OCEANSIDE - Staff members of a powerful body that holds sway over developments along the California coast have recommended steep fees be imposed on hotel and motel developers in this city's downtown area that would pay for hostels, campgrounds and RV parks for those who can't afford high-end hotel rooms.

Critics said the fees are unreasonable and could kill development.

The precedent-setting recommendation was made Wednesday by staff members of the California Coastal Commission. The commission is considering an amendment to the city's Local Coastal Program that would pave the way for the downtown Oceanside Beach Resort, a $187 million beachfront project that includes investor-owned units known as condo-hotel rooms and fractional time shares.

The recommendation calls for developers who demolish and rebuild a hotel or motel in the downtown redevelopment area to pay $30,000 per unit for half of any additional rooms.

As well, the staff is proposing an in-lieu fee of $30,000 per room on 25 percent of those that are not "lower cost" in all new hotels and motel projects.

Deborah Lee, district manager for the San Diego Coast district office of the Coastal Commission, said Friday that "lower cost" is "something in the order of $100 a night" for Southern California.

The fee would amount to $2.9 million for the Oceanside Beach Resort alone, said Kathy Baker, the city's redevelopment manager, in a memo sent Thursday to council members and city staff.

Jeremy Cohen, senior vice president for S.D. Malkin, the development company proposing the resort, said Friday that the fee would be an unreasonable financial burden on the project "without any basis in reality."

Cohen noted that the recommendation hasn't been adopted by the commission.

"The staff has recommended this in many other cases, but nothing of this magnitude has been approved," Cohen said. "It's certainly inappropriate in Oceanside, which has a preponderance of affordable accommodations and is trying to fulfill its mandated program for a high-quality resort."

The commission will consider the staff recommendation at its Dec. 12 meeting in San Francisco, and a contingent from Oceanside will be there, Deputy Mayor Rocky Chavez said Friday.

"I'm all for access, tents and RVs," said Chavez, "but for them (the commission) to basically assess a tax on people is wrong and shortsighted. The reality is no one's going to pay it and you'll end up instead with no redevelopment."

But Lee said the recommendation flows from the commission's concern that, as more and more high-end development occurs along the coast, individuals and families of modest means will be less able to enjoy the beach.

"There just isn't the development of lower-cost facilities occurring," she said. "There just aren't the support facilities if a family wants to come and stay at the beach for vacation."

The commission has tacked similar fees onto hotel-condo projects in Encinitas and Huntington Beach, but never addressed an entire redevelopment area as is being recommended for Oceanside.

In 2006, for example, Doug Yavanian of KSL Encinitas Resort Co. was forced to pay a $220,000 fee for a luxury condominium-hotel on an Encinitas bluff because the public's access to the privately owned rooms would be limited.

The money was reserved for a public or nonprofit agency to build low-cost lodgings or buy land for such facilities in Encinitas or Carlsbad.

Lee said the recommendation to include Oceanside's redevelopment area is appropriate because the commission's staff feels "it's important to have conditions that will maintain existing stock (of low-cost rooms) as well as address the need to plan ahead and preserve new, lower cost amenities."

The commission would rather see developers build lower-cost facilities than pay in-lieu fees, but if that doesn't happen, she said, the in-lieu fees will be used to build the campgrounds and hostels.

Developers would identify an account holder in conjunction with the Coastal Commission, such as a nonprofit, the state parks and recreation department or the city, and the in-lieu fees would go into that account. If they were not used to build a lower-cost facility in Oceanside in 10 years, the money could be used to build a campground of hostel somewhere else in Southern California.

Oceanside City Manager Peter Weiss said Friday that city staff members will meet Monday to go over the recommendation, which was given to the city late Wednesday. City Hall was closed Friday.

He said a "reasonable" fee would be fair, if the money goes to something specific. Part of being "reasonable," he said, would be knowing what the city would be paying for.

Weiss suggested a regional program addressing low-cost beach accommodations would be more equitable.

Contact staff writer Marga Kellogg at (760) 901-4067 or mkellogg@nctimes.com.