Coastal Panel Double Bogeys at Pebble Beach

Last week, just about the time Anita Hill more or less stopped the country with her day before the cameras, a small and troubling drama was played out in Monterey. This event got lost in the news swirl out of Washington, but it’s worth a look.

This drama involves one Minoru Isutani, a man often described in news reports as a “Japanese golf course tycoon.” It may say something about our world that the word tycoon is easily connected to a man who parlays golf courses, but that’s another story.

In any case, Isutani tycooned his way into the ownership of various golf courses in Japan, and last year advanced on the coast of California. Plunking down an estimated $830 million, he bought the best: Pebble Beach, the golf resort that’s served as the backdrop for a thousand television commercials.

Exactly what happened next is a matter of dispute. Some say Isutani realized, too late, that he had overpaid. The cash flow from the hotels and golf courses could not begin to pay off the debt.

Others believe Isutani understood the financial imbalance from the beginning and intended to use the imbalance as a lever to change the very nature of Pebble Beach.

Either way, our tycoon of the links soon dropped a bombshell: He proposed to sell memberships in the golf courses, a la many Japanese resorts. For a consideration of several hundred thousand dollars--the estimates ranged from $150,000 to $740,000--the members would get first dibs on the best tee times. All others would line up behind them.

That’s when the fun began. The locals of Pebble Beach, who for decades have limited visitors to the peninsula by charging $6 to drive around its streets, rose up in a body from their walled estates.

They cried out to the Coastal Commission. This Isutani fellow was trying to limit coastal access! If he gave the best tee times to his members, then public access would perforce be reduced!

And just which “public” were they talking about? Here’s a hint: one round of golf at Pebble Beach costs $200. Of course, if you take a room at the Lodge for $350 per night, the greens fee goes down to $175.

Isutani tried to compromise. He agreed to give priority tee times to “the public” for an hour each day, and to limit the members’ priority to two hours.

But nothing doing. Public access was the cry, and it prevailed. Last week, while all eyes were turned on Anita Hill, the Coastal Commission stood firm for the rights of those who can pony up $200 to knock golf balls into the Pacific, and rejected Isutani’s plan.

Perhaps we should be thankful that this commission managed to find its backbone on any issue. Mind you, this was the same bunch that last month told a Malibu developer it was OK that he bulldozed a two-mile road into the Malibu Hills without a permit and granted him the permit retroactively.

It was the same bunch that could not decide whether it had any position at all on the plan by the Walt Disney Co. to dump enough fill into Long Beach Harbor to create its new theme park.

But with Isutani, the environmental issue was not really the point, eh?

The real issue was otherwise and unspoken. It was this: the prime buyers of those hundred-thousand-dollar memberships at Pebble Beach were not going to be Americans. High-price memberships in golf resorts are not the tradition in America, and who has that kind of money, anyway?

The Japanese. They have the money, they have the passion for golf, and they were the market. If Isutani’s plan went into effect, Americans would have been lining up behind their honorable friends from across the Pacific to hit a ball at Pebble Beach.

And somehow that was unacceptable. In the name of public access, the Coastal Commission chose our own $200-a-day golfers over the lifetime-membership, Japanese golfers.

To those who say I am wrong, let me suggest this test: In a few months Isutani will return to the commission with a plan to build 350 to 400 new houses on the peninsula. He will argue that these houses, like the membership plan, are necessary for the solvency of his company.

Except this plan will not have racial overtones. The houses will be intended for Americans. So let’s see what the commission does. Maybe it will say no to the houses, too.

But I’m betting the opposite. I’m betting the commission blesses this plan, one that will do far more damage to the coast, and Isutani will walk away with the permits he needs.

And then we will know.