Coastal Panel Rejects Plan for Beach Homes : Development: Ruling is praised by environmentalists as a key victory for protecting the coastline.

In what environmentalists hailed as a key victory for protecting the coastline, the California Coastal Commission has rejected a developer’s plans to build luxury homes on a private Malibu beach.

By a 6-5 vote, the state panel, meeting in Los Angeles on Tuesday, rejected the plans of Norman Haynie and his associates to build the first of up to 17 houses on pristine Lechuza Beach.

The vote stunned supporters and opponents alike after Commissioner Dorill Wright, one of the panel’s more conservative members and one who had long expressed support for the project, decided at the last minute to vote against it.

“When you least expect it, they do the right thing in spite of themselves,” said Sara Wan, a Malibu resident and vice-chairwoman of the League for Coastal Protection, a statewide environmental group.

Commissioner Madelyn Glickfeld of Malibu, who led the opposition to the project, called it one of the most important decisions for coastal preservation that the panel has made.

“This (was) really a test as to whether we (were going) to be a Coastal Commission or not,” she said.

The commission majority ruled that Haynie and his associates had no right to build on their own property--a 1,600-foot-long stretch of sandy beach--because to do so would violate a part of the 1976 Coastal Act that prohibits seawalls from being built except to protect existing structures.

State officials had said the houses proposed by the developer would be unsafe without a seawall.

Haynie declined to comment on the outcome, but his lawyer, Sherman Stacey, called the ruling “wrong” and said his clients will seek to have it overturned in court.

Stacey said that to deny the owners the right to build on their own property was tantamount to confiscating the property, since the owners have no other use for it. He added that if the state wants the beach, it should buy it.

Haynie and his partners acquired the property in January from the Adamson Cos. They have said that, if unable to build there, they want at least $15 million for it. A group of homeowners in the gated, private community that borders the beach has offered $2.1 million.

Opponents had warned that approval would set a devastating precedent, opening the way to widespread development on parts of the state’s 1,100-mile coastline now off-limits to construction.

The commission has only allowed seawalls to be built when a new project is a so-called infilling of an already developed area, such as when a vacant lot is sandwiched between two houses. Opponents said that to apply the infill principle to the Malibu project, as the developer wanted, would have opened long stretches of protected beaches to residential development.

Peter Douglas, the commission’s executive director, told the panel, “If ever there was a proper case to deny a proposed land use, this is it.”

But until Wright’s unexpected vote, opponents had not been optimistic about the chances for blocking the project.

Wright, a former Ventura County Supervisor who has served on the commission for 19 years, said he broke with the panel’s other conservative members on the issue “because I was tired of wrestling with it and thought (voting no) would be the quickest way of getting it resolved.”

“Either way it fell, the decision was going to be decided in court,” he said. “I don’t regard what we did as final, by any means.”

Observers said involvement by Gov. Pete Wilson may have helped to tip the scales against the project.

In an unusual move, the non-voting member of the panel, a Wilson appointee from the state Land and Coastal Resources Agency, strongly urged that the project be rejected, citing the governor’s concern for the precedent that it could set.

William Shafroth, the Wilson appointee, said the governor’s office and the resources agency had received numerous phone calls from environmentalists and others concerned about the project.

A source familiar with the commission said Shafroth had privately pressured Wright and the three other commissioners appointed by former Gov. George Deukmejian to vote against the project. Reappointment of the four is subject to Wilson’s approval. Nevertheless, the other three--Steve MacElvaine, Bonnie Neely and Donald McInnis--voted for the project.

“He (Shafroth) sat on them pretty hard,” said the source, who spoke on condition of anonymity. “In a close vote like this, it only took one of the four to go the other way for it to make the difference.” Commissioners Mark Nathanson and David Malcolm also voted for the project.

Both the developer and a group whose homes are on the bluffs overlooking Lechuza Beach had offered competing plans to provide public access to the beach.

Commissioner Lily Cervantes of Salinas, who voted against the project, said public access was her main concern. But she referred to the arguments on both sides as “a pile of manure” and accused the homeowners of wanting to preserve the beach exclusively for themselves.

In other matters related to Malibu, the commission:

* Rejected a developer’s plan to grade 262,000 cubic yards of dirt and build 52 condominiums on 35 acres near Trancas Canyon Road and Tapia Drive in western Malibu. The vote against the so-called Trancas Town project was 5 to 4.

* Postponed, at the developer’s request, a hearing on whether to allow 38 condominiums to be built near Lunita and Bailard roads, also in western Malibu.