SAN LUIS OBISPO — Poring over piles of maps and deeds in a bland government office, Larry Kelly might easily be mistaken for Dilbert's quintessential cubicle man.
But the 54-year-old senior county planner is no common drone laboring listlessly behind his partition. Through a quirk of circumstances, key decisions about the future of the spectacular, 83,000-acre Hearst Ranch are being made not by some elected politician or blue ribbon committee but by this self-effacing, bespectacled government worker.
The documents piled on Kelly's desk represent the Hearst Corp.'s application for 279 "certificates of compliance," which could open the door to development of the ranch or, at the least, dramatically boost its sale value. Either way, they are critical to the future disposition of one of the last open swaths of California's 1,100-mile coastline.
Following paper trails as far back as 150 years, Kelly is trying to confirm Hearst assertions that much of the ranch once was subdivided into buildable parcels.
After a month, Kelly is about halfway through his research. Most of the applications, he said, will probably be approved. "About 95% [of the parcels] were created by the federal government," he said, suggesting their authenticity.
Even if all are approved, that won't settle the question of what to do with the sprawling seaside ranch. But it will give the Hearst empire a powerful card to play as it negotiates a possible sale of the property with conservation organizations.
All of which has put this 23-year county employee in the middle of one of the most hotly contested land-use debates in the United States. Kelly knows environmentalists and lobbyists are looking over his shoulder. Members of the press have trooped into his office to peer into the fat binders of old deeds, some based on measurements taken by men on horseback stringing ropes along boundaries.
"It's kind of nerve-racking," Kelly said of the attention. "This is much more political" than most of his work.
What's at stake is one of California's more mythic monuments to human accomplishment. Mining millionaire George Hearst began assembling the oak-dotted Central California tablelands from local homesteaders in the 19th century. His son William built his own Taj Mahal on a hill in San Simeon.
Today, the ranch looks much as it did when publishing baron William Randolph Hearst lived there. Cattle graze alongside the deer, zebra and aoudad that he imported in the 1930s for his amusement.
