Activists Press Geffen for Beach Path

A new nonprofit group of coastal activists has agreed to maintain a never-opened public walkway to the beach across movie and music producer David Geffen’s Malibu estate and is pressuring him to open the gates.

It’s the first time a nonprofit group has tried to force access to the beach through one of Malibu’s private enclaves. The activists say the move is born of frustration with two decades of government inaction.

The group, Access for All, picked the 9-foot-wide easement on the edge of Geffen’s property as a test case because it lies in the heart of a 3-mile stretch of Malibu coastline that is walled off by an unbroken phalanx of multimillion-dollar homes.

“If Mr. Geffen will stand behind his offer to open access, then we want to do this in the most sensitive, tasteful and gentle fashion,” said Steve Hoye, a former Sierra Club fund-raiser who launched Access for All.

If not, Hoye said, he is prepared for a fight. He has lined up lawyers and liability insurance, and will mount a public fund-raising campaign should Geffen or his neighbors resist. Geffen’s neighbors include billionaire businessman Eli Broad, Jeffrey Katzenberg, who co-founded DreamWorks with Geffen, and Nancy Daly Riordan, wife of Richard Riordan, the former mayor and a current candidate for governor.

Geffen declined comment on the access issue, spokesman Andy Spahn said Monday.

But Spahn, who handles such matters, said he welcomed a chance to meet with Access for All to better understand the group’s plans. “We are interested in sitting down with them.”

Property records show Geffen made an “irrevocable offer to dedicate public access” in 1983 in exchange for a permit to remodel his home on Carbon Beach on the seaward side of Pacific Coast Highway.

That was a time when the California Coastal Commission required such promised pathways to the shoreline in exchange for permission to build or remodel homes located between the highway and the beach.

That practice was sharply restricted in 1987, when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled it illegal to force such concessions from property owners as a condition of development. But the courts have upheld the validity of easements that were dedicated by property owners before the ruling.

However, many of these “offers to dedicate” public access expire after 21 years. It was assumed that would be enough time for cities, counties, park agencies or nonprofit organizations to adopt these easements, maintain walkways or staircases, install trash cans and assume liability should anyone get hurt.

But the threat of lawsuits, budget cuts and other headaches have led to inaction by most public agencies, particularly in Malibu. As a result, many of the 1,300 offers to dedicate land along the state’s 1,100-mile coast are set to expire in the next few years, prompting the interest of nonprofit groups to adopt them.

Some Malibu residents oppose opening these walkways, saying the beaches have no lifeguards, and limited parking could create a traffic hazard.

The Geffen easement, which connects Pacific Coast Highway to the public beach below the mean high tide line, was set to expire in 2004. So Hoye, executive director of Access for All, decided to make it a priority.

Hoye’s group, which he co-founded with Malibu environmental activists Marcia Hanscom and Robert “Roy” van de Hoek, spent months drawing up management plans for the path. Earlier this month, the group won approval for the adoption from the Coastal Commission and the state Coastal Conservancy, ensuring the Geffen easement will never expire.

Yet opening it to the public is another matter.

Unlike other long-promised walkways blocked by tennis courts and concrete walls, the Geffen easement would be easy to open--physically. All it would take is opening a set of handsome wooden gates. Geffen has already separated this strip of sand from the rest of his estate with a wall.

Hoye said he wants to install automatic time locks on the gates so they open at sunrise and close at sunset--to be consistent with Los Angeles County beach hours of operation.

Access for All also adopted three other easements that Geffen offered to the public over the years in exchange for building a sea wall to protect his property that extends across four oceanfront lots. These horizontal easements run for 225 feet along on the sandy beach in front of Geffen’s estate and would be available for beach-goers to spread their towels and blankets.

Hoye wants to post signs on the gate and the beach marking the location of the public walkway and the 225-foot stretch of public sunbathing area.

The signs, he said, would also ask the public to “Please respect homeowner’s 10-foot privacy buffer” along the sea wall.

“Access for All would like to move forward to survey and open these new easements as soon as is mutually convenient, and would like to meet with your representatives to assure that this process is carried out with the utmost sensitivity to both your interests and those of the People of California,” Hoye wrote in a Jan. 25 letter to Geffen.

If the walkway is opened, it will be the first in Malibu since 1981, when Los Angeles County unveiled the Zonker Harris Access Way about 1,000 feet up the coast.

Linda Locklin, coastal access manager for the Coastal Commission, said the Coastal Act allows nonprofit groups to open and maintain access ways.

The Mendocino Land Trust in 1996 became the first nonprofit in California to open such an access way to the shoreline. It now operates two such pathways to the sea.

“We had a wine and cheese opening one day and got sued the next day by the property owner,” Locklin recalled. Ultimately, the Coastal Commission and the land trust prevailed in court.