sheer exterior wall rising three stories without a setback.

The proposed wall would have been “a sheer cliff of concrete rising 48 feet above Pacific Coast Highway,” council member Peter M. Green said. “It’s overwhelming in its massiveness. It’s just too much. It looks like a bunker.”

Green and council member Earle Robitaille supported the addition to the building but rejected the additional concessions that the owner requested this week.

The council majority sided with the Planning Commission’s recommendation, which was denounced by two residents who addressed the council.

“How can (Abdelmuti’s proposal) conform to the downtown village concept, since it proposes such an eyesore?” asked resident Bob Biddle, speaking for Huntington Beach Tomorrow, a citizens watchdog group. “This property should blend with its natural surroundings.”

David Lang, the project architect, said that he is disappointed with the council’s decision but that he will revise the plans to meet the council requirements.

He said under his original plan, the building would have been painted and styled to match the surrounding area.

Mayor Pro Tem Grace Winchell, who along with council member Linda Moulton-Patterson have opposed the four-story tower from the outset, dismissed Lang’s comments.

“This development came to us originally as a three-story plan, and then it went to four stories,” Winchell said. “To violate it further, with a straight wall, (would mean) the air and space would not be there, I don’t care what color it is.”

Moulton-Patterson described Abdelmuti’s request as “a classic case of, ‘If you don’t get what you want from the City Council the first time, just keep coming back.’ I certainly applaud the Planning Commission’s recommendation to make this building a little better than it is.”

Mayor Jim Silva and council members Jack Kelly and Don MacAllister dissented, arguing that the council is unnecessarily meddling in the developer’s planning of the new structure.

“How can we look a gift horse in the mouth and do this?” Kelly said. “I can’t believe we can nit-pick a thing like this to death. I feel like we’re jerking somebody’s chain here, including our own.”