LAKE COUNTY — The rebuilding of Harbin Hot Springs has received a green light from the Lake County Board of Supervisors.
Voting unanimously, the board on Tuesday approved amendments to the county’s general plan and zoning ordinance, as well as a major use permit application and a development plan to facilitate a rebuilding process at Harbin being undertaken by the resort’s managing entity, Heart Consciousness Church.
An estimated 95 percent of the sprawling, clothing-optional resort located near Middletown was burned in the Valley Fire in 2015. Since then, Harbin has been working to rebuild itself—a process that Harbin Managing Director Sajjad Mahmud has said could take 10 years to complete.
As of January, Harbin was partially reopened: several soaking pools and some resort facilities, including overnight cabins, were rebuilt during the first of three planned phases of reconstruction.
With the County of Lake’s approval Tuesday, a major potential hurdle to the resort’s redevelopment has been cleared.
The parcels on which Harbin Hot Springs is located, which total more than 2,500 acres, are generally zoned either as rural lands or as planned commercial development with a requirement for “design review” prior to new developments. The changes approved Tuesday turned each of the rural-zoned parcels into “resort commercial” land, and removed the requirement for “design review” on each of the planned commercial development parcels.
According to Mahmud, who was present during the board meeting Tuesday, getting rid of the requirement for design review on the planned commercial development land removed a lengthy review process that would have stood in the way of Harbin’s reconstruction.
“It would have been an extremely cumbersome process” to provide all the information required in a design review, Mahmud said. “We just want to restore Harbin Springs back to what it was before the fire.”
In a similar way to the removal of the design review requirement, the board’s approval of rural land being rezoned for commercial resort use will allow construction to take place with fewer requirements.
County planning staff advocated for the board’s approval of Harbin’s rebuilding plans.
Senior planner Mark Roberts said Tuesday that “Harbin Hot Springs has (played) a vital role in the development of Lake County since it was founded in 1856, and gradually increased in size until it became one of the county’s largest resorts. By revitalizing Harbin Hot Springs, it would bring a diversified economic basis that would provide local residents and guests with a variety of resort amenities that the county once had.”
Measure N election questions
Also on Tuesday, the board heard comments from Northshore Fire Protection District Chief Mike Ciancio, who asked for further clarification on his concerns about the way the November special election for a proposed tax that would have supported the district, but failed to garner enough votes, had been carried out by the Lake County Registrar of Voters office.
Ciancio stressed that the district is “more concerned with the processes, and not the results of the election,” stating that the district’s governing board has already officially accepted the county’s final ballot results.
“There were a bunch of red flags that were raised,” Ciancio said of the November election process. He noted that he wanted to “make sure that due process of voting was done correctly.”
“I understand that you’re saying that this is not due to the results,” argued District 2 Supervisor Bruno Sabatier. “But I’m sure that if the results were the opposite, you wouldn’t be here in front of us asking us about our process. So I think the results have a lot to do with it, that you’re questioning the process.”
The fire district’s concerns about the election appear to stem from several circumstances.
In the weeks leading up to the election, several countywide power shutoffs had been executed by Pacific Gas and Electric Company. At the same time, the county elections office was under the direction of a recently-hired registrar of voters who, according to the fire district, had never before been in charge of a county election. Likewise, a new ballot counting system had been adopted by the county several months prior to the election.
The board of supervisors last week published a draft letter in response to the district’s questions, which was considered for approval Tuesday.
But Ciancio noted that some of the questions outlined in the letter from his district to the county had not been fully answered in the county’s letter. Acknowledging this, the board gave consensus Tuesday to add to its responses and present more information to the district at a future date.
