Coastal Commission weighs $4.7M fine for Rio Del Mar homeowners

As the sun set on Seacliff State Beach on Wednesday evening, the coastal pedestrian path teemed with runners, strollers and dog walkers. For those who approached a colorful row of 27 beachfront townhomes, they were abruptly cut off from that scenic path by a makeshift and unwelcoming barricade of bright orange traffic medians and metal fencing, sloppily wrapped in orange netting. 

This monument to public works hazards was not keeping the public away from a construction site, but an 800-foot stretch of pedestrian path with a pristine view of the ocean. 

The homeowners association governing most of those townhomes believes the path is private, and a Santa Cruz County judge agreed last year. The California Coastal Commission, the über-powerful agency that oversees land use along the state’s coast, has long argued that the path is public. Now, the commission is threatening penalties unprecedented in Santa Cruz County. 

Unprecedented, here, is spelled $4.7 million. That’s how much the state agency wants to fine the Rio Del Mar Beach Island Homeowners Association, and homeowners Gaurav Singh and Sonal Puri, for years of what it says is violations related to blocking that path. The commission will gather at Santa Cruz’s Dream Inn on Thursday to weigh whether to levy the fines and issue cease-and-desist orders aimed at re-publicizing the pedestrian path. 

The Coastal Commission has cited the HOA for 12 violations, including putting up walls to block the walkway, privatizing the walkway with patio furniture, allowing the retaining wall between the walkway and beach to be overcome with invasive plants, and failing to submit reports to the state on the health of that retaining wall. Most of the townhomes are used as vacation rentals, and the commission criticized the homeowners for profiting off the public right-of-way by offering the private patios as an amenity of their rentals. 

Singh and Puri were cited for three violations, chief among them the construction of a vertical seawall cutting off pedestrians from the walkway. 

A representative for the HOA was not immediately available for comment Thursday. 

The issue dates back over 40 years. Following a damaging storm surge in 1980, the homeowners organized into an HOA and sought a permit from the Coastal Commission to build a protective retaining wall between their properties and the beach. 

According to a Coastal Commission report, the agency granted the project, on the condition that the HOA preserve public access to an existing pedestrian pathway, and that the retaining wall be turned into a sand dune and covered with native plants. 

The Coastal Commission says the HOA preserved public access until around 1982, when it began putting up barriers. In 2018, after the county removed fencing put up by the HOA, the homeowners sued. 

In October 2022, Santa Cruz Superior Court Judge Timothy Volkmann sided with the HOA, ruling that the walkway is private.

He found that the county had not taken the necessary steps in the decades since the development was built in the 1920s to formally assert its ownership of the walkway or regularly maintain 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 its report, the Coastal Commission says it has tried to address the violations by working with the homeowners over the years; however, its tools to enforce public access violations expanded in 2014, allowing it to more aggressively work to remove these kinds of barriers. 

The cease-and-desist orders, if passed Thursday by the Coastal Commission, would require the HOA to remove barricades to the walkway and address the violations related to the retaining wall between their property and the beach; Gaurav and Puri would have to demolish the seawall on their property. The agency says state law requiring public coastal access would overrule a decision by a local judge to privatize the walkway. 

This is a developing story; check back with Lookout later for updates.

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