Judge Refuses to Halt Vote on Fate of Del Mar Beach

An attempt to halt a Tuesday election on turning over a strip of sand beach to the City of Del Mar failed Friday when a Superior Court judge refused to issue a temporary restraining order.

A suit, filed by two Del Mar beachfront property owners against the city and the Del Mar Civic Assn., challenges a move by the nonprofit civic group to turn over an 11-block strip of ocean frontage to the city and seeks to halt an association membership vote on the proposal.

Presiding Superior Court Judge Donald Martinson denied the property owners’ request for a restraining order, ruling that the election had not been improperly called. But Joseph Dzida, attorney for property owners Norman Elliott and Robert Wilson, said his clients may decide to appeal Martinson’s ruling before the Tuesday vote or pursue their lawsuit challenging the transfer of the beach property to the city.

Gordon Denyes, president of the civic association, said the group was formed in 1938 for the sole purpose of accepting the gift of the strip of sandy beach between 18th and 29th streets and of preserving it as a “private bathing beach” open to all residents of Del Mar.

In recent years, protective seawalls and other structures have threatened to intrude on the strip, he said. “The costs of potential litigation involving encroachments and of obtaining liability insurance against claims of personal or property damage is beyond the economic means of the association,” Denyes said in a sworn statement opposing the lawsuit and restraining order.

The seven-member civic association board of directors has voted, 6-1, to transfer the land to the city and to dissolve the corporation in order to avoid becoming embroiled in threatened litigation between the city and oceanfront property owners.

City officials claim that the beach is public property upon which private-property owners are encroaching. The property owners claim that the strip of Del Mar Civic Assn. land is privately owned but used by the public.

Dzida, in the suit, charged that the city officials “are executing a plan to pressure the members of the (civic association) board into ‘donating’ the property to the city . . . in order to assume exclusive control over its management and obtain standing to dispute the claims of adjacent lot owners who claim easements upon the subject property.”

The suit, which was filed Friday, also seeks $500,000 in punitive damages from the six association board members who voted to transfer the beach land to the city. Punitive damages are not being sought against a seventh board member, Lawrence Fletcher, who voted against the land transfer, Dzida said.

The Del Mar City Council has scheduled action adopting a beach overlay zone ordinance at its Monday meeting. This would impose time limits on beachfront property owners to remove privately owned structures from the public beach.

Although any Del Mar property owner may belong to the civic association, only 107 property owners are entitled to vote, Denyes said, because other association members had not paid their dues by an April 1 deadline set by the board.