The saga over the fate of an 80-foot piece of rock-strewn beachfront property between La Costa and Carbon Canyon continues as several lawsuits fly about, including one against the California Coastal Commission, which it discussed in closed session this week.
Another lawsuit filed by Jeff Greene, a real estate developer and 14-year Malibu resident, says the sale of the land to Malibu celebrities and billionaires breached his contract to purchase the land from Pepperdine University.
Billionaires Eli Broad, Chaim Saban and Nancy Daly Riordan (wife of mayor Richard Riordan) made a deal with the Coastal Commission’s mandate for 20-foot-wide view corridors on new beach-front construction by jointly buying and then donating an expanse of land to the California Coastal Conservancy for public use. They chose to buy Pepperdine’s La Costa property, although the land had already been promised to Greene through the university’s senior real estate officer, Dennis Torres, alleges Greene.
Once the homeowners surrounding the empty beach caught wind of Daly, Saban and Broad’s offer to donate the land for public access, the neighbors complained that the beach was located on a dangerous curve with inadequate parking.
The La Costa Beach Property Owners Assn. is suing the California Coastal Commission and the California Coastal Conservancy.
Originally donated to Pepperdine by the Adamson Company, the parcel of land was the subject of its first lawsuit six years ago.
The original gift was 50 feet in length. The university purchased adjoining land from the Adamson Company to total about 300 feet. The area was then rezoned into two lots, an 80-foot and 220-foot parcel, and sold a few years ago to George Stanton and Patrick Keegan.
Keegan and Stanton resold a larger portion for a profit. The remaining parcel, the two claimed in a lawsuit against Pepperdine, was ‘unbuildable’ since the high tide line came too close to the Pacific Coast Highway to allow any development. They sued Pepperdine for their money back.
After lawsuit number one was decided in the university’s favor, Pepperdine’s real estate team foreclosed on the property and sold it again to Jeff Greene in 1998 for $800,000.
“My real estate agent at the time asked me if I was interested in buying a beachfront lot in Malibu that had full concept approval from the city,” said Greene. “I said, ‘Fantastic, I would love to buy the lot.’ It meant all I had to do was go to the Coastal Commission to get a development permit, which is not a big deal, typically, if you have all the right City of Malibu approvals.”
A year later, Daly, Broad and Saban encountered problems with development on their lots–the Coastal Commission modified development laws, hence the requirement of 20-foot view corridors between new homes.
They approached Torres, who told them that the La Costa Beach property was available because the contract with Greene expired.
“We had a contract which read that, ‘If the sale hasn’t concluded for any reason whatsoever by March 1, 2000, then the thing is null and void,’ ” said Torres. “I told Jeff that if he doesn’t close it, we’re going to sell it to somebody else and that’s what we did. He didn’t put his money down.”
Greene said: “When the Coastal Commission changed the rules the university went back to the city and started adjusting the plans to comply with the new requirements. They knew that they had to deliver a lot with a set of plans that had approval and concept as they had agreed in our contract. I showed them I had all the cash I need, but I didn’t close on time because they didn’t deliver what they were supposed to deliver.”
Greene is suing Pepperdine for lost profits.
“My understanding is that they will join the two suits into one action of the courts. Until a decision is made, we’re in a ‘wait and see’ mode,” said Mark Beyeler, from the Coastal Conservancy, of the two lawsuits. “The Conservancy is ready to accept the property and we will do what we can to protect the privacy of the adjacent homeowners while providing public access to the beach, for example, by closing the beach at night.”
As for parking, Beyeler said, “There isn’t adequate parking on the streets of Malibu on PCH virtually anywhere, but this does have parking. We’ve communicated with Caltrans and they’re okay with providing parking in front of the lot on the street.”
If the land is not transferred to the state, Daly, Broad and Saban agreed to donate a cash amount equal to the value of the property to the Coastal committees in order to purchase suitable public beach land elsewhere. In that case, they will decide the fate of the small fenced beach.