Geffen's Ten Feet

David Geffen's 10 Foot Buffer violated by babes

The California Coastal Commission voted unanimously last week to sell billionaire David Geffen a 10-foot buffer zone of the public beach that abuts his Carbon Beach-front property in Malibu. For about $140,000, the Trip-C supposedly put to rest a decades-long debate over Geffen's property rights (Geffen finally granted access to the beach in 2005).

We visited Carbon Beach to assess how this deal might work out and found only about a dozen or so beachgoers (yes, some encroaching on the so-called buffer zone) on the hottest day of the year (so far).

Can this 10 foot "zone" truly be enforced or is this just a mechanism by which Geffen will further aggravate the public and the CCC? Along with other Malibu beachfront property owners, Geffen has already spent hundreds of thousands of dollars in attempts to restrict access to the swath of sand between his not-so-humble abode and the Pacific. And as Ryan at LAVoice is quick to point out, these beaches are and have always been public.

In December, California Coastal Commission staff recommended a denial of the ten foot privacy buffer and approval of the proposed public easement and $125,000 payment by Geffen to the Coastal Conservancy. The commission, however, voted last week to permit both the easement and the privacy buffer. Steve Hoye, (a former Sierra Club fundraiser) executive director of Access For All, the non-profit in charge of maintaining the existing public easement, told Reason after being sued by Geffen in 2002: "[T]echnically they haven't got a leg to stand on, but they do have unlimited resources and can drag this out to the next century if they want."

Despite the CCC's recommendations it appears that Hoye and Access For All no longer have the fight in them. Last week the Times suggested that Hoye: "favored privacy buffers because nothing aggravates oceanfront property owners more than having strangers pressed up against their walls on busy days."

Check out graphics depicting the plan at the Times.

More photos of the Geffen villa (and shots of some homes damaged the Malibu Beach fires of December and January) after the jump.

Satellite image of Geffen property (Yahoo Maps). Access to the beach is via a walkway about 1/2 mile west of the Carbon Canyon Road traffic signal (brown signs indicate "coastal access"):

Satellite image map of Geffen Malibu property

Taken from east of 42-foot "public easement," in the heart of "buffer zone":

Geffen's pool, taken from just east of as-yet-unmarked "buffer zone":

Taken from the eastern edge of Geffen's beachfront (again, graphic depiction is here):

Two of the homes damaged -- one completely -- by fire. We're not sure whether these houses succumbed to the December 19th fire that destroyed one home, or the January 8th fire that claimed 4 houses (including Suzanne Somers') and damaged 4 others: