The fate of about two dozen hotel workers at the Marina Inn in Dana Point Harbor has upended a lucrative redevelopment effort to renovate the area – a deal officials estimate will make a developer consortium $25 billion, the county about $2 billion and also steer tens of millions annually to the City of Dana Point in hotel taxes.
[Read: OC Supervisors and Developer at Odds over Dana Point Harbor Remodel]
After a host of delays – which developers say already has cost the project the ability to host for the 2028 Olympics at nearby events – the deal is back up for consideration today in front of Orange County Supervisors, who’ve already discussed the new leases twice and keep sending them back for further edits.
The most recent delays were triggered after County Supervisor Katrina Foley raised concerns with the deal in June over hotel worker retention. She then backpedaled in August, calling on her fellow supervisors to approve the deal as-is.
But Foley’s efforts actually stirred up additional supervisors’ concerns, triggering more delays and questions about a series of new changes to the leases.
Residents Raise Red Flags Over Harbor Redevelopment
The new leases are an update to a 2018 deal with developers intended to fasttrack the building of two new hotels in the harbor, which developers say is now dead in the water because the existing leases need revisions for financing.
That 2018 deal to offer a 66-year lease of a public harbor to a consortium of developers remains controversial, with many locals apprehensive about commercialization of the harbor area, historically known for its free parking, reasonable boat slip fees and localized commercial vibe.
The revitalization of the harbor has been debated since 1997 and languished for years in environmental reviews and regulatory approvals.
In 2016, then-Supervisor Lisa Bartlett led efforts to craft the current public-private sector partnership to redevelop the area through a series of leases, which were approved during the chairmanship of former supervisor Andrew Do.
[Read: Supervisors OK Dana Point Harbor Overhaul; Harbor Patrol Could Drain Countywide Park Funds]
There’s still lots of questions about community impacts on traditional programs and users in the area.
Just last week, Supervisor Foley held a community meeting to update residents who continue to be uneasy about how developers may change community access to the harbor.
Harbor Highlights Foley’s Struggles to Work with Colleagues
The controversy also has seemingly now become embroiled in the developing mid-term November election for a Fifth District county supervisor seat, a contest where incumbent Democratic Foley is seeking re-election against challenger, Republican State Assemblywoman Diane Dixon, a former mayor of Newport Beach.
Foley faced a competitive June primary, squeaking out a 299-vote win, or 0.17% lead, over Dixon thanks in large part to a $812,000 publicity blitz of independent campaign advertisements from a host of public sector labor unions.
While the hotel workers union didn’t spend any campaign money on Foley, it wasn’t a huge surprise that Foley came out following the June primary publicly siding with the local hotel union, publicly taking a stance defending local hotel workers who might lose their jobs at the Marina Inn in the ongoing redevelopment plan.
In an even stranger twist, campaign finance disclosures show that Bob Olson, the president of R.D. Olson Development, one of the leaders of Dana Point Harbor Partners, donated $2,700 to Foley last November but took back $2,200 of his donation on June 16 – a week before county supervisors took up the leases in public session.
While Foley opposed the deal at the June meeting, a couple months later, she publicly reversed herself – shocking hotel union leaders – as she proposed that the initial leases be approved without delay, arguing that verbal assurances from the developer would suffice.
Back in June, Foley publicly argued in front of her colleagues for written assurances from the developer as supervisors considered a package of newly proposed leases – asking that about 20 current workers be promised jobs at the new hotels being built.
Yet, in what has become a nagging issue for Foley on this board of supervisors dais, she couldn’t secure the votes – not even from her two Democratic colleagues – on a project in her district and in the midst of a re-election year.
This year alone, she’s faced repeated questions from her colleagues and activists over her handling of chemicals in the county creeks, a massive expansion to the county’s landfill that’s impacting many of her voters and even missed out on the opportunity to chair the board for the second time because she couldn’t get support from her colleagues.
Note that a few years back, a past board dominated by Republicans – one that also didn’t get along with Foley – redistricted her into a Fifth District straddling a huge coast with a slight Republican registration majority.
It took a lot of independent mailers from labor interests to secure Foley’s tight victory in June.
After a month-long vacation from public meetings, county supervisors met earlier this month – taking up again the question of the harbor leases.
In a stunning reversal, Foley began the meeting by announcing she had dropped her demands on the hotel workers and moved adoption of the agreement without any written assurances from the developer on worker retention.
Yet once again, Foley couldn’t get her colleagues to back her motion – losing a 4-1 vote to approve the developers’ leases as proposed with no changes.
Supervisors also went silent on the concerns of local boat owners about skyrocketing rents to park boats under the new partnership with the developer.
[Read: Supervisors Punt Again on Dana Point Harbor Renovation Deal, Leaving Hotels in Limbo]
Hotel union leaders – some who walked voting precincts for Foley’s campaign – were stunned by her reversal on such a core and public labor issue, with one top leader telling me privately that they felt betrayed.
The hotel union went silent on a request for comment about Foley’s vote flip but instead reiterated their statement the day that supervisors voted against her effort to push the Dana Point lease deal through without written protections for workers.
“We thank the Orange County Board of Supervisors for standing with Dana Point Marina Inn workers and recognizing that workers deserve more than hollow promises from the developer—they deserve written protections that provide a real pathway to retain their jobs,” wrote Unite Here 11 Spokeswoman Maria Hernandez.
While Hotel union leaders told me they felt betrayed by Foley’s reversal, they were inspired by the support from Supervisor’s Chairman Doug Chaffee, who publicly said at the last public meeting dealing with the leases that he supported the redevelopment deal in the harbor but needed to see more protections for hotel workers.
Chafee – although a Democrat – has publicly endorsed Foley’s Republican opponent, Dixon.
Meanwhile, Dixon’s campaign supporters immediately seized upon Foley’s inability to get her colleagues to back a project in her own district.
Calling it “a stunning rebuke,” OC GOP leaders posted on Facebook that “OC Democrat Supervisor Katrina Foley could not get a single one of her colleagues to support her vision for the Dana Point Harbor today.
She’s been under fire by boaters, the hotel owner, the Dana Point Mayor and Council, shop owners, and voters for her handling of the process. A process that saw her try to slip in demands (one colleague called it extortion) of the developer to benefit her union supporters.
And today, she made a motion to approve her vision and couldn’t get a single colleague to support her.”
The Aug. 11 posting on Facebook from the OC GOP featured a cartoon with the headline, “On an island of her own making.”
