Property Rights at Issue in Beach Battle : Development: Owner clashes with nearby residents over his plan to build up to 16 oceanfront homes. Coastal Commission is expected to review the proposal today.

Just when Anne Kennedy and her Lechuza Beach neighbors thought they were safe, along came Norm Haynie with a plan to wreck their million-dollar ocean views.

Others have tried to build houses on the 1,600-foot-long beach beneath where Kennedy and her neighbors live on some of Malibu’s most spectacular ocean bluffs, but none have matched Haynie’s tenacity.

“He is obsessed with making a great deal of money by building on the beach,” Kennedy said, “but he is making a big mistake.”

Scorned by environmentalists and repeatedly rebuffed by the California Coastal Commission, the developer acknowledges that his ambition to build up to 16 houses on the beach is about as welcome as a tsunami.

He accuses residents of the private, gated community above the beach of wanting to keep Lechuza as their own domain, and he says his property rights have been trampled in the process.

“I am confident we will build those houses because we have the constitutional right to do so,” Haynie said.

Cheered by a Supreme Court decision last June in a South Carolina case, Haynie today will ask the Coastal Commission, meeting in Santa Monica, to reconsider a 1991 ruling that declared the beach--which is in western Malibu about four miles west of Point Dume--off limits to development. A Superior Court judge in November sided with Haynie in ordering the panel to reconsider the case.

Opponents say more is at stake than determining whether a few wealthy homeowners are forced to share their skyline with a new row of beach houses.

Environmentalists and the commission’s own staff contend that approval would set a devastating precedent that could open wide stretches of private beaches to development along the length of the state’s 1,100-mile coastline.

At issue is whether Haynie should be allowed to build on the sandy beachfront he and his associates own, but which state officials say is impossible to develop for safety reasons, without his also being allowed to construct a protective seawall.

Under state law, construction of a seawall on a beach is permitted only to protect existing structures. The law makes an exception for “infill,” where new structures are sandwiched between ones that already exist, but the panel in 1991 ruled that Haynie’s project did not qualify.

“The key danger here is that to approve (it) would essentially write a new definition for infill,” said Sara Wan, a Malibu resident and vice chairwoman of the League for Coastal Protection.

“If that were to happen, it could have devastating consequences for any number of communities up and down the coast,” she said.

In one of its more dramatic votes in recent memory, the commission rejected the project in 1991 by a 6-5 vote after Dorill Wright, one of its more conservative members--and a longtime supporter of the project--decided at the last minute to vote against it.

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 from the state Land and Coastal Resources Agency, a Wilson appointee, strongly urged that the project be rejected, citing the governor’s concern about the precedent it would set.

Sources said that the appointee, William Shafroth, privately pressured Wright and three other gubernatorial appointees to vote against the project. Shafroth declined to be interviewed this week.

While holding to its view on infill, the commission staff has also raised new questions about the property’s ownership and has cited an obscure 1940s law governing navigational easements in recommending that the project be rejected.

Opponents in the past have challenged the location of the mean high-tide line as it relates to Haynie’s property. By law, all land seaward of that mark is public property.

The beach was last surveyed in 1932. Opponents at the 1991 hearing contended that the mark the survey showed was at least 25 feet out to sea.

In recent months the coastal panel’s staff has encouraged the State Lands Commission--the entity that owns public beach property along most of California’s coast--to claim ownership of at least part of Haynie’s property.

The commission staff hired a retired Lands Commission surveyor last October to examine aerial photographs of the beach taken between 1946 and 1989 to estimate the boundaries of Haynie’s property. The surveyor, Francois Uzes, is expected to present his findings at today’s hearing.

A lawyer for Haynie, meanwhile, dismissed the effort as a desperate attempt to throw new obstacles in his client’s way.

“It’s the old kitchen-sink strategy,” said Sherman Stacy, the lawyer. “They’ve thrown in everything including the kitchen sink in the hope that something will work.”

Haynie’s spirits got a boost in June when the Supreme Court ruled in favor of South Carolina property owner David Lucas in a case watched closely by both environmentalists and property rights advocates.

Lucas bought two beachfront parcels in 1986 with plans to build houses on them, but his property became virtually worthless in 1988 after the state passed a law to ban construction on land subject to beach erosion. Lucas filed a lawsuit, relying on the 5th Amendment, which prohibits the taking of private property for public use without just compensation.

In a 6 to 3 decision, the high court ruled that officials can prevent development without compensation if the land use would be a nuisance and cause clear harm to others, but they cannot refuse compensation simply because banning the development would benefit the public.

Haynie contends that his circumstances are remarkably similar to those of Lucas.

Others do not agree.

Deputy Atty. Gen. Peter Kaufman said that while the South Carolina action may have rendered Lucas’ property worthless, Haynie has rejected a $2.1 million offer from residents who do not want to see the beach developed.

“It’s not in the Lucas scenario,” Kaufman said.

In rejecting the residents’ offer, Haynie contended that the property had been appraised for more than $20 million.

“The whole thing comes down to whether or not people have the freedom to use their property in a reasonable manner,” Haynie said. “If the state doesn’t want to see houses built on my property, then let them buy it for a reasonable price.”