Low-key Peninsula activist took ‘high road’

By Nick Green
DAILY BREEZE

Barbara Gleghorn, a soft-spoken, 77-year-old grandmother, hardly fits the stereotype of strident environmental activist.

But as the company developing a proposed $200 million luxury resort at the former Marineland theme park site discovered, looks can be deceiving.

Gleghorn played the role of David to the Goliath of Brentwood-based Destination Hotels & Resorts, the nation’s seventh-largest hotel management company.

In an effort to sway public sentiment toward its Long Point resort planned on land owned by an influential group whose investors include former Los Angeles Mayor Richard Riordan, the development company produced glossy brochures and mailings touting new parks, trails and millions in tax revenues.

In response, the former home economics teacher organized Save Our Coastlines II, a group opposed to using public parkland for part of the resort’s golf course. The group collected thousands of signatures from Palos Verdes Peninsula residents.

As the group’s elected spokeswoman, the gray-haired Gleghorn became SOC’s public face. Clad in SOC II’s trademark blue T-shirt, she was a familiar sight at Rancho Palos Verdes city meetings, politely, but firmly repeated the reasons for its opposition, urging the council for more than two years to reject including public open space in a private development.

Last month, the City Council finally relented and told the company that if it wanted to build the resort it must use its own land, not Point Vicente Park, which surrounds City Hall and boasts critical wildlife habitat and stunning ocean views.

“I think (SOC) played a big role in bringing about the decision,” said Councilman Doug Stern, an ardent land preservationist who for months tried to convince his fellow panelists to endorse SOC’s position.

“Barbara took a very high road in the way they handled it,” he added. “Nobody was chaining themselves to the City Hall palm tree or whatever. It was largely an educational endeavor . . . It was nonconfrontational by design.”

Indeed, that strategy could describe Gleghorn as well.

“She’s always the quiet one in the background working like a beaver, but not wanting any recognition,” said Betty Strauss, who was one of the founders of the original Save Our Coastline in 1968, which was instrumental in creating the city to staunch the rampant development the county had planned. “In this effort she demonstrated real leadership.”

The modest Gleghorn downplayed her contribution.

“There wasn’t anybody else to do it and I felt it was a good cause,” she said. “I felt it was wrong for a company to take from the general public. It belongs to all of us. It’s a beautiful site. People don’t understand what they have there.”

Gleghorn, whose drives around the heavily Republican Peninsula in a car sporting bumper stickers espousing the drug war’s futility and her support for abortion rights, has always been a fervent defender of political causes.

Born a Missouri farm girl, Gleghorn said her attitudes were shaped by her mother,the daughter of a New Englander with anti-slavery views.

“I’ve always been a feminist,” Gleghorn said. “She was a feminist.”

She and her husband, George, sponsor a scholarship fund for women and minorities at their alma mater, the University of Colorado.

In college, Gleghorn was active in the Independent Student Council, designed as an alternative to what she saw as the elitist Greek system.

Gleghorn and her husband, an aerospace engineer, moved to the Peninsula in 1954 in part because of its open spaces. The couple lived in Palos Verdes Estates before moving in 1964 to what later became Rancho Palos Verdes, settling in a Crestridge Drive home overlooking flower fields.

She joined the original Save Our Coastline, becoming the group’s volunteer public relations coordinator.

What Gleghorn perceived as a similar threat to the open space the original group had sought to preserve three decades earlier prompted her to resurrect the organization in 1999.

Spurring Gleghorn to action was a letter from Councilman John McTaggart, who alerted her to the fact that the Long Point developers wanted to use what was then about 100 acres of city parkland for an 18-hole golf course.

Moreover, McTaggart’s letter touched upon what would later be the crux of opposition to the resort’s proposal: that developers wanted to use their land to build profitable homes — later euphemistically called resort accommodations since owners would not be allowed to live in them full time — while using city land for their golf course.

McTaggart, who opposed the idea, said he wanted to ensure residents were aware of what was going on.

“I had no idea 2 ½ years ago that Barbara Gleghorn was going to get an organization together like she did,” he said. “But I knew if she was concerned about it, she would hang in there. I just didn’t want to give a gift bag to the developer.”

Gleghorn convened an informal meeting of a dozen or so residents — including former mayors and council members who were in the original SOC — around her dining room table.

“We were losing sleep over (the fact) that they were taking 120 acres (of city parkland) for the golf course,” she said.

Gleghorn was surprised when more than 100 people volunteered to circulate petitions opposing the idea — and more than 1,700 people signed them in the first few months.

The Gleghorns worked more than 40 hours a week on the cause, turning their basement into the group’s war room.

To heighten their visibility, group members began wearing blue T-shirts.

To counter the developer’s financial resources, the group created its own Web site (www.palosverdes.com/socii) to disseminate its views.

And in an attempt to advance a viable alternative for the land, the group began promoting its own vision of a park at Point Vicente, successfully winning its inclusion in the environmental analysis of the resort.

“We didn’t want to be always against things, we wanted to be for the public park,” Gleghorn said.

For many in the community, Gleghorn exemplified the community leadership the council had abrogated.

Despite repeated calls from SOC II, Stern and advisory panels such as the Planning Commission, the council steadfastly refused to determine the appropriate use of city parkland before the project began wending its way through the approval process.

As the resort design was modified, the amount of city parkland the developer wanted decreased to about 60 acres, but for Gleghorn, it wasn’t the acreage, it was the principle.

The turning point came last summer when McTaggart nominated former school board trustee Peter Gardiner to complete the final few months of departing Councilman Lee Byrd’s term.

When Gardiner surprisingly expressed his opposition to the project’s use of municipal parkland at a City Council campaign breakfast at Gleghorn’s home, SOC II suddenly realized it had three votes on the five-member panel that backed its position.

And Destination found itself politically outmaneuvered. Project Manager Mike Mohler declined to be interviewed for this article.

As with the original SOC, which successfully took on the county bureaucracy, tenacious residents had beaten back a well-connected, well-financed opponent.

“It’s been fun,” Gleghorn said. “When you get out with people and you’re all united for a cause that’s when you really get to know people.”

The Gleghorns plan to disband the informal group as soon as it becomes apparent the city land issue is dead.

That’s looking increasingly likely. On Wednesday the council is expected to formally put the project on hold indefinitely and will give the developer a six-month deadline to either bring a revamped project back to the city or withdraw its application.

“She surprised me from day one with the success that she had,” McTaggart said. “But I think an awful lot of people agree with her. . . It’s amazing what she was able to accomplish, and maybe the developer will have a better project as a result.”

Monday, November 5, 2001