Soundings Appears in Print, Due to Publication Lag Times
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THE SEA RANCH ASSOCIATION P.O. BOX 16 PRSRT STD U.S. POSTAGE PAID THE SEA RANCH, CA 95497-0016 MEDFORD, OR PERMIT NO. 125 Address Service Requested A QUARTERLY NEWSPAPER WRITTEN BY AND FOR THE SEA RANCH ASSOCIATION MEMBERS NUMBER 130 FALL 2016 IN THIS ISSUE: COMMUNITY SPIRIT AWARD Where Have All the Restaurants Gone? By Mary Street Alinder weekend getaways - small and mod- PLANTING AT TSR Bones Roadhouse – CLOSED est, built cheaply without insulation, The Gualala Hotel restaurant – CLOSED and affordable to NEW FOREST SUBCOMMITTEE The Sandbar – CLOSED a middle-class in- come. Now, one Cross the bridge to Gualala and we are must be relatively ROBERT HOLMES REMEMBERED greeted by two large shuttered buildings wealthy to buy into framing the road. Driving north on High- The Sea Ranch way One, Bones Roadhouse sits empty dream. And high ‘German South’ THP followed by a succession of for sale signs. housing costs are Just before the speed limit returns to 55, directly reflected on Sea Ranch border the long-closed and still sorely-missed in the values of By Roland Pesch Food Company bids us adieu. commercial build- ings in our area Our new logging-company neighbors, People are asking, “Where have all the – raising them. Gualala Redwoods Timber (GRT) are restaurants gone?” It turns out the answer Restaurants can’t proposing a timber-harvest plan on is much more complex than I first real- afford their rents lands directly across the Sea Ranch ized. But there are some answers: poor and staff can’t af- property line. This article presents a service because of not enough staff and/ ford to live here. condensed description of the plan as or not well-trained staff; punishingly high proposed to CalFire. overhead; owners unaware or unwilling to Some people work the long, long, necessary hours; ab- blame current GRT publicly filed the THP on May sentee owners; mediocre or uneven food; landlords for the 17, 2016; at the June 25th Board menu prices considered unaffordable, es- restaurant closings, meeting, Community Manager Frank pecially by locals; and too many restau- saying they are de- Bell informed the Board of GRT’s rants for the actual year-round population. manding too-high plan in public session during his rents and saddling Community Manager’s report. When First enormous problem is staffing a their tenants with questioned about when he learned of restaurant. One chef/owner said there is no sewer fees and the filing, Bell said he first heard of way to pay staff enough for them to afford other imposed im- Timber Cove Resort great room. Their Coast Kitchen restaurant is open. Photo it on May 19, 2016. The August Bul- local rent. There are simply too few af- provements which by Jim Alinder. letin (published in late July), under fordable rental units in our entire area. Al- can add up to tens of thousands of dollars. Carolyn André, chair of the Coastal Se- “Board Summary and Actions”, car- though at Sea Ranch nearly 400 homes are Most local commercial owners carry large niors board, says that many of their clients ried the following mention: “Com- on vacation rental programs (and that fig- mortgages now, and that means they must cannot afford to eat out because the pric- munity Manager Bell alerted the ure has remained quite steady for the past charge high rents. es are too expensive. Her husband Barry Membership to a recently filed GRT decade), Chris Howard, TSR Director of believes another problem is that local ex- Timber Harvest Plan…….” (http:// Emergency Services, estimates that only Restaurant income here fluctuates wild- pectations are too demanding. Most meals www.tsra.org/mod/secfile/viewed. 10-15 houses are offered for long-term ly by the season. A restaurant must make do not have to be gourmet experiences. php?file_id=3546, page 16) rental, a month at a time or more. This is enough during the summer months to tide Chef Bates states that in our expensive re- with a total of about 1,900 houses built. it through winter. In the past, businesses sort-oriented community there can only be Because the plan is so close to final Service staff cannot afford to commute in Gualala could postpone paying rent in high end and low end; there aren’t enough approval, it is not likely to change from Santa Rosa, so all restaurants share the slow times and pay it off in the sum- people to support restaurants of moderate substantially. However, it is still the same labor pool. The happy exception mer. There is no such forgiveness now. cost. As she says, with restaurant overhead formally possible that it may change is if the restaurant is family-operated; that One local chef/owner takes no pay four or so costly, “You’re not going to have a Pop- prior to final approval, if GRT ne- is a huge plus. five months a year, so that they can keep sicle store here, it’s got to be gelato.” In gotiates further with regulators and their staff paid during the hard months. another experienced chef’s opinion, we neighbors (including the Vegetation In the mid-1960s, The Sea Ranch was As Chef/Caterer Leslie Bates told me, “In have only enough residents to support a fi- Management Subcommittee of the planned by university professors, aided the summer I make money. In the winter I nite number of restaurants, and the closing Association’s Board—see related ar- by their students. Houses were meant as make friends.” A restaurant is kept alive by of the latest three establishments is a sign ticle on page 3). If there are any late year-long local support. of too many of one and not enough of the changes, this summary may be out of other. date by the time Soundings appears in print, due to publication lag times. Not that many years ago, Gualala was a It must be assumed that all owners of property much different town (unincorporated as Where is the proposed logging? within The Sea Ranch by virtue of their pur- it still is). Gualala has been pretty much chase of such property are motivated by the owned by a handful of families for many It’s on a 198-acre parcel on our side character of the natural environment in which years – the Bowers, the Bakers (did you of the Gualala River, starting 1/4 mile know that Millard Sheets designed Baker their property is located, and accept, for and among themselves, the downstream from the Hot Spot, and Town?), the Sundstroms. Up until about continuing along the riverside. Of principle that the development and use of The Sea Ranch must pre- 20 years ago, there was a hitching post in that parcel, 17 acres are “no harvest” serve that character for its present and future enjoyment by other front of the hotel – and it was used. Ida Gi- for one reason or another. owners. anoli Bower’s first husband, George Cia- pucci, owned the hotel. Ida built the little Page 13 From The Sea Ranch Declaration of cottage just south of the hotel – now Upper Covenants, Conditions and Restrictions Page 6 PAGE 2 THE SEA RANCH SOUNDINGS FALL 2016 In The Zone By Barbara Rice surroundings. By buying property at the Sea Ranch, you are buying into Sea Ranch – that’s the place where you this vision. Before you undertake can only use California native plants in landscape planning here, you may your landscape? want to read the Sea Ranch Design Manual, section 9.0 Landscape Ele- Not quite. ments, the Design Rules, sections 3 Sea Ranch – that’s the place where you and 9; and Sea Ranch Rule 2.3 Pol- can only plant native plants from an ap- icy and Procedures for Enforcement proved plant list on your lot? of Governing Documents. Almost. Rules and Restrictions – we have them. But we also have a cohesive Sea Ranch is the place where you can natural landscape that you won’t see only plant native plants from the ap- in many other communities where proved plant list for your vegetation zone the houses and the exotic gardens in any place visible from outside your lot. predominate. We all share and are stewards of an incredibly beautiful Your Sea Ranch lot is in a vegetation place. zone. What does that mean? Why do we have these zones? Different plants occur in different parts of our commons, so we have Example of a vegetation map.. Back in the beginnings of The Sea Ranch, six Vegetation Zones, and every lot landscape architect Larry Halprin envi- is assigned to one of these zones. You zones this year to raise awareness of the for Plantings. Many natives here are low sioned a way for the houses that would be can read about each zone and see the ap- many special ecosystems we enjoy. growing and take moisture from the sum- built here to fit in to their surroundings, proved list for each zone on www.tsra. mer fog. to harmonize with the existing landscape org under Your Property/Plantings/Vege- The Dune Zone occurs in only a few plac- and be part of a whole. From this concept tation Zone Descriptions. You can look es. It is part of the Salt Spray Zone, but Inland from the bluffs, the Lower Ter- emerged our Covenants, Conditions and up your zone on the TSRA website un- the winds may be stronger and the soil is race Zone is comprised of former grazing Restrictions governing what we can plant der Your Property/Plantings/Vegetation mostly sand.