Beached Oceanside Landowners Want to Raze Strand Development Ban

Some coastal property owners in Oceanside, angry that they can’t sell or develop their land despite the city’s beachfront renaissance, have organized to demand that a 10-year-old building ban be lifted.

The state Coastal Commission imposed the moratorium on a six-block, 51-parcel section of the South Strand, fearing new construction in the largely deteriorated area would worsen beach erosion.

Although the area has remained basically unchanged since the prohibition went into effect, other parts of The Strand have blossomed from a blighted, high-crime area into an attractive stretch of upscale condos, new parks and rehabilitated houses.

Finally, South Strand property owners had enough, and 28 of them recently formed the South Strand Assn. to urge city officials to petition the Coastal Commission for relief.

“The property owners are getting absolutely frustrated this thing isn’t being lifted,” said Richard Eisendrath, the association’s chairman and co-owner of a nine-unit apartment building erected in the 1940s.

He and his partners want to replace their building with beachfront condos, partly for their personal occupancy, but they are blocked from undertaking the project.

“The effect of the moratorium has been suppressed property values,” said Eisendrath. “Our dream is to have a condo on the beach, but the moratorium stymies everything.”

Although, an Oceanside real estate agent, and his partners are eager to improve their property, some owners don’t have time to wait.

Joyce Larson and her husband, Don, have owned five units on two adjoining lots since 1978, and they want to sell. “We’d like to retire. If we were 15 years younger, this would be great,” she said.

Last November, the couple had a deal with a buyer, but, “three days before the escrow was scheduled to close, it fell apart,” Larson said. She said the erstwhile buyer “couldn’t get financing” because lending institutions are reluctant to get involved in areas with building restrictions.

“We should have the right to sell at a decent return on our investment after so many years,” Larson said.

She’s especially upset because people with coastal holdings outside the moratorium area but near eroded beaches have been able to sell or develop their property.

“I feel it’s discriminatory,” she said.

South Strand owners are mobilizing now, in part because the city’s innovative sand bypass operation has proven it can distribute sand via a long pipeline to keep beaches from eroding.

To owners, that signifies the time to end the prohibition on South Strand building. They met Wednesday night with city officials, who agreed to explore a request to the Coastal Commission to remove the ban.

There appears to be sensitivity toward the property owners’ plight.

“I think we’re ready to start making the motions to lift it (the moratorium) and get some development down there,” said Mayor Larry Bagley.

Dana Whitson, principal assistant to the city manager, said she would also recommend lifting the ban because the sand bypass project “has proved everything they hoped it would prove” and there is no reason to uphold the building limitation.

“The main thing we’ve been waiting on is the sand bypass operation,” she said.

Before the Coastal Commission imposed the moratorium, it had been denying building applications along the South Strand. Besides beach erosion, the commission worried that too much residential building would prohibit parks and visitor attractions from being developed at the beach.

Whitson said it’s in Oceanside’s interest to help South Strand property owners.