The last stand of residents who have lived in the Lower Topanga area, some for more than 35 years, are expecting final eviction notices this week.
By Hans Laetz / Special to The Malibu Times
The last several families living in state-owned houses in Lower Topanga Canyon are expecting sheriff’s deputies to arrive this week and hammer official notices onto front doors ordering them to vacate their homes.
“I spent two days in court last week, and it looks like it’s over,” said Pablo Capra, a poet and writer who has lived in the same Lower Topanga home since arriving there as a toddler 25 years ago. “We expect to see the sheriff Wednesday.”
The final writs of possession will give the four remaining residents five days to remove their possessions, or find them on the street. That will pave the way for California State Parks contractors to bulldoze houses that have housed an eclectic mixture of artists and surfers, tourists and natives for decades.
“There’s not much left to talk about,” said resident John Clemens, who is expecting to find his belongings removed from the community he’s lived in for 39 years. “I told them I need another month to get my other place in Topanga ready, but they said ‘no more.'”
State Parks has already begun constructing paths and bathrooms to serve visitors on the 1,659 acres of creekside land located north of Pacific Coast Highway and west of Topanga Canyon Boulevard. The state bought the land from the Los Angeles Athletics Club Organization in 2001.
Nearly all of the 85 dwellings on the land, which range from well-worn houses to teepees and shacks, have been vacated since the first round of eviction notices went out in 2002. Only four dwellings were occupied last weekend.
State officials said last month that as many as 16 houses would be removed from the area. Some historic structures, like the Topanga Ranch Motel, are being preserved.
Businesses in the canyon that primarily serve visitors, such as restaurants and Wylie’s Bait and Tackle Shop, are being allowed to stay on month-to-month rentals, owners said. Other businesses, such as the Ginger Snips hair salon and Something’s Fishy restaurant, were demolished a month ago.
But for the residents, the shock of the deadline to move is not dulled by the fact they had known for years that their inexpensive, if rustic, life by the beach is over.
“It tears you up when you see your whole community disappear,” said Clemens, who is struggling to remodel a small cabin he owns in Upper Topanga Canyon that was damaged in the 1994 earthquake.
Jean-Louis Bartoli, who has moved to Laurel Canyon, said he was lucky to find a small studio above Hollywood that is almost comparable to Topanga – except no beach. “That was like a five-year vacation,” he said. “I really miss it.”
Other Lower Topanga residents have moved as far away as Kentucky.
Capra is still seeking a place to live: “Maybe Rome, heck, I don’t know,” he said. “I’m a writer and a poet, and the people who inspired me are all gone.”