Features

MENDOCINO — It took a lawn mower and a mild summer day for Jim McCummings to create a pathway to the Mendocino Bay Viewpoint and its sweeping vistas of the craggy Northern California coast. 

That was the easy part. The real work came in court when John Brittingham, the man who owns the viewpoint, sued McCummings’ Mendocino Land Trust, the nonprofit group authorized by the state to operate it. 

The trust won, convincing a judge that California law guaranteeing coastal access gives the public the right to walk across Brittingham’s backyard and gaze across the bay at the pastel perfection of Mendocino. 

Now, a similar fight is unfolding over a disputed trail across Hollywood producer David Geffen’s property in Malibu, a battle that could be a turning point for quasi-private beaches up and down the state. 

McCummings is in the position of having been there and done that. The Mendocino trail, he says, has been “fine. People are pretty respectful of it.” 

The issues playing out in Malibu now — the rights of private property owners vs. public beach-goers — are similar to those raised in Mendocino six years ago when the land trust opened the bay viewpoint. 

The pathway had been promised to the public in 1977 by the then-owner in return for a building permit under a coastal access program then in place. But like many of the 1,300 or so pathways granted under that program, the trail had never been opened because it had never been adopted by a public agency as required. 

A 1987 U.S. Supreme Court ruling effectively shut down the pathways-for-permits scheme, saying it amounted to extortion. Courts have upheld trails promised before then, but pathways expire in 21 years if not adopted, which means soon in many cases. 

In 1996, state officials tried something new, authorizing the Mendocino Land Trust to become the first nonprofit entrusted with one of the trails. 

In August, McCummings trundled his lawn mower from the property edge on state Highway 1 to the cliff, creating a recognizable path, and half the town turned out to celebrate the official opening with a wine and cheese reception. 

Then, Brittingham, who had bought the property in 1990, filed suit, claiming that public access would be harmful to the environment and disturb American Indian sites. 

A judge rejected Brittingham’s arguments in 1997 and the trust has continued to operate the viewpoint, along with a second pathway some miles north that leads to a nick in the coast known as Cantus Cove. 

Volunteers police the trails for trash and maintain signs marking where the public stops and the private starts. 

The Cantus Cove trail — marked by only a discreet sign at the property owner’s request — operates quietly. But Brittingham, who now spends most of his time in Florida and is trying to sell the Mendocino property, remains unreconciled to the pathway across his land. 

“It used to be a natural area and now it’s more like a little park. There’s a lot of cars there and people mistake the easement for my property so they go up to my house,” he says. “They think it’s a fort or they think it’s a restaurant. Even if you spell it out, “Private Property,” it’s like, well, what does that mean to people just roaming around or they’re drunk or who knows what.” 

Trust and state officials say there’ve been few problems. 

“It’s going very nicely,” says Linda Locklin of the California Coastal Commission, the agency that safeguards public access. 

Technically, California’s 1,100 miles of coast, from Mendocino’s surf-bitten bluffs to the broad, sandy shelves of Southern California, is owned by the public up to the mean high tide line. However, it’s often hotly debated by irate homeowners and towel-waving sunbathers exactly where that line falls. Meanwhile, just getting past the battalions of private homes that block some stretches of the coast often isn’t a walk on the beach. 

That’s the issue in Malibu, where Geffen’s beach-front home sits on a stretch of coast accessible to the public by only two pathways more than three miles apart. The path through his property is currently blocked by locked gates at the highway. 

Geffen spokesman Andy Spahn says he’s willing to talk about opening the pathway, but “there are a great number of public safety issues to be addressed.” For one thing, he says, the pathway opens onto the Pacific Coast Highway, which has fast cars and little parking. 

Other objections raised by property owners like Geffen are that officials aren’t making provisions for picking up trash or maintaining security. Even with the path closed, Geffen, whose low-slung house stretches across four oceanfront lots, has had to contend with an intruder in his living room. 

Steve Hoye, leader of Access for All, the nonprofit that has been approved by the coastal commission to open the Geffen pathway, is aware that Geffen has “definite public safety concerns. And I’m certainly, absolutely going to try to address those.” 

Geffen promised the pathway in 1983 in exchange for a permit to remodel his home on Carbon Beach. Over the years he also offered three horizontal easements behind his back patio in return for building a sea wall. Access for All has also been given the go-ahead to open those easements, but since they’re stretches of sand, they’re not as controversial as the main path. 

Hoye describes the beach behind Geffen’s home as “very white sand, beautiful crystal water. It’s a great piece of simple beach. You can see Malibu pier to the west, down coast, on a clear day ... you can see great views.” 

Hoye is considering installing a time-locking mechanism to close the Geffen gates at sunset. Still, he and other access advocates say homeowners’ fears are overblown. 

“These notions that somehow trails just drive down property values — it’s bogus,” says Richard Nichols of Coastwalk, a group trying to create an uninterrupted trail down California’s nearly 1,000 miles of coast. “A trail is an amenity; it’s not a negative.” 

Hoye sees coastal access as a vital link to a vanishing resource. 

“Our public lands in the United States, they really are the last chunk of wilderness left,” Hoye says. “People really want to go there.” 

——— 

On the Net: 

Coastal Commission: http://www.coastal.ca.gov/ 

Coastwalk: http://www.coastwalk.org/