Alice’s Restaurant on Malibu Pier : Gets a Last Call From Its Landlord : Landmark: The state says the famed eatery, named after an Arlo Guthrie song, is behind on its rent. The business’s operator charges that officials reneged on a promise to repair the wharf.

Two decades of earthquakes, mudslides and furious winter storms could not topple Alice’s Restaurant from its landmark perch on the Malibu Pier. But now the celebrity hangout faces a more potent threat: eviction by its landlord, the state of California.

The state’s Department of Parks and Recreation, which owns the pier, hit the restaurant owners with a 30-day eviction notice Tuesday, demanding “significant amounts of unpaid back rent.”

Co-owner Bob Yuro, who opened Alice’s in 1972, conceded that he has often been behind on rent since 1991, but vowed to fight the eviction on the grounds that the state had reneged on a promise to apply rents to renovate the decrepit pier, badly damaged in a 1983 storm.

The dispute only compounds the restaurant’s financial troubles--it suffered $70,000 damage and slower business as a result of last fall’s wildfires--and throws into doubt the future of a Malibu icon favored by surfers and Hollywood stars.

“Cher would come in with all her young boyfriends and you’d have Elizabeth Taylor sitting next to some Danish tourists--everyone would just fit in together,” said Nancie Evoniuk, who worked as a waitress at Alice’s for eight years. “Arnold Schwarzenegger came in with his cigar once and none of us had the guts to tell him to put it out.”

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The restaurant, where tequila-fortified waiters have been known to toss themselves off the pier in full dress, also became a favorite spot for riding out large surfs. “You’d always have these crazy people wanting to sit at the end of the restaurant with the waves smashing into the windows and watching surfers shooting (through the supports of) the pier,” Evoniuk said.

The damage caused by storm-tossed surf is a central part of the current dispute. Yuro said the state, which paid $2.5 million to a private owner for the pier in 1980, has not honored an agreement to use rents to fix up the battered pier. The renovation cost has been estimated at $2.5 million.

“In the last 13 years I have paid them nearly $2 million in rent and absolutely no repairs to the pier have taken place,” Yuro said.

Officials who oversee state recreation department concessions declined to comment on the eviction action or were unavailable. A department announcement did not specify the amount of unpaid rent owed by Alice’s.

Yuro’s company, Japademy Inc., had sought a 20-year contract with the state to manage any business on the pier but could not land the concession after four years of negotiations.

Under the proposed plan, the restaurant would have been required to pay for the renovation. A sticking point in the talks reportedly had been the state’s unwillingness to grant sufficient rent abatements to induce the owners to make the repairs.

Over the years, Yuro’s plans for the pier included an additional restaurant, gift shops, a jazz club and an expanded sport-fishing business.

The recreation department said it plans to find another concessionaire.

But some observers doubted that the pier business could generate enough money to cover the renovation costs.

“The state is unrealistic that someone can take over the huge job of renovating the pier by themselves,” said Madelyn Glickfeld, a member of the state Coastal Commission. “You’d almost need a Century City skyscraper on the pier to recoup enough money to restore it.”

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For years, people have warned that the 88-year-old pier is a disaster waiting to happen. Winter storms have snapped pilings and yanked bait platforms away from moorings. The pier, built by a prominent Malibu rancher, was nearly wiped out by a storm in 1942. Rebuilt in 1944, it served as a wartime station for the U.S. Coast Guard. The state bought it in 1980.

Locals are already girding for a fight to save the restaurant, which was named after the famed Arlo Guthrie song and is, in some people’s minds, a historic monument.

Actor Rod Steiger, an Alice’s regular, said the place is one of the few remnants of old Malibu, which has been largely swept away by a tide of strip malls.

“We have no sense of tradition, we don’t honor the past,” Steiger said. “In Europe, a restaurant like this would have the whole neighborhood out there, doing whatever they could to save it.”