Commission Extends Boundaries of Coastal Zone to Scenic Bluffs

The California Coastal Commission this week voted to expand the state’s coastal zone to include all of the scenic bluffs in Playa del Rey and part of Westchester, a change that is likely to significantly slow the pace of construction of bluff-top mansions that has occurred there in recent years.

The commission, meeting in Marina del Rey, voted 7 to 1 Tuesday to move the coastal boundary line as much as 150 vertical feet up the bluffs, despite objections from Howard Hughes Realty, owner of most of the undeveloped land in the area.

Hughes attorney William R. Lindsay said in an interview after the vote that the boundary change will make it more difficult to build on the bluffs because future developments will be required to conform to state Coastal Act requirements.

“We don’t understand why this was done to us,” he said.

Extensive construction along the bluffs of palatial homes, most costing upwards of $1 million and visible for miles, has sparked criticism on aesthetic and environmental grounds in recent years. Environmental advocates have warned that further building will threaten wildlife habitat essential to the health of the Ballona Wetlands that lie at the base of the bluffs.

To tighten building regulations and protect the bluffs, Los Angeles City Councilwoman Ruth Galanter sought the boundary change beginning in early 1988.

The lower portion of the bluffs west of Lincoln Boulevard were placed in the coastal zone after the Coastal Commission was established in 1976. But the most valuable bluff-top property, offering spectacular views of Santa Monica Bay and the entire Westside from Malibu to downtown Los Angeles, was not included.

In seeking the boundary change, planners for the city of Los Angeles said the bluffs provide “the upland habitat necessary to ensure the diversity of wildlife and native plant communities” of the Ballona Wetlands.

“Expanding the coastal boundary will provide additional protection and regulations, similar to the rest of the ecosystem to the north,” the planners wrote in a staff report.

The city is also developing plans to regulate future development along the entire length of the bluffs--which rise as much as 300 feet above the Ballona Wetlands and stretch for about three miles from Sepulveda Boulevard nearly to the ocean.

The Coastal Commission’s action will affect 28 parcels of land west of Lincoln Boulevard. Only about 8.75 acres will actually be added to the coastal zone, but because this acreage includes fractional parts of several large parcels, development on as much as 70 acres may be affected.

The largest bluff-top parcel affected is a 40-acre site just west of Lincoln Boulevard owned by Hughes Realty, a real estate arm of the empire of the late Howard Hughes.

Hughes Realty, according to attorney Lindsay, eventually intends to build single-family residences on the 40-acre property.

Another large parcel affected by the Coastal Commission decision is a 25-acre tract owned by the Southern California Gas Co., which uses the bluff-top location to inject and withdraw natural gas stored in a vast underground field that extends from Venice to Westchester.

Lindsay said Hughes Realty does not want to go to two agencies--the Los Angeles City Council and the Coastal Commission--to obtain development approvals. He said the firm was led to believe by Galanter and her staff that construction of single-family residences on bluff-top property in the area would be excluded from the dual permit requirement.

But Coastal Commission Executive Director Peter Douglas said no such exclusion is possible. And commission Vice Chairman Steve MacElvaine told Lindsay that someone “led you down the primrose lane.”

Galanter’s legislative deputy, Jim Bickhart, said the councilwoman did promise to try to get an exemption for the bluff-top properties but never indicated that obtaining one was a certainty.

“Howard Hughes Realty . . . has not been friends of the Playa del Rey bluffs,” Bickhart said. MacElvaine cast the lone no vote on the boundary change, saying he did not want to expand the coastal zone when the financially strapped commission is having difficulty with its existing workload.