Last-ditch efforts from opposition fail as property owners representing 83 percent of the beachfront property vote “yes” on a $20 million plan to widen the eroded beach.
By Jimy Tallal / Special to The Malibu Times
Broad Beach may soon be getting a big makeover. A majority of Broad Beach property owners on Sunday voted in favor of a property assessment to pay for a $20 million project to widen the heavily eroded beach, as last-minute requests by a number of property owners to be excluded from paying proved unsuccessful.
At a final public meeting of the Broad Beach Geological Hazard Abatement District (GHAD), a kind of assessment district formed by private property owners to pay for the project, at the Malibu Swim Club, property owners representing 83 percent of the beachfront property within the GHAD agreed to fund the project. The official vote was 89 parcels in favor, 14 parcels against.
The expected cost of $20 million will be shared among Broad Beach property owners based on the percentage of beachfront property they own and spread out over 20 years.
The GHAD is now set to move forward with the beach-widening project, pending environmental analyses from the State Lands Commission and California Coastal Commission, which could possibly be completed by this summer.
The GHAD consists of the 121 beachfront parcels from Trancas Creek to Point Lechuza, a distance of 6,217 feet (more than one mile). The proposed project will include burying the existing wall of boulders that was completed just two years ago at a reported cost of about $3 million in front of 78 of the properties, and will bring in enough sand to widen the beach to about 100 feet, restoring it to where it was before natural and manmade forces began eroding it away since the 1970s; and re-establishing sand dunes with native plants.
Each property’s vote was weighted by the number of feet of beachfront it represented; and election rules required that 51% of the GHAD’s beach frontage had to vote “Yes” in order for the assessment to pass. At the final tally, 4618 feet of beachfront voted “Yes,” 785 feet of beachfront voted “No,” and the remainder either did not participate or submitted white ballots instead of the required green ballots.
The vote had served as the last chance for opponents to the project to sway fellow property owners to vote against the project, which they claimed would benefit their neighbors far more than themselves and on their dime. Those opposed to paying for a beach widening project tend to own property at the west end of the GHAD area, sometimes referred to as “Little Broad Beach Road,” and feel they are already protected from wave action by a seawall built almost 20 years ago.
On March 9, just two days prior to the scheduled vote count, Paula Kent Meehan, a beauty product tycoon and Broad Beach resident, filed numerous technical, environmental and engineering objections to the project, which required the GHAD’s immediate response. The written responses, prepared by the retained engineering company Moffatt & Nichol, were handed out at the public meeting prior to the votes being counted.
During the public hearing portion of the meeting, Meehan’s attorney, Allen Abshez of the law firm Katten, Muchin & Rosenman, LLP, asked the GHAD Board members to “consider not doing the vote today,” but to “take a step back and talk to those against the project in order to establish a compromise with them” and avoid future lawsuits. The GHAD Board, consisting of Marshall Grossman, Norton Karno, Steven Levitan and Jeff Lotman (plus Zan Marquis, who was absent due to recent surgery), was not swayed and took issues with the complaints Meehan had filed.
Abshez was grilled by Grossman about his choice of engineer, perceived inaccuracies in his engineer’s report, a prior failed seawall at his client’s property, whether his client’s home was currently in escrow and whether he was representing anyone other than Meehan (Abshez said no). When pressed, Abshez said he was specifically requesting two things-to drop his client’s property from the assessment and not “fill the cove with sand.”
Resident Max Factor and his wife both supported Abshez, saying they believed the residents of the east end would receive “a disproportionate benefit” from the project, and that they were being asked to “subsidize the neighbors.”
Not everyone there feels the same way, though.
Allen Mutchnik, a property owner on Little Broad Beach said, “We are incredibly supportive and committed to this project. I would argue that the project is equitable, and that the sand will be contoured to fit each property. There’s a historical pattern of sand movement from west to east, and we believe strongly that the project benefits everyone. There is also strong support for the project at the west end of the beach. At high tide each day, our seawall is just pounded and you feel it throughout the house. The homes on the east side are not getting hit every day by water.”
Board members Steve Levitan and Marvin Grossman, and TPOA (Trancas Property Owner’s Association) President Winni Lumsden showed photographs from the ’50s, ’60s and ’70s showing that a wide sand beach used to exist at the west end of Broad Beach.