In wake of lawsuit
PCH — While confident they have complied with laws regulating development along the coast, city officials wouldn’t say on Monday whether or not they will move forward with plans to build a public beach club at the old Marion Davies estate after a group of residents filed a lawsuit last week challenging the redevelopment project.
The lawsuit, filed Friday in Los Angeles Superior Court by the Palisades Beach Property Owners Association and resident Jonathan Ornstein, does not prevent City Hall from initiating the next phase of the project.
However, city officials would not comment on what their next steps will be since the matter is under litigation, said Deputy City Attorney Cara Silver.
At this point, Silver said only an injunction by a judge could halt the project, which, according to city staff reports, is in the design development phase, with construction scheduled to commence in early 2007. The project, which will transform the old Marion Davies estate at 415 Pacific Coast HIghway into a public beach club complete with an expanded beach house, a pool and public meeting rooms, is expected to be completed by January 2009.
As of Monday evening, attorneys for the beachfront property owners had not filed for an injunction, however, that option remains open, said Bill Delvac, an attorney with Latham and Watkins, which is representing the property owners. Delvac preferred not to reveal any litigation strategy.
The two sides are holding closed-door discussions to see if a settlement . Delvac and Silver said agreements have been reached on several issues, but the two sides are at an impasse when it comes to locking in an operating agreement between City Hall and the property owners.
“We’re always hopeful that a case like this will settle,” Silver said.“However, we are very confident that if we do go to trial, the court will agree that the city fully complied with (the California Environmental Quality Act) and Proposition S,” which limits the development of restaurants or food service facilities in coastal zones, among other provisions.
Prop. S, passed in 1990, was designed to limit large developments on the beachfront, such as large hotels and restaurants. The proposition’s supporters have said publicly that it was never meant to be applied to a public facility.
Those who filed the lawsuit claim City Hall failed to address or omitted several environmental impacts created by the project, and that it violates Proposition S because the beach club would include an event house of more than 6,000 square feet where food would be served. Under the proposition, no food service facility more than 2,000 square feet is allowed in the coastal zone. They argue in the lawsuit that the event house will generate 40 percent of the facility’s revenue, which is a substantial food service operation.
City officials said the event house will not have a kitchen, and food served must be brought in from other locations.
Delvac said his clients will be more than happy to drop the lawsuit if City Hall will agree to a list of conditions dictating the operation of the beach club. The property owners who filed the suit fear that if the beach club starts to lose money, elected officials will reduce the level of security and maintenance at the site.
The property owners also have asked City Hall to force Cal-Trans to install a traffic light at the entrance of the beach club to protect visitors from deadly traffic accidents on a busy PCH. However, Cal-Trans is operated by the state and the city of Santa Monica has no jurisdiction over the placement of traffic lights.
“What we want is very simple,” Delvac said. “The city needs to impose certain conditions and agree to not change those conditions … The city makes the rules. The least they can do is play by them.”
Delvac said City Hall required a traffic light be installed at the location of the public beach club more than a decade ago when a private developer was looking to build there, but when it comes to City Hall pushing its permits through, anything goes.
Delvac stressed that his clients are not opposed to the project, but in fact support the idea of saving the historic estate. They are just seeking a guarantee that it will not fall into disrepair or be neglected in the future, Delvac said.
Councilman Kevin McKeown said city staff has tried for months to reach an agreement with the property owners, and have scaled back operating hours and increased security, lighting and other features in to appease residents.
However, the City Council couldn’t enter into a contract preventing them from being flexible in the future.
After realizing that an agreement couldn’t be reached, McKeown said the City Council had to act for the sake of the city as a whole, and therefore, approved the project in May.
“We went every inch we could in good faith, protecting public access, but doing everything we could to accommodate the concerns of the neighbors as well,” McKeown said. “Our negotiations were apparently met with a preference for law courts over volleyball courts. (The public beach club will be) a community treasure, and the City Council simply could go no further in letting a few neighbors put a lock on the treasure chest.”
If the lawsuit goes forward, Silver said it could take between three and six months to be resolved, during which an injunction could be granted, putting the project on hold.
A delay will most likely increase the cost of construction, which may or may not put the $28 million in funding from The Annenberg Foundation in jeopardy.
Leonard Aube, managing director of The Annenberg Foundation-Los Angeles, said he could not comment on the lawsuit and what effect, if any, it could have on Annenberg’s commitment to fund the project. In past public comments, Aube said Annenberg is very committed to seeing the project to fruition.
The proposed beach club, to be funded primarily by Annenberg, will preserve and restore existing portions of the estate while adding elements to benefit the public, including public meeting rooms, an expanded beach house, pool, cafe and expanded areas for beach activities.
It will be located on 5.5 acres of prime real estate purchased by media mogul William Randolph Hearst in the late 1920s for actress and mistress Marion Davies. It was designed by architect Julia Morgan, who also created Hearst Castle in San Simeon. The original estate had 100 rooms, guesthouses, tennis courts, an elaborately decorated swimming pool and a 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.
Badly damaged in the 1994 Northridge earthquake, all structures except the beach cafe have been “red-tagged,” or designated as unsafe to occupy.
Following an extensive community plan-ning process, the City Council in 1999 approved a re-use plan that determined the site’s potential as an important public resource, leading to the current development proposal.
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on June 27, 2006. Read the original PDF.