Quick Take
The California Coastal Commission unanimously voted to fine an Aptos homeowners association nearly $5 million for blocking access to a pedestrian path along Seacliff State Beach that the state had ordered to be public. The penalty is the largest fine issued by the Coastal Commission in Santa Cruz County.
The Aptos homeowners association that attempted to privatize a coastal pedestrian path along Seacliff State Beach will have to tear down the barricade it haphazardly erected earlier this year and pay the state nearly $5 million in fines, an unprecedented penalty in Santa Cruz County.
The case, which weighed coastal private property rights against decades-old permit conditions set by the highly influential California Coastal Commission, showed the power the commission holds in opening up the state’s coastline to the public.
During its meeting Thursday at the Dream Inn in Santa Cruz, the Coastal Commission, which oversees land use along the state’s coastline with an eye toward public access, voted unanimously to order the Rio Del Mar Beach Island Homeowners Association to dismantle the bright orange traffic medians, fencing and orange netting it installed in January to wall off the public from a nearly 800-foot stretch of pedestrian path.
The HOA, which represents most of the 27 owners of the colorful island of beachfront townhomes from 202 to 300 Beach Dr. in Aptos, will also have to pay a $4.8 million penalty for the violations.
The Coastal Commission has never levied such a high penalty in Santa Cruz County. Still, commissioners and commission staff said the penalties were conservative considering the state first raised the public access issues decades ago.
“This has been a big issue for this community for a long time,” Coastal Commissioner and District 3 Santa Cruz County Supervisor Justin Cummings said. “I think the penalties being imposed here are a little light given that the staff has tried to engage and get us a resolution. It’s wasted a lot of staff time.”
Homeowners Gaurav Singh and Sonal Puri, who own the northernmost townhome at 202 Beach Dr. and are not part of the HOA, will have to pay a $500,000 fine and demolish a seawall and fencing the commission said blocks public access.
The issue dates back to 1980. After storms damaged a retaining wall between the beachfront homes’ patio and Seacliff State Beach, the homeowners formed an HOA and applied for a permit from the Coastal Commission to rebuild. The Coastal Commission issued the permit, but only under the condition that the HOA allow public access along the path between the patios and the retaining wall.
The Coastal Commission said the HOA complied until 1982, when it began constructing barriers to privatize the walkway.
Neither Patrick Richard and John Erskine, attorneys from San Francisco-based Nossaman LLP representing the HOA, nor Singh and Puri immediately returned calls for comment. However, they told the commission that the issue actually dates back to the 1930s, when the homes were first being built. Richard argued that back then, the county and the property owners recognized the pathway as private property, a view he said should stand today.
In 2018, the county demolished a permanent fence put up at the southern entrance of the walkway, which Richard called “unconstitutional.” The HOA sued. In October, Santa Cruz Superior Court Judge Timothy Volkmann ruled in favor of the HOA, and said the walkway belonged to the homeowners. He found that, in the decades since the townhomes were built, the county had not formally asserted the public’s ownership of the walkway or put any money toward regularly maintaining it for public use.
“The suggestion by the county that the public possesses some type of interest in the property is contradicted by the evidence confirming that for seventy-nine years (1929-2018) the area was maintained and utilized by private homeowners,” Volkmann wrote.
In January, without a permit, the HOA, and Singh and Puri, stood up the barrier that blocks public access today.
However, the Coastal Commission said none of that matters. The walkway might legitimately be private and owned by the homeowners; the stretch of townhomes could have used the path for private patios during the 50 years before the 1980 storm. What matters, commission staff said, is that the Coastal Commission issued a development permit in 1980 to rebuild the storm-ravaged pathway and retaining wall on the condition that the path be accessible to the public. That condition, the commission said, supersedes any private property claims.
“Even if no public easement ever existed, ownership issues are not relevant here,” staff said during the hearing. “The commission is enforcing the coastal development permit put in place.”
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