Long Beach development czar Craig Beck insists he warned contractor Sean Hitchcock more than a month ago that it would be illegal to build soccer fields on the 8.38 acres of wetlands-adjacent property near Studebaker Road and Loynes Avenue that Hitchcock was planning to purchase from developer Tom Dean for $2.3 million.

“I would be surprised to hear Mr. Hitchcock say he was given permission to do anything like that on that land,” says Beck—executive director of the Redevelopment Agency and director of the city’s Department of Development Services—in a telephone interview from Monterey, where the Long Beach RDA received a communications award at the California Redevelopment Association conference. “Mr. Hitchcock was fully informed relative to the need for getting permits and relative to what permits he would be able to get under the land’s zoning.”

Hitchcock, a successful contractor whose Signal Hill-based 2H Construction company has worked frequently on Long Beach city and school projects, did not respond to several requests by The District Weekly for an interview. But he told LBreport.com that city officials approved of his plans to carve a recreation area into the property.

“I’ve already met with the City before about plans of some kind of venture with them to do open park space, which is what the city seems to want,” Hitchcock told LBreport.com on March 21—the morning after two days of complaints from outraged residents finally brought Long Beach City Manager Pat West to the site to stop the heavy equipment that was scraping and grading the protected land. “I’ve already told them I’m in tune with doing what they want to do.”

Hitchcock wouldn’t say which city officials he had spoken with, but at Tuesday evening’s Beer & Politics forum at Gallagher’s Pub assistant city manager Suzanne Frick revealed that Hitchcock had met with Beck and Third District Councilman Gary DeLong.

Beck confirms that three men discussed Hitchcock’s plans to buy the land—and his plans to convert it into soccer fields—in a meeting in DeLong’s office on the 14^th floor of City Hall.

“It was an impromptu meeting—it wasn’t on my calendar,” Beck says. “I got a call from the councilman and popped upstairs. [Hitchcock] expressed a desire to build soccer fields. I said, ‘That sounds good; I’ll look at the zoning.’

“But when I looked at the maps the zoning said the land was brackish ponds and wetlands, and I expressed that to him—before he closed escrow.”

So was Beck surprised on March 20 when he learned that Hitchcock had brought trucks and bulldozers and a huge pile of waste asphalt onto the land, knocking down nest-filled trees, covering up the warrens of burrowing animals and uncovering potential toxins that had been sealed in what used to be a city dump?

“I was surprised after our meeting to find that he had continued to close escrow on that land,” says Beck, “considering that the entitlement challenge had there was so significant.”

But Beck makes it clear that passing judgment is not his job.

“My job is to work with property owners, and I will continue to work with Mr. Hitchcock, walking him through the process on his land,” says Beck. “He has been very cooperative in trying to correct what has been done there.”

Tags: 2H Construction, Craig Beck, gary delong, lbreport.com, Long Beach Redevelopment Agency, pat west, Sean Hitchcock, soccer fields, The District Weekly, Tom Dean, wetlands