State Agency Opens 2 Paths to Exclusive Malibu Beach : Recreation: Conservancy hopes to set a precedent for improving access to the coastline. Only about 20% of the strips of land promised to the state are in use.

A state agency agreed Wednesday to open two paths to an exclusive Malibu beach, an action that officials hope will set an example for improving public access along all of California’s coast.

The unanimous vote by the state Coastal Conservancy means that John Q. Beachcomber will now be able to walk down two stairways from Pacific Coast Highway to Escondido Beach to lay down his towel not far from the homes of movie stars, moguls and a “playboy prince.”

Officials with the state agency said opening the stretch of beach near Malibu’s Paradise Cove fulfills a years-old promise that coastal development would be accompanied by greater access to the shore.

“This area is a real asset to the state of California, and it’s part of our mandate to open it,” said Penny Allen, chairwoman of the conservancy, who said she once lived in Malibu. “People who live there love the limitation on access. But those who don’t live there don’t like it at all.”

Concerns about the access question have been heightened since The Times reported this month that bureaucratic inattention and a lack of caretakers have left hundreds of potential beach entries closed statewide. The investigation found that Malibu, in particular, has a dearth of paths to the sand.

The clock is running out for the state to claim many of the easements--legal agreements that property owners made giving limited access to their land in exchange for permission to build. The agreements obtained from the property owners will expire at an accelerating pace after the turn of the century.

Wednesday’s vote comes shortly after the state Coastal Commission, sister agency to the Coastal Conservancy, ordered an “action plan” to improve beach access statewide. The Times report found that only one in five of the 1,269 strips of land offered for beach access by owners over the last two decades had been secured for public use.

“There was a feeling that this big battle had been fought back when many of these easements were granted,” said Coastal Commissioner Madelyn Glickfeld, noting that long stretches of Malibu coastline are still walled off to the public by homes. “It never occurred to us that we would have an even bigger fight when we tried to claim them and open them. We just thought people would keep their promises.”

But the state agencies have been faced not only with obstreperous property owners but with a lack of organizations willing to maintain and accept legal liability for the strips of land.

The path for Wednesday’s vote was cleared recently when an arm of the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy agreed to oversee the Escondido properties. The conservancy’s rangers agreed that it would be a simple task to maintain the beach stairways, dump trash and respond to citizen complaints from its headquarters less than a mile away.

The Coastal Conservancy set aside $82,000 to pay for those maintenance activities for the next five years.

The stairways from the coast highway to the beach were built years ago, one running by the side of the Seacliff condominium complex and the other from the parking lot of Geoffrey’s restaurant, less than 100 yards down the coast. But they had been gated to prevent access by the public.

At a public hearing in Malibu last month and in a series of letters, many residents said the gates should remain closed. They denied that they wanted to keep outsiders away. Instead, they cited a litany of potential problems--from the danger of beach-goers being struck by cars on Pacific Coast Highway to the destruction of a Native American burial ground and the purported health risk of swimming in surf polluted by overflowing septic tanks.

Many argued that the one public path to Escondido Beach that exists, several hundred yards to the east, is sufficient.

Three property owners attended Wednesday’s Coastal Conservancy hearing to renew their objections to opening the stairway from Geoffrey’s restaurant. Talent agent Charles H. Stern, who originally promised the coastal access and still lives on Escondido, said the needs of the area had changed since that arrangement was made 20 years ago. He argued that the restaurant, where lunch entrees average $16, effectively provided the public access that the Coastal Commission had envisioned.

Orthodontist Roger Wolk, who has a home for sale next to the access way, called the stairway unstable and “a disaster waiting to happen.” Geoffrey’s owner Harvey Baskin said he fears for “children and families in flip-flops with beach equipment” parking on the inland side of busy PCH and running through speeding traffic.

Brenda Buxton, manager of the Escondido project for the Coastal Conservancy, said those threats were exaggerated, noting that residents have long crossed the highway and used the stairways without significant problems. “You wouldn’t believe the rhetoric that has been out there,” Buxton said. “You would think dead bodies will be flying.”

A Coastal Commission representative rejected the notion that the pricey restaurant would suffice as a public access to the shore.

The conservancy said it will post a small poster-size sign on the highway to mark the stairway next to the condominiums, with a less prominent sign to mark the Geoffrey’s access way, as a compromise with the establishment.

The action Wednesday ends a long-running dispute between the condominium complex and the coastal agencies. The builder of the complex agreed in 1980 to install the long metal stairway to the beach in exchange for approval of the building. But the stairs remained closed to outsiders, and the Coastal Commission has been pushing to open them.

But Wednesday’s vote may not be the end of the dispute over the Escondido access ways. Some residents say they may be able to block their opening because beach-goers will have to cross their private road at the bottom of the stairs. A doctor who lives on the beach promised, in a letter to the state, “the firestorm that will follow, will make this the mother of all trials.”

And a resident who addressed his written protest as being from “His Highness Prince Stanislas Klossowski de Rola” raised the specter of the access disturbing “rare birds and insects” and the purported Chumash burial ground. (Officials denied the existence of both.) The movie maker--who was responsible for the critically trampled 1993 release “The Shining Blood”--vowed to use “our considerable resources” to counter the access proposal.

The Coastal Conservancy is studying how to proceed on another access to Escondido Beach, at the east end of the strand, closest to Paradise Cove. The steep property has been promised by an earlier owner as a beach pathway, although the current owner is fighting the move.

Buxton, the Coastal Conservancy official, said she hopes other government agencies or nonprofit groups will follow the example of the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy.

“This can show people in fact it’s not such a burden to take over a beach access,” Buxton said. “And there is an opportunity to serve the public.”