Panel Rejects Permit for Sun Shelters

The state Coastal Commission on Tuesday gave a strong thumbs-down to advertising on California beaches, prompting officials to predict the removal of ad-clad sun shelters from the Los Angeles County coast.

By a 10-2 vote, the commission voted to deny a permit that the county sought for 22 already-installed sun shelters that feature poster-size ads. Those shelters were installed beginning in 1992 from San Pedro to Malibu.

The state panel also denied the county a permit for 23 proposed structures--kiosks called “beach information directories”--that also would have featured 4-by-6-foot ads.

The shelter ads were the only ones of their kind on the state’s public beaches. Other financially strapped counties indicated they were watching the vote with keen interest.

The action sent an unmistakable signal that the commission, charged with protecting the state’s shoreline, intends to put a halt to commercialization at the beach.

“Our beaches and forests really are . . . our last refuges,” said commission chairman Rusty Areias, a former Democratic state assemblyman from San Jose.

County Beaches and Harbors Director Stan Wisniewski said that the shelters “will have to be removed,” but that he did not know how quickly. No new shelters will be built; the kiosks will not go up.

Wisniewski added that he was “surprised and disappointed” by the commission vote, in part because the panel rejected its own staff report.

The commission’s staff had urged approval for the shelters and kiosks--if the county agreed to move a few of the shelters to less intrusive sites and to donate 10% of the annual ad revenue to the state Coastal Conservancy, to be used for beach accessways in Malibu. The county had agreed to those conditions.

Opponents of the shelters and kiosks greeted the vote with raucous applause.

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“The coast is clear!” exulted Donley Falkenstien, 37, of Hermosa Beach, who heads a grass-roots coalition called the South Bay Coastal Defense Alliance.

Frank Angel, an attorney who filed a Los Angeles Superior Court lawsuit on behalf of the Sierra Club and others opposed to the shelters, said he was inclined to drop the commission from the suit as a result of the vote. But he said he would continue to proceed against the county, to seek damages for “illegal development.”

County officials did not seek a Coastal Commission permit when they installed the shelters because they believed the structures were “temporary” and did not need one. They learned otherwise late in 1994, when the county received notice it was in violation of state rules.

The shelters and the proposed kiosks were dependent on the revenue generated by advertising. County officials say there is no other way to pay for them.

Each advertisement rents for $1,320 per month. The county was getting 40% of those revenues as well as an annual fee; it intended to collect 50% of the rental but no annual fees.

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The shelters would have generated $330,000 in fiscal 1998, and the kiosks $364,000. Department of Beaches and Harbors officials said the shelters helped defray the cost of beach maintenance and the kiosks would have funded a program that offers ocean skills training to innner-city and foster care children.

Before the commission vote at a hotel near Los Angeles International Airport, both proponents and opponents spoke passionately about the relative value of the shelters.

Sally Sarlot, 55, of Marina del Rey, praised the shelters, describing them as “probably as important to people who use the beaches as call boxes are on the freeway.”

Beth Skiba, 79, who has lived in Redondo Beach since 1958, said she and her daughter, a “cancer survivor,” walk twice a week on the concrete strand by the beach, and the shelters have “greatly added to our comfort.”

“I personally do not find the advertising offensive,” she said. “In fact, I find it interesting.”

Opponents did not. Mark A. Massara, director of the Sierra Club’s coastal program, called the ads “corporate graffiti.”