Malibu mogul ordered to open beach

[emad]

April 18, 2005

Times
From Chris Ayres in Los Angeles



SOME of California’s most exclusive beaches are to be opened to the public after David Geffen, the billionaire music mogul, lost a three-year fight to stop surfers walking across his Malibu estate to reach the riptides of the Pacific Ocean.

Mr Geffen, who started out as a mailroom worker at the William Morris talent agency before going on to create Geffen Records — whose artists included Cher, Guns N’ Roses and Nirvana — has been ordered to pay $300,000 (£158,000) in legal fees and other costs to settle the dispute.

He must also hand over the keys to wooden gates that provide access to a nine-foot wide pathway across his property to the beach. At the moment, most of Malibu’s pristine beaches are impossible to reach because they are blocked by rows of multi-million dollar seafront homes. In theory, all the wet sand below the “high tide line” of California’s beaches belong to the public. In practice, however, homeowners block access to the beaches for long stretches and nail “private beach” signs outside their properties. But after this week many of these homeowners will have to get used to public sanitation facilities, litter and tourists with radios and bottles of suntan lotion.

The pathway is the first of ten that Access for All, a non-profit group, is trying to open along some of the most desirable parts of Malibu, a weekend playground for California’s wealthiest residents that is also home to more luxury drug rehabilitation centres that any other city in North America.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/newspaper/0,,170-1574157,00.html

[rockedthevoteinMA]

1. Good. I live in an area where the rich are constantly fighting to

keep the beach in front of their waterfront property from the rest of the public, which I think is utter BS.

[rocktivity]

2. Same problem on the Jersey shore

Last time I was at Seaside Heights, someone had actually tied a string where the next town began. The current battlefield is Asbury Park, where developers wants to cover the beachfront with overpriced condos and no public parking.

:headbang:
rocknation

[rockedthevoteinMA]

4. That's like what they did in South Boston. It's sick. n/t

[orpupilofnature57]

3. Went there in 75, you could tell then it wasn't 68 no more.

That's why i love cape cod ,J.F.K. saw it coming and made it so no one can build next to the ocean, at least on the outter cape.

[d.l.Green]

5. This is an issue in Diamond Beach, NJ, adjacent to Wildwood.

My mother bought a house there and has to pay an exhorbitant (and growing) fee to access the beach which is only one and a half blocks away. Otherwise she has to go about 1/2 mile away for public access. It also is wall-to-wall condos constricting access. I couldn't believe that restricting access to the ocean would be permitted anywhere. But it's the same apparently on the East Coast- the beach below the high tide line belongs to the public- but the access does not....

[Zorra]

6. "....all the wet sand below the “high tide line” of California’s beaches

belong to the public."

And we'll even let you billionaires use it whenever you want.

[JoFerret]

7. Good. These people need stopping

the shoreline belongs to all of us - including the birds. Urge passing laws that protect above the hide tide water mark as open access. Urge local governments to buy access. Protect wildlife and nesting/ habitat areas.

[devilgrrl]

8. bwaa ha ha!!!!

Oh no, David Geffen has to put up with the humble masses... boo hoo hoo.

:rofl::rofl::rofl::rofl::rofl::rofl: