Quoted from appended article about the privatization of California's
coastlines:
When speaking of public property, afforability of access often determines
whether something is public in name only, or is, in a egalitarian sense, truly
public.
Pasted below is yet another example of how public lands are being
privatized. It is an example that show most clearly how those who are
facilitating this privatization are doing so by twisting and contorting the
very concept of 'publicness' so that it no longer applies to any member of the
public who is not rich.
http://www.dailynews.com/news/ci_4247957
8/27/2006
Sierra
Club lawyer says Coastal Act in danger
BY NOAKI SCHWARTZ, Associated
Press
LA Daily News
ENCINITAS - On a sandy bluff overlooking the
Pacific, surfer Mark Massara
sees a developing threat to California's
guaranteed beach access for average
families.
Luxury hotel builders
are hovering over the coastline, hoping to add
California to the nationwide
trend of splitting shore development between
high-priced hotel rooms and
pricey privately owned condos.
Where developers see opportunity in "condo
hotels," Massara and others see a
legal loophole that lets private buyers
snap up parts of the coast that are
supposed to remain public. And that, he
fears, will make getting to the
beach harder.
In the low-key northern
San Diego County surf town of Encinitas, dunes and
ice plants are being
cleared from land designated for public use to make way
for 100 condos that
will sell for about $1.5 million each and 30 hotel rooms
that will cost up
to $600 a night.
Because the project includes hotel rooms, it is deemed
to be for public use,
satisfying the California Coastal Act's legal
requirement for public access.
"It's like a knife at the throat of the
Coastal Act," said Massara, a lawyer
for the Sierra Club.
Condo
hotels have gained popularity nationwide in recent years, thanks to
the real
estate boom. There are 225 such developments in the pipeline
nationwide,
with Chicago, Miami and Las Vegas the current hot spots,
according to the
newly formed National Condo Hotel Association.
Along California's coast,
where demand for real estate is so intense that
Santa Barbara city officials
say affordable housing is needed for families
earning $160,000 a year, as
many as 10 condo hotel projects are pending.
Since 1989, the state
Coastal Commission has approved nearly a dozen such
projects, including
developments in Half Moon Bay near San Francisco, Pismo
Beach on the central
coast and Hermosa Beach. In the past five months, the
commission has
approved projects in Encinitas and one project in Rancho
Palos
Verdes.
In such quasi-residential developments, condo owners can use
their rooms for
a maximum of 90 days each year and are expected to rent them
out the rest of
the time. Developers say owners have incentive to make rooms
available to
the public during peak seasons because they can charge
more.
Just who can afford these largely luxury accommodations and how to
police
whether owners stay year-round, rather than the 90-day maximum, are
questions the Coastal Commission tackled this month. The regulatory panel is
supposed to uphold the 1976 Coastal Act that requires affordable
accommodations to be protected and encouraged.
For many, a California
beach vacation already is out of reach. Barely 10
percent of coastal
accommodations are considered affordable - that is, less
than $100 a night.
Of the 1,600 recreation-vehicle parks, campsites and
hotels, only 134 are
deemed affordable.
To comply with the law, the 12-member commission
regularly attaches special
conditions on condo hotel projects, such as
limiting how long owners can use
their units and protecting public beach
access.
For the yet unnamed $50 million project that KSL Encinitas Resort
Co. is
getting started, commissioners required the developer to attach hotel
rooms
to the original condo proposal. The commission also required the
developer
to invest $220,500 in low-cost accommodations off site.
- Privatization 
