415 PCH City officials on Monday marked an important milestone in the construction of a public beach club here with the demolition of the Locker Building,an old bath house on the former Marion Davies estate that was built in 1948. Soon, it will be a garden and outdoor picnic area to welcome visitors.
Those at Palisades Park near Georgina Avenue watched as a crew from Midwest Environmental Controls used a yellow back-hoe to rip off the roof of the white, two-story wooden structure.
Demolition is expected to last until May, at which time Pankow Special Projects LP will begin the construction of a new poll house, event house and other amenities as part of the $34.6 million project.
“It’s very exciting to see,” said Joel Daniels, a resident who was taking a morning stroll along the bluffs overlooking 415 PCH, the site of the proposed beach club. “We’ve been waiting for this for a long time — about 10 years or so. It’s almost hard to believe that we’re finally at this point and that in another few years, we’ll be relaxing poolside. It’s fantastic.”
The beach club is expected to open in January 2009.
City officials have been working on building a public beach club for more than a decade, but financial woes and the 1994 Northridge Earthquake derailed a planning effort that was underway. City Hall had been operating the site, formerly the estate of silent movie star Davies, as a seasonal beach club before the earthquake, according to Karen Ginsberg, assistant director of Community and Cultural Services.
The project picked up steam roughly seven years ago when the Annenberg Foundation offered to finance the majority of the project, eventually putting up $27.5 million. That prompted City Hall to hold a series of community meetings in 2005 to get a sense of what residents wanted in a beach club.
The 5.5-acre estate was built by William Randolph Hearst in the late 1920s for Davies, his mistress. It was designed by architect Julia Morgan, who also created Hearst Castle in San Simeon. The estate had 100 rooms, guesthouses, tennis courts, an elaborately decorated swimming pool and dog kennel.
The property was sold in the 1940s to a private party and converted to a hotel and beach club. The state purchased the property in 1960. Under an agreement with the state, City Hall leased it to a private beach club, the Sand & Sea Club, and later operated it as a seasonal public beach facility.
Damaged in the earthquake, all structures except a beach cafe have been “red-tagged,” or designated as unsafe to occupy.
Following an extensive community plan-ning process, in 1999, the council approved a re-use plan that determined the site’s potential as an important public resource, leading to the current development proposal.
The beach club design would preserve and restore the original swimming pool, which is constructed of Italian marble tiles with inlaid designs. The north house would also be rehabilitated along with the interior design, including hand-painted bathroom tile, the marble fireplace, cabinets, and a crystal chandelier.
New facilities include an entry pavilion, an event house and pool house.
As part of the demolition, crews are required to recycle or reuse 75 percent of the Locker Building, including it’s large marble tiles, which will be used in the new pool house, said Voneeyla Simmons, project manager for the beach club.
Demolition crews will be restricted in the number of hours they are allowed to work and transport debris, so as to not hold up traffic and to protect the quality of life of residents living nearby. Work begins at 8 a.m. and ends at 5 p.m. Hauling must be terminated by 2 p.m., Simmons said.
The dream of a public beach club almost died last year when members of the Palisades Beach Property Owners Association and multimillionaire Jonathan Ornstein filed a lawsuit asking a judge to stop the project because City Hall allegedly violated conditions of the California Environmental Quality Act a well as a local law prohibiting the creation of food-serving facilities along the beach.
The plaintiffs also said the beach club would create dangerous driving conditions on an already deadly stretch of PCH, and therefore, a stop light needed to be installed.
City officials made several attempts to appease the residents, including scaling back portions of the facility, as well as the hours of operation. Additional security was also included, and city staff entered into negotiations with the California Department of Transportation to have a traffic signal installed.
A settlement was reached in September of last year. In exchange for dropping the lawsuit an ensuring the project went ahead as scheduled, City Hall has agreed to operate the beach club according to conditions approved by the association and provide around-the-clock security for at least seven years, with certain conditions in effect for 10 years.
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on April 17, 2007. Read the original PDF.