Sailing onto the Rocks: The Failed Plan to Turn Malibu into a Yachting Center

Yachts set sail from the Malibu Quarterdeck Club in this artist's renedering of the harbor and private luxury yacht club proposed for the Malibu Lagoon in 1947. The club house was designed by Cliff May. The nearly mile-long breakwater is decorated with a faux lighthouse. The developer of this particular version of a Malibu harbor wanted it so badly that he started construction before getting a permit and in the middle of massive controversy.

The Malibu Times had a front page article this week on how developers Steve Soboroff—owner of the property destined for the "Whole Foods in the Park" development, and David Resnick—owner of the Malibu Bay Company, with plans for more than 120,000 square feet of new commercial development between them in the Civic Center area, have filed suit against the City of Malibu over Measure R, the initiative passed by 60 percent of Malibu voters in November that requires developers like these to obtain voter approval for new commercial development in excess of 20,000 square feet.

The case will be heard in federal court and the outcome, whatever it is, may take years to be decided. It's hard to know at this point what the developers hope to gain through the lawsuit. While there's a good chance that Malibu voters may have passed somewhat scaled-down versions of both development projects through the Measure R process, it seems unlikely that the developers will succeed in challenging the measure's constitutionality. But the developers filing the suit may have other motives. They may hope to reach a settlement with the city. And they wouldn't be the first developers in Malibu who refused to let go of a cherished plan even when the entire community united against it. 

The prize for persistence in pursuing what may be the most universally unwelcome project in Malibu history goes to the series of developers who sought to build a Malibu yacht club and harbor, a project that, like a grade z horror movie monster, simply would not die, returning every decade from the 1940s to the '70s, despite constant opposition from the community. In the end, the community won. But it was a long, strange, journey. 

The first plan to build a Malibu marina was proposed by a developer named Hiram Helm. In 1927, Helm released plans for a massive yacht harbor and luxury development on 400 acres at Miller Ranch, along the coast at what is now Point Mugu State Park. An article in the August 21, 1927 issue of the Los Angeles Times calls the project the "Malibu Palisades," and states that the "seaside residential and resort project involving a five-year development program and the expenditure of $5,000,000 is to be launched early in 1928 on 400 acres of the Miller ranch bordering the Los Angeles county line in Ventura county and fronting on the new Roosevelt Highway," and that it would feature "hotels, golf courses and homes, fresh water lagoons, a breakwater and yacht harbor."  

There have been three plans to turn this stretch of coast west of Malibu into a yacht harbor, marina and luxury housing development. The earliest was in 1927, the most recent, in 1994. Photo © 2015 S. Guldimann

A similar plan emerged again decades later in the 1970s on the still undeveloped three-mile stretch of coast west of Deer Creek, known as the Mansdorf property, and again in 1994, when a politician named Carter Ward, who was running for Ventura County supervisor, proposed a scheme to develop a "world class marina," on the site, with 3500 boat slips, according to the L.A. Times.

 Another yacht harbor was proposed in 1929 as part of the La Costa development. La Costa was the first section of the 17,000-acre Malibu Rancho to be subdivided and sold. The February 1947 issue of The Californian Magazine has this to say about the plan:  [May Knight Rindge] floated an $8 million bond issue and plans were drawn for lush clubs, a yacht harbor and other accoutrements of a proper Riviera."

May Rindge, who became the sole owner of the Malibu Rancho when her husband, Frederick Hastings Rindge, died in 1905,  was forced to sell the property to raise funds to continue her increasingly expensive fight with the county and the state over the easement across the ranch for a coast route, now Pacific Coast Highway.

The article states that "the depression and the jailing of promoter Harold G. Ferguson left the plan to fade on the blueprints." Ferguson went to San Quentin for shady business dealings, and the bondholders foreclosed, leaving May Rindge, now more deeply in debt than ever, to cope with the aftermath.

It's unclear whether the La Costa or west Malibu marina plans ever advanced to a more concrete form than pipe smoke and artists' renderings, but the Quarterdeck Club at the Malibu Lagoon nearly became a reality. Twice. Defeating the project would be one of the biggest environmental fights in Malibu's history.

Gulls enjoy the sandbar at what is now Malibu Lagoon State Park and Surfrider Beach, but was once slated to be dredged and bulldozed for a luxury private yacht club and marina. © 2105 S. Guldimann

The Malibu Quarterdeck Club and Yacht Harbor development was the brainchild of Edward D. Turner. Turner saw the Malibu Lagoon as “a site for the construction of a yachting center in the Southland comparable with the famed Miami Quarterdeck Club.”

Cliff May, the architect famed for developing the California ranch house, was enlisted to design a clubhouse and surrounding grounds in a “style reminiscent of the South Seas.” The plans called for “hand-hewn redwood with aquamarine tile roofing. A 14-foot glass windshield, constructed of specially treated glass and metals and inverted like the prow of a ship, will be placed atop the breakwater to protect bathers and those dining on the outdoor terraces and in dining rooms,” plans for the project state.

The Malibu Marina has to be one of the worst ideas in Malibu history and an ecological disaster, but the designs for the Cliff May-designed club house are spiffy. In some alternate reality it would have been lovely to sit on the terrace and sip one of those 1950s drinks with the pineapple and the little umbrellas and admire the ships sailing by. Not lovely enough, however, to be worth sacrificing the Malibu Lagoon and Surfrider Beach.

"Within a year it is hoped that this prediction will have become a reality," The Californian enthused. "Motorboats and yachts of club members should, by then, be able to anchor in the dredged-out creek delta. And in another year the ultra-modern Quarterdeck Club, designed by Cliff May, should be abuzz with its 1000 members bent upon getting their two thousand dollars worth of pleasure. Plenty of opportunity will be offered them. Aside from the luxurious club, its shielded swimming pool, sand areas and guest rooms, there will be the feature attraction: Southern California's only harbor owned by a private club. It will accommodate 750 small craft in the inner harbor and larger vessels along the outer breakwater. Extra fancy is a planned two-story boat garage equipped with boat elevators and providing "valet" service for parking all kinds of pleasure craft up to thirty-footers. This is a Riviera development of no mean sort."

The optimistic Turner built a pair of Quonset huts on the west side of the lagoon to house the heavy equipment required for the project and began work dredging before final approvals from the county were in place.

An audience gathers for a ceremony commemorating the "driving of the first pile" in September 1947 at the site of the Quarterdeck Club House. The cars and crowd of onlookers are dwarfed by steam shovels and stacks of lumber. This photo is from the Los Angeles Library Digital Archive. More photos of the same event can be viewed here.

However, Rhoda Adamson, Rindge’s daughter, who still owned the Adamson House with her husband Merritt Adamson, vehemently opposed the plan, as did William Huber, the owner of the Malibu Pier, and other members of the community. The battle raged for over a year in front of the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors.

The headline of the front page of the June 20, 1947 Malibu Times.

One of the main arguments is the one that would lead eventually to the Coastal Act and the formation of the Coastal Commission: public access. The first generation of surfers at Surfrider and the public who only achieved access to the beaches at Malibu in 1929, when the coast route opened, argued that the private yacht club would bar the public from the beach and destroy an important public resource. 

The caption for this photo from the June 1947 Californian Magazine describes the first generation of Malibu surfers as "ex-G.I.s from Santa Monica...they practically live here. The fight over the Quarterdeck Club was the first time that the surfers' right to access the beach was a major issue in a Malibu development fight, but it wouldn't be the last. Surfers voiced the concern that the breakwater would ruin the surf, and expressed concern that the beach would be closed to the public and accessible only to the wealthy club members. Other residents raised concerns about the impact of the breakwater on coastal erosion and questioned the project's authority to close the swimming beach to the west of Malibu Creek used by Colony residents and other beachgoers.

In September of 1947, Turner began excavating for the foundation of the yacht club. In November he held a BBQ in the Malibu Colony celebrating the driving of the first pile for the clubhouse. Two weeks later he was dead, leaving his stockholders scrambling to retrieve their uninvested capital.

Turner, who was staying with friends in the Malibu Colony, was reportedly found dead still sitting on the sofa in the living room where his hosts last say him the night before. If life was a noir mystery novel, he would have been poisoned or shot by a project opponent, but his death was determined to have been from natural causes.

Edward Turner, in 1947, wearing a jaunty nautical hat. 

For several years after Turner's death, supporters of the project continued to produce press releases stating that construction was imminent, but it wasn't until the county released plans to build a multilane freeway through Malibu Canyon that the yacht harbor project was revived.

The major second effort to develop the project was spearheaded by Henry Guttman, president of the "Malibu Improvement Association." Guttman's other "improvements" seem to consist of the row of office buildings on Malibu Road between the fire station and Webb Way. However, he reportedly secured the blessing of the county and the federal government in 1966 and arranged to use the hundreds of tons of rubble that would theoretically be blasted from the mountains for the freeway to build an even more ambitious breakwater, harbor and 300-home country club development.

The 1966 proposal for a Malibu Marina was much larger and more ambitious than the 1947 development scheme. This plan depended on construction of the proposed Malibu Freeway, which would have transformed the Civic Center area into an interchange and probably rendered much of Malibu unlivable. This artist's rendering of Guttman's marina plan is from an ad in the July 22, 1962 Evening Outlook. It doesn't show the epic breakwater extending a mile into the bay or the proposed Malibu Freeway that was part of the project.

“One of Malibu’s fondest dreams, that of establishing a small craft harbor, with all its attendant lodging, dining and recreational facilities, now seems closer to reality,” a 1966 brochure advertising the proposed marina states.

“The county has approved the idea of private financing for the harbor and the Federal Government has expressed interest in the project since being assured space within it for Coast Guard facilities, all that remains is the lease negotiations with the state, bilateral approval of the over-all project, and completion of the various stages of development leading up to the Marina as planned by the Improvement Corporation and the state.”

As one of his selling points, Guttman used statistics released by the Los Angeles Regional Planning Commission in 1966 that estimated that the population of Malibu would expand to 117,000 by 1980. 

If one harbor wasn't enough, a second yacht club corporation was founded in 1962 with the intent to build a marina at Point Dume. There was talk at first of using Big Dume Cove, but when the official plans surfaced in 1971, the proposed marina was sited at Paradise Cove.

The powers-the-be chose Paradise Cove as the site of a marina in 1971. They did it without bothering to ask the residents who lived there and had already arranged for the Army Corps of Engineers to survey the site before they were hit by backlash from the community. Today, the view down the coast towards Paradise Cove looks very much the same way it did when the marina was first proposed in the 1960s. © 2015 S. Guldimann

There was tremendous pressure to build a Malibu marina (or two) in the '60s and early '70s. Yacht harbors were springing up all over the coast. Construction began on Marina Del Rey in 1953 and was completed in 1965; on the other side of Malibu, the Channel Islands Harbor broke ground in 1960. In 1972, there was a push for a Santa Monica marina as well. Project opponents were told repeatedly that they were standing in the way of "progress." 

Paradise Cove in 2015. This beach has faced numerous issues of access, water quality and land use, but at least it isn't a marina and yacht club. © 2015 S. Guldimann

Among my dad's papers, I have a petition from the early 1970s, signed by more than 500 people protesting the Malibu marina plans. It states:

"We, the undersigned, request that no further funds be appropriated for, or expended by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the State of California, or the County of Los Angeles for the study, design, or construction of a marina, boat harbor, or related facilities along the fragile Malibu seashore.

"The narrow coastal Malibu bluffs and beaches are a priceless resource, the last unspoiled coastline [and] of major importance to the entire Los Angeles Metropolitan region.

"Construction of a marina on the Malibu coastline will deplete sands transported by the longshore current to remaining beaches in Malibu, the City of Santa Monica, the City of Los Angeles and other South Bay communities; will be destructive to marine creatures; tidepools; and the last economically important giant kelp beds in three counties; and will bring unbridled development; traffic congestion; and visual, air, and noise pollution to the adjacent fresh air and recreational resource, the coastal slopes of the Santa Monica Mountains."

Big Dume Cove, also known as Pirate's Cove, was one of the sites under consideration for a marina and yacht harbor. Today, it's a nature preserve. © 2015 S. Guldimann

The yacht club developers weren't troubled by any of these things, or the plight of California brown pelicans, great blue herons, snowy plover or other resident shore and wetland bird species—most were rarely seen, with populations hovering on the brink of extinction due to DDT use, but the people of Malibu were concerned. The environmental movement was gaining serious momentum and the projects met furious opposition.

The petition states "return to Malibu Citizens for Good Community Planning, Coastal Committee, c/o John Guldimann." The battle for good community planning is still being fought but at least the fight over yacht harbors was won. 

The September 3, 1970 issue of the Los Angeles Times features a story about the Malibu Freeway project, which was beginning to buckle under pressure from grassroots opposition. It states that "City Traffic Commissioners Anticipate Reauthorization After 'Ecology Hysteria' Dies Down."  

Unfortunately for the commissioners, their insane optimism was unfounded. The ecological movement didn't die down, it gathered strength. In 1972, the Coastal Act was finally passed. It would take several years for coastal protections to go into effect—the first draft of the coastal development guidelines was only released in 1976, the year the the commission's authority was extended indefinitely. By the early 1980s, even the most determined developers had to abandon their plans to transform Malibu into a "yachting center."

Dad and the other activists who fought and defeated these massive projects never got much recognition. There were no Dolphin Awards or Malibu tiles.  The reward was knowing that they went up against developers with massive resources and incentives and little regard for local concerns, and against entities like the Army Corps of Engineers, and won. 

'That they were eventually able to defeat the freeway and the yacht club/harbor/marina plans, and save Surfrider, the Malibu Lagoon, and the Point Dume Headlands and Paradise Cove was the real reward. 

Today, Malibu has a population of 12,861, not 170,000. The Malibu Lagoon, Surfrider Beach, Big Dume Cove and the old Miller Ranch are all recognized as critical habitat and important recreational, scenic and historic resources that need to be protected and preserved. They are all State Parks properties, and part of the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area. They are open to everyone, instead of being private yacht clubs accessible by only a wealthy few. 

A surfer catches a sunset wave at Surfrider. Malibu has managed to hang on to its cultural identity as a beach community that values the natural resources and beauty that surrounds it, thanks to the remarkable individuals who have been willing to put their hearts into the fight to save what is special. © 2015 S. Guldimann

Malibu activists continue to fight to save Malibu's resources for the future. The city's mission statement says that "Malibu citizens have historically evidenced a commitment to sacrifice urban and suburban conveniences in order to protect unaltered natural resources and rural characteristics..." Malibu's citizens have also fought like wildcats to preserve those resources and will continue to do so, regardless of threats or lawsuits.

If the developers had a better grasp on Malibu history, they might have a better understanding of how to work with the community, instead of against it. Of course, if they really understood Malibu, maybe they wouldn't want to bulldoze it in the first place, and we could all spend our spare time on the beach, enjoying the sunset, instead of fighting to ensure the next generation will have a beach and everything else that makes Malibu, in Frederick Hasting Rindge's words, "very near terrestrial paradise," and not a yacht harbor or a "boutique shopping destination."

Suzanne Guldimann
9 January 2015

 Sunset in Malibu, January 8, 2015. Photo © 2015 S. Guldimann

Grunion Hunters

Although this scene looks as calm and peaceful as a Chinese brush painting, some high stakes fishy business is about to unfold at Surfrider Beach. All photos © 2014 S. Guldimann

Alive without breath;

as cold as death;

never thirsting, ever drinking;

clad in mail, never clinking.

Drowns on dry land,

thinks an island

is a mountain;

thinks a fountain

is a puff of air.

So sleek, so fair!

What a joy to meet!

We only wish

to catch a fish,

so juicy-sweet!

—J.R.R. Tolkien, "Gollum's Song"

It's the May new moon this week, and the grunion are running. This small silvery fish is off limits to human hunters in April and May, but it's open season for the local shore birds, who, like Gollum, "only wish to catch a fish, so juicy sweet."

From March until August, grunion come ashore at night to spawn, taking advantage of the highest full moon and new moon tides to lay their eggs in the sand. The eggs hatch 10 days later, the next high tide carrying the hatchlings back out to sea.
When conditions are right, in the dead of night, certain beaches can be covered in living silver as hundreds of fish come ashore, but it's rare to see even one lone grunion during the day. However, the same tides that help the fish reach the sand can strand them. At the Malibu Lagoon, any fish swept over the berm by the tide is fair game for the shorebirds.

This season, the lagoon extends in a long, narrow inlet all the way to the bottom of the Adamson House. While the water doesn't look appealing to humans, it was a kind of cross between bouillabaisse and a sushi dinner for an enterprising egret, taking advantage of fish left behind by the previous night's new moon.

The egret waits at the edge of the inlet, for all the world like a cat at a mouse hole. This is a common egret, also called a great egret. It has black feet—unlike its much smaller cousin the snowy egret, which has yellow feet. Great egrets stand more than three feet tall and can have a six-foot wing span. They are master fishers with good eyesight, boundless patience and lightning fast reflexes.

Pounce!

Apparently the fish wasn't oriented for optimum swallowing. The egret carefully spit it out, caught it in mid-air, flipped it around and gulped in down head-first, all in about three seconds. However, that quick flash of silver was enough to attract the attention of a passing Caspian tern. 

"Grunion? I want a grunion." 

That water can't be more that a foot deep, but the tern spots a fish and dives for it. Splash!

The most impressive part of the feat was how quickly the bird surfaced and transferred itself from the water back into the air.

This fish was also swallowed head first, gulp! Within seconds the tern was back in the air searching for more grunion, diving into the shallow inlet, and emerging again and again with a succession of silvery fishes.

I've described Surfrider and the lagoon in the past as a sort of Jurassic Park where humans have a chance to encounter the living descendants of the dinosaurs, but what struck me today was the evident intelligence of the birds I watched. I have no idea if anyone has ever attempted to evaluate the intelligence of the great egret—although the green heron, a member of the same family, has been documented using twigs, worms, and even bread crumbs cadged from humans as fish bait (you can watch a video of one fishing with crumbs here)—but their patience and speed are impressive, and this particular heron seemed to have figured out that if it put itself between the grunion and the end of the inlet it would have an all-you-can-eat fish dinner.

The tern and I both saw the egret at about the same time. Neither one of us could see what was in the water until we moved closer. It appeared that the tern recognized that the egret was successfully hunting something and that it flew in to investigate, and instantly took advantage of the shooting-fish-in-a-barrel opportunity. It's easy to anthropomorphize, but they both seemed extremely well pleased with themselves, and with life in general. Alas, it wasn't a good time or place to be a grunion.

The grunion run during the four nights following the new or full moon. Surfrider, Zuma and Leo Carrillo are good beaches to catch a sight of this fishy phenomenon, although there's no way of knowing if the fish will appear on any given night, even when all of the conditions appear to be right. Officials warn that bright lights and loud noises can scare the fish away—Flashlights should be used only to safely traverse the beach, not to illuminate the fish. It's a good idea to bring warm clothes and plenty of patience.

For anyone interested in addition grunion information, I wrote a more indepth article for the May 13 issue of the Malibu Surfside News. Dates and times and vast quantities of information on the 2014 grunion run are available at the California Department of Fish and Wildlife website. 

Surfing Safari

It feels more like October than May this week. Gale force Santa Ana winds and temperatures in the 90s  have raised the red flag for fire danger and sent crowds to the beach, braving sand-blasting to seek relief from the heat, but before the winds blew in there was one perfect day for surfing.

You could tell the surf was up without even seeing the ocean. The Chumash name for Malibu—Humaliwu, "where the surf sounds," was well chosen. When there's a powerful swell the sound of the surf forms a dull roar in the background of the lives of anyone within a mile or so of any of the major local surf breaks.

Another sure sign of surf is the mob of cars parked along PCH at Surfrider, Leo Carrillo, Nicholas Beach, as hopeful surfers skive off work or school in search of waves. They were double-parked at the Malibu Lagoon, but a car pulled out just in front of me and, on a whim, I stopped and joined the rag-tag army of wetsuit-clad surfers heading for the beach.

"Not surfing today?" the guy behind me asked. 

"Just taking some pictures," I replied.

The vegetation at the controversial Malibu Lagoon restoration and reconstruction project is beginning to fill in, despite the drought, although there are still more flags than plants in some areas. The plastic flags are supposed to mark where the native plants are so they aren't weeded out by mistake. There was an American crow foraging for breakfast on one of new manmade islands. It's the first time I've spotted a bird there. 

Here's the same scene in 2013, during construction. I was amused to find there's a crow in this photo, too. Perched on the wire.

The surfers took the quickest route to to the shore, but I stopped to admire the kayak of an audacious explorer, drawn aground near the parking lot. Later, I saw the kayaker paddling lazily around the lagoon. The sand berm is closed right now, transforming the newly re-contoured and enlarged wetland into a kind of brackish lake that is ideal for kayaking, even if it isn't an activity State Parks necessarily approves of. 

I also watched the crow carefully picking its way along the edge of the water, looking for breakfast. A few minutes later, I saw him again, harassing a black-crowned night heron at her nest on top of a ficus tree in a Malibu Colony garden adjacent to the park. Later, he was down on the beach, on the lookout for unattended picnics.

This black-crowned night heron was defending her nest from the crow. The crow eventually gave up on eggs for breakfast and settled instead for whatever he could scavenge along the edge of the lagoon. I would never have spotted the heron if she wasn't giving the crow a piece of her mind. The genus name, Nycticorax, means "night croaker." It doesn't exactly do justice to their amazing range of vocalizations.

I also stopped to examine the "Winter Ramp-Summer Clock" installation, which has already stopped being a ramp and become, well, not exactly a clock, but a water level gauge. It's designed to fill with water once the sand berm seals off the lagoon in summer, transforming the walkway into a kind of post-apocalyptic scene that reminds me of Belgian symbolist painter Ferdinand Knopff's melancholy vision of the end of the world, "Verlorene Stad." 

The last tide slowly and silently fills up a desolate Brussels street in Knopff's pastel drawing. I doubt that's what the Malibu Lagoon project's designers had in mind, but it does sort of convey the same impression, doesn't it? 

There was no silent end-of-the-world-evoking emptiness at the beach. Instead, an astonishing number of California Brown pelicans were gathered on the lagoon sand berm. I've described Surfrider Beach before as a kind of miniature Jurassic Park. Being on the beach with hundreds of pelicans is about as close as it gets to seeing live pterasaurs. Pelecanus occidentalis is on the smallish side compared to other members of the pelican family, but this bird is still a giant, with an 6-8-foot wing span. The distinctly prehistoric looking bill can grow to be more than a foot long and the throat pouch can reportedly hold up to two gallons of water.

The pelicans, grave and silent, were joined by a huge,  raucous flock of terns, their shrill voices rising above the sound of the surf. California brown pelicans are a rare conservation success story, rebounding from the edge of extinction in the 1970s. The terns' fate remains less certain. They are a California species of special concern due primarily to habitat loss. 

California brown pelicans crowd the sand spit at the Malibu Lagoon. 

A huge group of elegant terns, the punk rockers of the tern family, were having a convention on the berm, too.

Here's the Malibu Lagoon berm. It forms naturally every year after winter storm season ends and the sand deposited by the tides is no longer washed away by the creek. During the winter, the creek flows directly into the sea. During the summer months, the berm impounds the creek and turns it into a closed system. At the end of summer, it's either breached by the first storm of the season or by human intervention. 

The terns like to take advantage of the calm water inside the main channel of the creek. Usually they have to share with a flotilla of ducks, coots and cormorants, but they had it to themselves on this morning.

The surfers are just on the other side of the berm, waiting for the waves that give Surfrider Beach its name.

It gets crowded out there when the word goes out that the surf is good.

But almost everyone—birds and humans—would agree that it's worth it. And every now and then, everything comes together and you catch that perfect wave.

I walked back along the old Adamson House wall. When you see it in surf movies, it's always the side that faces the ocean, although a section of it is missing now, torn down after a truck smashed into it, and it's blotched with mismatched paint, where State Parks has painted over years of graffiti. This is the land side. It's in better shape and still decorated with bits of Malibu Potteries tile.

Here's my favorite detail:

The Malibu Potteries' pseudo-Aztec god has kept a benign, if slightly lunatic, eye on the Surfrider surfers ever since the 1920s, when local legend says pioneer surfers Tom Blake, Sam Reid and Duke Kahanamoku first hit the waves at what is now Surfrider. 

More than anyone else I know, surfers understand the philosophy of living in the moment. Just hours after I took this photo the Santa Ana winds arrived, signaling the end of this surf event, but it didn't matter. "I was out there all morning and it was awesome," a surfer told me as I walked back to my car. It was, too. Carpe diem, dude.

Suzanne Guldimann
1 May 2014

Fool's Paradise

A nuclear power plant in geologically unstable, fire-prone Corral Canyon? What could possibly go wrong? The caption for this 1965 Los Angeles Times photo reads: "Three members of the Atomic Energy Commission inspecting the site of proposed nuclear power plant in Malibu." I wish I could say the image is an April Fools joke, but it's not, it's taken unaltered from the UCLA Library Digital Collections. 

There's a certain kind of person who can't see a mountain or a canyon without wanting to flatten it or fill it and build Hilltop Luxury Homes or Canyon View County Clubs. Perhaps the thought of undeveloped land fills them with a sort of horror vacui. It certainly seems to kindle an overwhelming lust for profit in some people. But then there's another kind of project, the civil engineering programs that are vast in scale and have the power to entirely rearrange the landscape, rarely to the benefit of the environment.

Anyone who has lived in Malibu—or anywhere in California—for any length of time knows about both kinds of scourge. We're fortunate, because Malibu has also had passionate defenders willing to fight to preserve at least some of what makes this place special.

Many of the biggest—and craziest—Malibu terraforming development projects of the 20th century never happened, thanks in part to community opposition. From a 21st century perspective, most of those plans look completely lunatic, but somebody thought they were a good idea at the time. In honor of the Feast of Fools, we'll take a look at some of the more outré proposals.

Los Angeles County's nuclear power plant plant is part of local legend. In 1963, the Department of Water and Power proposed a San Onofre-type nuclear power plant on 305 acres at the heart of the Corral Canyon. Media reports from the time describe it as "the largest atomic plant ever [to be] built," and detail plans to pump seawater under Pacific Coast Highway to cool the reactors, and back out to sea half a mile offshore.

The proposed Corral Canyon nuclear power plant would have required massive amounts of seawater pumped from the ocean under PCH right here at Corral Beach and back out to sea. Photo © 2014 S. Guldimann

Unsurprisingly, the plan touched off a chain-reaction of opposition. In 1970, after a losing a savage fight with environmental activists and residents, and after a number of doom-filled geologic reports that warned of potential landslides and earthquake faults, the DWP quietly dropped the plan. Concrete foundations at the site reportedly belonged to an early, failed attempt to build a facility to breed and slaughter foxes for the fur trade, and have nothing to do with the DWP's nuclear experiment, despite persistent rumors.

Today, the photo shown at the start of the post is just about the only visual evidence, but the DWP plan left a lasting legacy in that it was a wake-up call.  A number of the activists who united to fight the nuclear plant would continue the battle to preserve the Santa Monica Mountains as a National Park.

The Corral Canyon nuclear power plant site would be at the center of another battle in the 1990s, when comedian and real estate tycoon Bob Hope sought to fill the canyon and build a private resort  with an 18-hole golf course, two restaurants, six tennis courts, and 69 "luxury" estates. The plan called for five million cubic yards of grading. At the same time, L.A. County was pushing hard for a country club at what is now Charmlee Wilderness Park. Today, the view from the top of Corral Canyon contains neither golf course nor nuclear reactor and still looks much the way it might have appeared to the Chumash who were the canyon's first residents. Photo © 2014 S. Guldimann

A Los Angeles Times article from December 9, 1990, states: "[Opponents] are especially upset by plans to move 5 million cubic yards of dirt on the property and fill in an entire canyon...But developer Sidney McClue Jr. of La Jolla-based Sun Pacific Properties last week told the supervisors at a public hearing that 'state-of-the-art' procedures would ensure that construction did not damage the ecologically delicate area." 

That was suppose to make it all magically OK.

"'Our desire was the best possible development, McClue said. 'Our concern was to address every issue. . . . We are not establishing any new procedures or cause for concern.'" 

He just said they had new "state-of-the-art" procedures, but he also isn't "establishing any new procedures." I'm reminded of the famous Sidney Harris cartoon:

Developers often seem to have a lot a faith in imaginary engineering.  The City of Malibu's current sewer plan for the Malibu Civic Center comes to mind. It also appears to operate on magical state-of-the-art technology that, like the action in superhero movies, isn't affected by the laws of physics.

The Santa Monica Causeway, another mad plan from the 1960s was another project that seemed oblivious to the laws of physics and the natural world. According to a 2008 Santa Monica City Landmark Report, "In May 1958, The Los Angeles Times reported on a bold proposal that Mr. John Drescher was preparing for the California Highway Commission. Mr. Drescher, a local engineer, had developed a plan to construct a causeway off the coast of Santa Monica and Pacific Palisades in order to relieve coastal traffic pressures. Mr. Drescher argued that his proposal, at an estimated cost of approximately $15 million, was more economical than purchasing land to expand the existing coastal highway. In addition, an offshore causeway would increase beachfront property values, serve as a breakwater for new harbor development, and create a beachfront on the causeway’s ocean side."

The Santa Monica Causeway, first proposed in 1958, would have stretched from Santa Monica to Malibu on a series of  islands made out of 100 million tons of rock and fill blasted out of the Santa Monica Mountains.

The causeway, including a 200-foot-wide freeway named the "Sunset Seaway," would have stretched from Santa Monica to Malibu along a series of manmade islands more than half a mile out to sea. Paula A. Scott, in her book Santa Monica: A History on the Edge, writes that the Army Corps of Engineers "declared the project 'technically feasible,'" in 1963. The same year the DWP came up with the Corral Canyon reactor plan.

Just what the Corps thought was "feasible" about Drescher's plan to blast large sections of the Santa Monica Mountains into rubble and ferry almost 100 million tons of stone and fill out to sea on a conveyor belt is hard to comprehend today. Everyone involved in the project seems to have been able to believe "six impossible things before breakfast," just like Lewis Carroll's White King.

Scott quotes Robert E. McClure, the man immortalized by the McClure tunnel, who reportedly described the project as "attractive and inoffensive."

Mark McCuigan researched and wrote a fascinating and in-depth account of the project for the Lookout News in 2003. It's available here. He writes, "For years the audacious scheme to create a chain of islands linked by a causeway lay dormant, hidden in a cardboard box in the vaults of City Hall. Before fading from memory, the ghost of this white elephant continued to stalk City Hall until the '70s, when a scale model of the project, sitting in the planning office, mysteriously disappeared."

The Causeway wasn't the first attempt to turn the Santa Monica Bay into a major harbor. Southern Pacific Railroad reportedly pressed for a seaport in Santa Monica Bay when the railroad arrived in Los Angeles. In 1893, the 4700-foot Long Wharf, billed as the "longest pier in the world," was constructed just north of Santa Monica. Freight trains traveled from downtown L.A. out to the end of the nearly mile-long pier to pick up cargo, but plans for a full-scale commercial harbor evaporated in 1897, when Congress chose San Pedro Bay to be the official deepwater port of Los Angeles. 

All that's left of the Port of Los Angeles Long Wharf is a sign near Temescal Canyon naming the site California historic landmark # 881 and some broken pylons that are a popular destination for divers.

The Long Wharf, also known as the Southern Pacific Mammoth Wharf and the Santa Monica Long Wharf (it was really in what is now Pacific Palisades), in 1916. That's Point Dume in the distance. WaterandPower.org has an incredible collection of Long Wharf photos online.

Closer to home, a developer named Edward B. Turner hatched a plan in 1946 to transform the Malibu Lagoon into a yacht harbor with berths for 500 yachts, a two-story concrete boat garage capable of storing 180 additional vessels, and a 60,000-square-foot clubhouse. the plan also called for 11 acres of dredging and a 4700-foot breakwater, which would have rendered the argument between State Parks and local surfers and conservation activists over lagoon restoration moot, since there would have been neither surf nor lagoon if the project had been constructed. 

State Parks' Malibu Lagoon Restoration's concrete and steel "amenities" are still a sore point for many Malibuites, but developer Edward Turner's 1946 plan to transform the lagoon into the Malibu Quarterdeck Club and Yacht Harbor—a smaller version of Marina Del Rey— would have radically altered the entire ecology of the area and eliminated the surf break at Surfrider. Here's an artist's rendering of the marina.

The overly optimistic Turner built a vast shed to house the heavy equipment he would need for the project and reportedly began work before receiving final approval. He met ferocious opposition. Project opponents included Rhoda Adamson, the daughter of Frederick Hastings Rindge and May Knight Rindge, and William Huber, who owned the Malibu Pier in the 1940s.

The fight continued for over a year. Turner won and began excavating the foundation for the clubhouse in September of 1947. He held a BBQ in the Malibu Colony in November, to celebrate the start of construction. Two weeks later he was found dead in the Colony home of friends. A heart attack was the official cause of death. Turner's stockholders were left to retrieve what they could of their uninvested capital.

Henry Gutman, president of the "Malibu Improvement Association," revived Turner's plan and enlarged upon it in 1966. Gutman, capitalizing on a concurrent plan to fill in Malibu Canyon and build a multi-lane freeway from the San Fernando Valley to the sea, planned a full-scale marina.

"The county has approved the idea of private financing for the harbor and the Federal Government has expressed interest in the project since being assured space within it for Coast Guard facilities," the 1966 Malibu Chamber of Commerce Guide enthused. "All that remains is the lease negotiations with the state, bilateral approval for the over-all project, and completion of the various stages of development leading up to the marina planned by the Improvement Corporation and the state."

The Chamber forgot that Mr Gutman also needed to convince Malibu's residents and self-appointed guardians that it was a good idea. He failed dismally. The fight over the marina and the proposed freeway that would have run an interstate through the middle of what is now the Malibu Civic Center and Legacy Park where two key parts of the chain of events that led to Malibu incorporation. 

The pre-restoration Malibu Lagoon, above, with an armada of birds, including a Brant's goose and several great egrets in the forground, and one of Larry Ellison's mega-yachts in the background—a reminder of what was once planned for this small patch of wetland habitat. Photo © 2014 S. Guldimann

The new lagoon, reconfigured and reconstructed by State Parks in their own terraforming project intended to "restore" the lagoon. Photo © 2014 S. Guldimann

It's clear in hindsight that the none of the proponents of the freeway, marina, causeway, or nuclear power plant ever bothered to look around and see what else was being planned. In the 1960s, the Los Angeles County Regional Planning Commission confidently estimated the population of Malibu would swell to almost 120,000 by 1980. In comparison, in 2010 Malibu had a population of 12,645. The planners and developers of the era envisioned a very different future from the one most people who actually lived in Malibu desired and what the terrain could accommodate without massive human reengineering projects.

It's easy to look back and proclaim the abandoned mega-projects of the past as barking mad, but we're still fighting some of the same battles. Some projects just won't die. They rise like tiresome and indestructible movie zombies, bent on devouring brains, no matter how illogical they seem. The City of Malibu has rolled over and given in at last to to the sewers that earlier Malibu activists fought so hard to keep out. The hotel project that was fiercely opposed by the proponents for Malibu cityhood is back again in a new form that is just as unwelcome to the majority of residents as the plan from the 1970s. 

I wonder what projects the next generation will be shaking their heads over in another 50 years. I hope that Malibu's future guardians will have the courage to stand up against tomorrow's half-baked projects. Maybe we will have learned our lessons by then about coexisting with nature. The problem is, we don't always realize the magnitude of the loss until it is too late. 

The tree which moves some to tears of joy is in the Eyes of others only a Green thing that stands in the way. Some see Nature all Ridicule and Deformity, and by these I shall not regulate my proportions; and some scarce see Nature at all. But to the Eyes of the Man of Imagination, Nature is Imagination itself. As a man is, So he Sees. As the Eye is formed, such are its Powers.

—William Blake

Suzanne Guldimann
1 April 2014

There's still an abundance of solitude and wildness in the Santa Monica Mountains. On the day I took this photo in Tuna Canyon, I watched a red-tailed hawk glide past just feet below me. I felt as if I too was soaring. It feels entirely removed from the world here, and from all the world's problems, but that's an illusion. This view is still here because activists had the vision and the determination to meet the challenges of preservation head-on. Developers planned to build 100 "estate homes" here. The Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy acquired the 1256-acre property in 2002. There are more battles still to be fought and won. Photo © 2014 S. Guldimann