Panel Pressures Laguna to Open Private Beaches : Access: Coastal Commission chides city which has the most shore closed to the public in the county.

Fifteen years ago, Robert Burgess bought a bluff-top home above a pristine, surf-chiseled cove in the ritzy, gated community of Three Arch Bay in South Laguna. What he got was a seaside sanctum.

Consider one recent sunny morning. While nearby public beaches were crowded with swimmers and surfers beckoned by the warm ocean water and exceptional swells, the quarter-mile strip of sand curving below Burgess’ back-yard balcony was empty but for a few sea birds.

The reason for the solitude is simple: Jutting rock formations and the community’s own well-locked gates prevent anyone living outside Three Arch Bay from venturing into the picturesque cove. That’s the way residents of the 450-home enclave like it, Burgess said. When they come to the beach, he said, they want to meet friends, not strangers.

But that will change if the California Coastal Commission has anything to do with it. The commission made it clear once more last week that its goal is to open such private community beaches to the public, and it is challenging local governments to make that happen.

At a meeting in Long Beach, the commission criticized the city of Laguna Beach for failing to tackle the politically sticky coastal access issue in its private communities. As an expression of its disapproval, the panel nearly rejected a plan that enables the city government to supplant the commission in approving future developments in the coastal city.

In the end, however, the commission chose a less punitive action and decided to retain land-use control over four of the city’s beachfront communities: Three Arch Bay, Irvine Cove, Treasure Island and Blue Lagoon. The commission is refusing to release its development-permit authority over the gated communities to the city until Laguna Beach proposes a long-term strategic plan for allowing public access to the exclusive beaches.

“The commission has been concerned and continues to be about locked gated communities that preclude access to pocket beaches,” said Peter Douglas, the commission’s executive director.

Expanding public access to the state’s coastline, Douglas noted, was the highest priority of citizens who campaigned for passage of Proposition 20, a 1973 initiative that established the Coastal Commission.

Since then, the commission has used its prerogative to require new coastal developments to provide public beach access, such as the bluff-top park and walkway donated to the public by the developers of the Ritz-Carlton hotel in Dana Point and the Irvine Co.’s dedication of private coastal land and beach access trails at Crystal Cove State Park.

For the past two decades, the commission has used its powers over the development-permitting process to establish more than 2,000 easements over private land on the California coast so the public can reach the shoreline. In those two decades of activity, more than 40 miles of new public beach have been opened up.

But, with few exceptions, the state agency has been unable to pry a public opening through locked-gate communities such as Three Arch Bay and Irvine Cove, which were developed decades before the commission came into being. Residents of such neighborhoods protest strongly that allowing the public through their gates would raise the specter of mammoth parking problems, crime, vandalism and safety liability issues.

In Laguna Beach, the small pocket beaches of Three Arch Bay and Irvine Cove are geographically secluded. Moreover, there is no public access between Aliso Beach and Victoria Beach, a two-mile stretch of sand flanking the private communities of Lagunita, Blue Lagoon and Treasure Island. Of those communities only Lagunita has reached a settlement of the public access issue with the Coastal Commission, dedicating its once-private beachfront to the city of Laguna Beach.

Laguna Beach inherited all but one of its gated communities--and their public access disputes with the Coastal Commission--when the city annexed the unincorporated South Laguna area in 1987.

Ronald Tippets, the county’s chief of coastal planning, said the county had struggled in vain for years to negotiate agreements between the gated communities and the Coastal Commission. For instance, homeowners in Three Arch Bay have in the past expressed a willingness to allow outsiders into their cove on a sign-in basis strictly for scientific research and educational purposes, Tippets said. “But it was very apparent the Coastal Commission would not accept that.”

Those seeking to open up private beaches were dealt a major blow by a 1987 U.S. Supreme Court decision that determined only limited kinds of development within a gated community can trigger the requirement to provide public beach access. The Supreme Court ruled that the California Coastal Commission had no right to force a Ventura couple to give access to the beach in front of their house because the construction project would not impede the public from reaching the shoreline.

Kyle Butterwick, director of community development for Laguna Beach, said the 1987 decision left uncertain how the city will be able to legally force gated communities to provide public access to their beaches. “The city will have to take the initiative and come up with something creative we hope will be acceptable to a diversity of interests,” Butterwick said.

Whatever access plan Laguna Beach eventually adopts for its gated communities is likely to serve as a prototype for other municipalities grappling with the same issue--if it withstands legal challenges and meets the approval of the Coastal Commission.

The commission staff is drafting a letter that will ask the city to spell out exactly how ambitious a new construction project would have to be in a gated community before authorities could legally demand public beach access as a trade-off. The city will also be asked to explore ways of raising funds to purchase access paths from the private communities, using its power of condemnation if necessary.

City officials say they are sympathetic to the Coastal Commission’s mission. Lida Lenney, the mayor pro tem in Laguna Beach, said she believes that most members of the City Council “strongly support public access to all California beaches” and that she was “heartened” to learn that the Coastal Commission is trying to protect the public interest.

Among Laguna Beach’s gated communities, the most likely candidate for public beach access in the future is the Treasure Island Mobile Home Park. In the past, Treasure Island has been eyed for more intense residential development. “If Treasure Island were to be redeveloped, it is a given that public access would be required,” Butterwick said.

Currently, the cove beaches below the bluff-top mobile home park can only be reached by visitors willing to trudge a mile or so from the public beach at Aliso Pier, climb some rocks and slither through a cave or two.

K.P. Rice, a Treasure Island tenant lobbying for a plan to have the city buy the mobile home park, said park tenants favor allowing immediate public access to the beach by building stairways on both sides of the park, but not through it. He said that the streets inside the trailer park are narrow and that there are scarcely enough parking spaces for tenants, let alone the public.

Others are more resolute. Richard Hall, co-owner of Treasure Island, said he has no intention of voluntarily allowing the public on his land. He said that when the mobile home park was purchased three years ago for $43 million, “we paid for a private beach.”

That same sort of attitude prevails at Three Arch Bay. Burgess, president of the community’s homeowners association, said his neighbors would put up a fierce battle if the city tried to seize property for public beach access. The homeowners, he said, “have everything to lose and nothing to gain” from an influx of public beach visitors.

Burgess said he doesn’t expect government pressure for public beach access to cease--nor the community’s vigilance. As a result, Three Arch Bay is wary about launching any development project that could give the Coastal Commission a grip on its beloved cove. “We are very careful about what we put on the table,” he said.

Douglas of the Coastal Commission acknowledged the agency’s predicament. “We cannot tell the homeowner associations or property owners they have to open up the community for public access, not in the absence of some major development or a major change in use,” he said.

Money is also a factor. Douglas said purchasing access ways to private beaches “politically is real tough and in times of scarce resources very difficult.”

But, he added, “the time may come when the population of the state is so great and pressure for recreational outlets becomes so great that public entities will take that step.”

Locals Only

About one-fourth of Orange County’s 42-mile coastline is private property, most of it in the Laguna Beach area where the California Coastal Commission is trying to increase public access. Capistrano Beach area: 16% Surfside: 13% Other areas: 5% Laguna Beach area: 66%

Source: Orange County Environmental Management Agency