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A SIERRA CLUB lawyer said the group is confident the California Coastal Commission next week will reject a ballot measure approved by Monterey County voters in 2000 that would facilitate the Pebble Beach Company’s plans for a new golf course in Del Monte Forest while downzoning large tracts of Monterey pine forest from “residential” to “open space.”

At a June 14 meeting in Santa Rosa, coastal commissioners will decide whether or not to allow the ballot measure to go into effect.

“Unless something unexpected from left field occurs,” said Mark Massara, director of the Sierra Club’s California coastal program, “there is no legal or scientific basis upon which to approve this thing.”

A report from the coastal commission staff — which has long campaigned against allowing significant new development in Pebble Beach — urges the commission to reject the zoning changes as “inconsistent with Coastal Act environmentally sensitive habitat and wetlands policies.”

The Pebble Beach Co., on the other hand, contends the development will provide unprecedented protection for the most vital parts of the pine forest since it will limit future development. And so do many residents of Del Monte Forest, where Measure A was approved more than five years ago by a 2-to-1 margin.

“We hope the commissioners will see past all of this one-sided rhetoric that the staff has put out and actually vote on the issues,” said Rick Verbanec, president of the Del Monte Forest Property Owners.

“The Del Monte Forest Plan: Forest Preservation and Development Limitations,” which would be facilitated if Measure A goes into effect, includes an 18-hole golf course, driving range, equestrian center, 160 hotel rooms, underground parking at the Lodge and Spanish Bay, 60 new employee residences, 34 residential lots, and road and infrastructure improvements.

According to the coastal commission staff report, the development would harm areas home to Monterey pines, Yadon’s piperia and the federally protected California red-legged frog.

“For example, the contemplated golf course that would be allowed under Measure A could be expected to result in the direct loss of 63 acres of native Monterey pine forest (and over 10,000 individual trees),” the staff report notes. “It would also result in the loss of 36,000 individual piperia plants, or 21 percent of the known population of this listed endangered species.”

The Pebble Beach Co. claims those figures are exaggerated.

The staff report also says the Monterey pine is “globally rare,” a claim contradicted by the Pebble Beach Co. and other supporters of Measure A, including Bruce Cowan, a former Sierra Club member.

“There are literally millions of native Monterey pines in California, and many more planted pines throughout the world,” Cowan said.

If the commission OKs Measure A, the Pebble Beach Co. would place more than 900 acres (nearly 500 within Del Monte Forest) of forest and other land into conservation as open space. In addition, the company would prohibit hundreds of home lots, allowed under zoning approved by the coastal commission in the 1980s, from being developed in the forest.

“The opposition ignores the hundreds of thousands of Monterey pines and Yadon’s orchids that will be protected in perpetuity on the nearly 900 acres of preserved lands being added to the hundreds of acres Pebble Beach Co. has preciously donated,” Cowan said. “It also ignores that the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, which listed the Yadon’s rein orchid, and the California Department of Fish and Game have supported the final plan with all of its land dedications and other mitigations.”

Furthermore, Verbanec said a golf course is a way of preserving more trees and habitat than houses. The Pebble Beach Co. development would also create jobs, support services, charitable contributions and tax revenues to continue forest maintenance and habitat restoration.

Alan Williams, president of the Carmel Development Company, planners for the development, is hopeful the commission will consider the public favors the measure.

“About the only people we have against us is the Sierra Club and the coastal commission staff,” Williams said. “And I say staff because I’m not so sure the commission will come to the same conclusion.”

But the coastal commission staff report says the areas slated for development in Measure A — about 600 acres in two dozen locations in Del Monte Forest — also contain “significant wetlands habitat” and developing those areas “could be expected to result in significant impacts to these resources.”

The report also criticizes the plan for allowing an equestrian center in the Sawmill Gulch conservation easement, a former quarry area the coastal commission previously required to be restored and protected as mitigation for the Pebble Beach Co.’s Spanish Bay project.

“The proposal to allow intensive recreational development at Sawmill Gulch is not consistent with the Coastal Act,” the report indicates. “Approving this land use change for a protected conservation easement area would also set an extremely adverse precedent for the hundreds of conservation easements in the coastal zone.”

But the Pebble Beach Co. sent a letter to the coastal commission last week proposing to move the equestrian center from Sawmill Gulch to the Pebble Beach Co.’s corporation yard at Sunridge and Lopez.

Verbanec said the concession could sway commissioners who are on the fence about the project.

“If they don’t have to give up those easements then they might be willing to pass Measure A,” he said.

Massara said the offer to move the equestrian center is a last-ditch effort to convince commissioners to approve the project.

“It seems clear to me that the coastal commission welcomes the idea of some final development plan for the Del Monte Forest,” Massara said. “But whatever they [Pebble Beach Co.] propose has to be consistent with the fact that the last remaining Monterey Pine trees are ESHA.”

“The coastal commission is supposed to be preserving land, encouraging coastal access, encouraging coastal accommodations and encouraging coastal recreation,” Williams said. “And that’s all this project does.”

The June 14 coastal commission hearing in Santa Rosa, at which commissioners are expected to decide the fate of Measure A, begins at 9 a.m. at the Fountain Grove Inn, 101 Fountain Grove Parkway.