Malibu's rich and famous fight to keep beach private State draws a line in sand for public access
By Martin Kasindorf
USA TODAY
MALIBU, Calif. -- A tide of ordinary people is lapping at the secluded beaches of the rich and famous.
Malibu, a 27-mile strip of spectacular coastline northwest of Los Angeles, has been resisting encroachment by average folks for decades.
A retreat for Barbra Streisand, Tom Hanks, Dustin Hoffman, Robert Redford, Goldie Hawn, Pierce Brosnan and scores of other Hollywood stars, Malibu has come to connote entertainment royalty watching Pacific sunsets from exclusive sands. Privacy means a lot to celebrities, and they have achieved it by walling off luxurious oceanfront hideouts worth up to $15 million.
Now, state officials are moving to assert the public's right to share Malibu's vistas.
The California Coastal Commission, a powerful state environmental agency, says the law allows everyone to frolic in the waves and the damp sand below the point of the highest tide. These legal rights are worthless without a way to get onto the beach, however, so the commission is working to open more pedestrian rights of way from the Pacific Coast Highway to long-impenetrable miles of Malibu sand.
One proposed corridor would bring outsiders along the side fence of David Geffen, billionaire co-founder, with Steven Spielberg and Jeffrey Katzenberg, of Hollywood's DreamWorks SKG studio. Another pathway would enable beachgoers to stroll past actor Ryan O'Neal's living room.
As Geffen considers a possible legal challenge, some other homeowners in this hotbed of Hollywood liberalism already have gone to court to hold back the changes.
Just whose beach is it? That's not a question only for Malibu. Whether property owners can exclude the public is in dispute at idyllic spots along the Atlantic, Pacific and Gulf coasts. With the nation's beaches increasingly gated off by development and with populations of recreation-hungry city dwellers growing, conflicts between public access and private property rights are simmering in several states.
In Malibu, beachfront owners are anticipating an influx of thrilled tourists with about as much joy as they welcome the winter El Ni
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Wonder how "liberal" Babs will feel about this????
