A Right to See the Sea? : Residents Up and Down the Coast Are Scrambling to Keep Their Ocean View

Whenever the clatter and mess of development around their Del Mar home preyed on their nerves, Brett and Linda Castile could always look toward the one view that remained uncluttered by the hand of man--that of the sea.

A half block from the ocean, their home is within easy earshot of the big breakers that pound the North County shore on gray winter days. At sunset, the couple often would share a bottle of wine as they gazed off their back porch toward the peaceful blue-gray expanse.

Today, that peace is gone, swallowed up by the condominiums being built by their neighbor and ex-friend, who refuses to alter the project that now eclipses the couple’s cherished ocean view.

But the Castiles are fighting back. They have hired a lawyer and made telephone calls to galvanize neighbors in an effort to take their cause before the city.

Call it a fight for the right to see the sea. The dispute signals a growing trend up and down Southern California’s overpopulated coast--one that has prompted homeowners, lawyers and city officials to begin asking similar questions:

“Just how much is a view of the sea worth to coastal dwellers?” “How hard will people fight to keep their ocean vista?” “And how can the government ensure that a room with a view stays that way forever?”

Steve Scola was everybody’s friend when he bought the property next door to the Castile’s 11th Street home four years ago. He doted on the couple’s four children, sent them birthday cards, gave them presents.

But most important of all, he promised that no development of his property would ever block the couple’s view of the ocean, Linda Castile said.

“He said he was going to preserve our view of the sea at any cost,” she recalled. “And we believed him. We had no reason not to.”

Now workmen are putting the finishing touches on the third of four condominiums Scola is building on the property--structures that dwarf the Castile’s two-story home, casting long shadows in the middle of the afternoon and blocking more than 90% of their ocean vista.

As both their sunny solitude and the resale value of their home diminish with the pounding of each nail at the adjacent condos, Scola has told the couple, they said, that there is nothing he can do--the project is three-fourths completed.

On Monday night, the Del Mar City Council will hold a special administrative hearing in an attempt to reconcile the neighbors’ differences. The Castiles claim that Scola’s condominium project exceeds the city’s height and bulk limitations, although they acknowledge that they never got involved in the process when the city first was reviewing Scola’s plans.

As Del Mar tries to resolve one view problem, the Solana Beach City Council also will meet Monday night to consider what city officials there call a major view ordinance proposal.

The issue has arisen repeatedly since Solana Beach incorporated in 1986, said city planning director Steve Apple. So this fall, the City Council appointed a citizens zoning committee to explore ways to limit the squabbles that arise as people pack in larger and larger homes along the coast.

“In Solana Beach, there has been no legal mechanism to protect private views,” he said. “Our policy has been to encourage neighbors to work it out among themselves. But we’re going to reach a point very soon when that’s just not going to be good enough.”

The city is considering an ordinance to establish a three-member review panel that would make binding decisions in otherwise unsolvable view disputes, he said.

“It’s a growing problem in affluent cities all along the Southern California coast,” Apple said. “When we did our homework, we found that there were already enough models to follow--existing view ordinances in Los Angeles-area cities such as Palos Verdes, Buena Ventura and other places along the coast.”

Such measures are applauded by coastal North County homeowners like Walt Baldwin, who sees his ocean vista not only as money in the bank but as an aesthetic treasure, the great Pacific pacifier.

Baldwin, a Del Mar neighbor of the Castiles who surfs daily, has resisted many efforts to encroach on his ocean view.

“One wall begets another wall begets another wall--and we’ve got to put a stop to it somewhere,” he said. “Having an ocean view has been a great focus point for my life, being able to say ‘I’m on this map, on this coast.’

“It’s important for water-oriented people to at least have a glimpse of the sea. There’s nothing more powerful than watching a wave break and see dolphins and other wildlife just beneath the surface.

“The sheer power of that gives my life balance. And every person who comes to this town does so, I think, just to see that view.”

That’s why, Baldwin said, the threat of losing a view will move people to all sorts of protracted measures.

“People will muster just about every effort they have to protect their views,” he said. “It’s an emotional issue, as opposed to being a logical issue.”

It’s a financial issue as well.

The greater the ocean view, realtors say, the greater the cash value of the home. It just depends on the location of the home, the health of the housing market and the sheer scope of the view.

“But it doesn’t have to be a panoramic view to increase the value of the house,” said Bill Smalley, a realtor with Grubb & Ellis in Del Mar. “If you take two pretty similar properties, one with a view and one without, the difference could be as much as $100,000.”

The fights over views have proven to be a financial windfall for lawyers as well. Leo Wilson, the attorney representing the Castiles, handled a half-dozen such cases last year and considered more.

“I wouldn’t want to make my living solely on this type of work, but I imagine you could,” he said. “View certainly plays a role in a lot of homeowner disputes.”

Of all North County cities, insiders say, Del Mar has quite possibly been most distracted by the issue of view disputes.

Over the years, newer custom-made homes have blocked out the views of many less-expansive beach and hillside cottages built after the turn of the century.

“A lot of fairly affluent people have moved in and built elaborate homes, sealing off the smaller homes owned by people who have lived here a long time,” said Arlene Carsten, a former mayor of Del Mar.

“The longtime residents have made a lot of noise because they want the community to stay the way it was.”

But buildings haven’t been the only things to block expensive views. In 1984, while running for a City Council seat, Lewis Hopkins learned firsthand just how many Del Mar residents were miffed by their neighbor’s trees and shrubbery blocking their view of the sea.

“I went door-to-door to chat with people and find out what their concerns were,” recalled the retired rear admiral who also served as Del Mar mayor. “And, strange as it may seem, the thing they complained about most was the vegetation that grew up over the years to block their view. A lot of people were hopping mad about it.”

Hopkins made vegetation blockage a primary issue after he won his seat on the council. He and other council members established a Vegetation View Blockage Committee that studied view ordinances in the upscale communities of Sausalito, Tiburon, Belvedere and El Cerrito in the San Francisco Bay Area.

The committee proposed that the city form a vegetation control board that would have the power to order pruning of any greenery that substantially blocked or obstructed scenic views.

The City Council never passed the measure, however, instead adopting a resolution encouraging residents to resolve vegetation view blockage disputes through a city-contracted mediator, with the city footing some of the cost.

Pat JaCoby, former member of the now-defunct committee, said she always liked the ordinances in some Northern California coastal cities that preclude foliage and building projects from blocking a homeowner’s morning or afternoon sun.

“It’s eventually going to come to that,” she said. “If we continue to pack the coastline, allowing people to build one house on top of another, we’re just going to have to be more guarded about our views--the things we bought the home for in the first place.”

Sometimes, the only solution to a view dispute is to have one of the neighbors move away--as in the case of two actors from Del Mar.

The long-running battle was set off by several trees on property owned by Navarre Perry that blocked the view of Don Kennedy, a neighbor who lived directly up the hill. No matter what Kennedy tried, Perry refused to cut or trim his trees.

“One of the things those trees did was offer me some privacy from the houses above me,” said Perry, a lawyer-turned-actor.

“He wanted a 180-degree ocean view. But who has the greatest right to see the ocean, the guy highest on the hill so nobody else below him has the right to build or grow things? If that’s the case, pretty soon you’re going to have a pretty nice desert around here.”

And besides, Perry said, there are beautiful vistas other than an ocean view. “There’s the rustic quality of trees and winding roads that’s as nice as any ocean waves,” he said.

The two took each other to court, and Perry was awarded $89 after Kennedy cut away several tree branches with a power saw.

In 1987, however, Perry sold his home to move closer to San Diego and now has what he describes as a gorgeous view overlooking rugged canyons near Balboa Park. But nobody is happier about the move than Kennedy.

Ironically, three months after Perry’s departure, a storm blew down the most obtrusive tree. And his new, more cooperative neighbor did the rest, removing the others, Kennedy said.

“Every morning when I get up and enjoy my ocean view, I take a deep breath and say ‘Gee, I’m glad Navarre Perry moved!’ ”

Del Mar officials maintain that, despite the death of the tree-pruning proposal, the city still fiercely protects a homeowner’s right to what the city calls his “primary scenic view corridor.”

“We can’t always protect 180-degree ocean views, but people get their day in court in Del Mar,” said James Sandoval, city planning director. “Before any building project is approved, the city’s design review board meets with a particular eye toward view concerns.

“Many nights, they go into the wee hours of the next morning just to make sure that neighbors around a project are satisfied with what’s going to be built around them.”

Sandoval said several North County cities, including Solana Beach and Encinitas, have examined the way Del Mar considers view blockage in the building permit approval process. The board reviews plans if notified by neighbors of the proposed project.

“It’s an important step along the way to get a building permit approved,” he said. “Because, if things such as primary views aren’t protected, city planning becomes more like Russian roulette.”

But the design review board process didn’t help Brett and Linda Castile.

Their trust in their neighbor persuaded them to bypass the design review board’s hearing into Steve Scola’s condominium project--after being assured by him that their presence wasn’t necessary, Linda Castile said.

She said they also didn’t require Scola to install story poles before the condominiums were begun--as a preview to the projected height of the project.

And now, rather than being clustered in the middle of the lot as he had promised, Scola has spread out his buildings, moving his neighbors to take action.

Del Mar City Planner Sandoval said officials have been out to check Scola’s project and have found it to be within city codes.

Scola would not comment publicly on the dispute and has repeatedly refused to meet with the Castiles and a city-appointed mediator to work out a solution.

That’s fine with Linda Castile. On Monday night, she’s going to do some talking--telling the Del Mar City Council just how she feels.

“My husband is an oceanographer and a surfer, and nothing riles him, not even when he has to go to Washington to talk before a bunch of bureaucratic paper pushers,” she said.

“Until this.”