(Response to Harriet Burgess letter)
In response to the article about Lower Topanga, you stated that ALC (American Land Conservancy) will not develop any part of the property. We believe you. But we also know the deals your ALC brokered at the Post Ranch Inn in Big Sur and at Crystal Cove in Newport Beach.
In both cases the DPR (Department of Parks and Recreation) gave a 60-year lease for a portion of State Park land to a concessionaire (the Freed family), who then developed a high-end resort hotel in Big Sur ($450-750 per night), and who plans to do the same at Crystal Cove. We have reasons to believe that you have similar plans for Lower Topanga.
What do those plans mean to the community at large? It means that there will be no more “Feed Bin” for horse owners, no more “Reel Inn” for locals to hang out with friends, no more low-cost housing at the “Topanga Ranch Motel,” which also has become a popular movie location, no more “Wylie’s” for local fishermen, no more “Ranch Market” to serve the beachgoers, etc.
Instead, the new development will be catering to an international tourist crowd, or maybe there will be rows of expensive town homes, and the locals will be kept off limits. Is this really the way we want things to go? Or is Topanga Beach better served by maintaining its unique vernacular architecture and the businesses who really cater to the local surfing community and to the inner city folks who come here to chill on weekends?
Arthur Machen