Cliffhanger: La Esplanade Apartments at Risk?

 

By Julia Scott
San Mateo County Times

Posted: 01/21/2009 07:41:44 PM PST

PACIFICA — It doesn't take long for Bart Willoughby to make his point about the ocean gobbling up the bluff that supports his home, La Esplanade Apartments. All he has to do is point to a giant gash in the bluff face to show the erosion that is now within a few feet of his neighbor's back railings, the view a sheer drop to the beachfront below. "The city had better have an evacuation plan. Any consecutive storms that come in could be a major problem," said Willoughby, gazing over the rail and shaking his head. More than a year has passed since Willoughby, representing the owners of the apartment complex and the 200 residents who depend on its safety, first attempted to get an emergency permit from the California Coastal Commission to armor the bottom of the bluff along Esplanade Avenue with 31,000 tons worth of boulders, also known as riprap.

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LA ESPLANADE APARTMENTS ON THE BRINK

Comments

[Dan Underhill]

For some reason I am unable to get the video to play but as one who (as a plumbing contractor) has done many excavations in sand, it is important to note that there are rules about shoring of trenches even four feet deep (let alone forty or eighty) and about setting heavy things near such trenches. A bluff is very like a trench except there is no other side to brace off of. I think Scotty's point (if I understood him correctly) is well taken that the city is quite correct to consult with some real experts in the field rather than simply jumping in with both feet. I liked Todd's idea of the property owner partnering with the city on the area in question rather than busying them selves with recriminations. If we did want to go the recriminations route, I would have to say that the property owner knew the risks and should have spent some of that Prop. 13 money (that should rightly have gone to our state and local governments) long before this became an emergency.

[Lance Fernork]

If Lance recalls his Pacifica history, wasn't this the apartment complex that had a landslide problem a few years back because the city let a drain clog and it collapsed? If that is so, i would assume that the city retains a major liability for anything that happens to this property and should be bending over backwards to assist the owners, who will be spending THEIR money, to repair a threat to their property. What am i thinking, the city interact in a postive way to alleviate a potential disaster! Jeez, I crack my self up! The city help! hahahahahhah

[Jeffrey Simons]

so if I read Julia Scott's article right, and understand the KTVU news story . . . the city is delaying these emergency repairs to the bluff, putting the tenants lives at risk, because they are worried about the liability of someone getting injured on city property that is adjacent to the apartment complex, or the property being damaged.

and they want a trail, unless the people they are putting at risk with these delays say NO.

Seems reasonable.

[Jeffrey Simons]

http://www.ktvu.com/video/18544791/index.html

here's the story on KTVU with Sal Castaneda

[Scotty]

Yes, and trust our local Pacificans to provide that other side of the story... They can explain complex geophysics without any qualifications whatsoever -- they stayed at a Holiday Inn last night!

[Peter Loeb]

It's not just "an abandoned piece of land to store rock." It's a narrow, unstable sandy blufftop adjacent to the blufftop they're trying to save, and it's over 100 tons of rock according to the City Engineer quoted in the newspaper article. The City Engineer is asking for an independent geotechnical consultant to assess the stability of the land. Isn't that a reasonable request? What if storing over 100 tons of rock on the blufftop results in it collapsing into the ocean, and that makes it impossible to save the blufftop behind the apartment buildings? The City Engineer also points out that there is a safer alternative -- the rock could be stored on a nearby parking lot. There is more than 1 side to this story.

[Dan Underhill]

What happens if the city OKs the project, the rock gets stored in the place the city has deemed to be unstable and the land slides? Who pays for that?

[Andrew]

"Or, will the taxpayers end up paying for the property owner's hubris, with scarce Public Works dollars getting dumped into that cliff, and eventually FEMA relief for an "act of God" that was entirely preventable (by vacating)? Who will end up paying the price for propping up a building in a place it doesn't belong?"

It's already paid for. If the apartments get abandoned the city will have to pay out the value of the apartment buildings, and relocating infrastructure.
The owners have already poured a huge amount of money into this, and continue to. So far the city hasn't needed to.
I understand where you're coming from, but you're lacking information.

[Andrew]

Summer, we're not asking the council for anything beyond using an abandoned piece of land to store rock. That's it. They are saying that land is too unstable to store rock.

That's all the argument is. Yes, these apartments will one day have to be abandoned. The question is, should we abandon them now? Consider that the rock is ready to go, everything is paid for, machinery and workers are contracted, all we're waiting on is the ok to store rock on an abandoned lot.

If you're truly ok with letting the apartments be torn down, and a huge amount of money then spent to relocate all the infrastructure that's underground now, just so you can wind up with another stretch that will be fenced off and abandoned by the council, then I have to say I don't understand your argument.

[Lionel Emde]

There's a telling photograph somewhere in the Pacifica Tribune morgue of Esplanade Ave. in the 1950's, when the now disappeared houses were built. The backyards went 50 feet out before dropping off in the ocean.
When those houses fell, to national attention, we learned that in part it was runoff from the land that was causing the erosion in addition to the sea pounding the cliffs.
In other words, the more development there is, the worse the problem gets for people living on the edge, so to speak.

[todd bray]

if the city asks for and gets a trail it may be a way for the property owner to have extra protection by partnering with the city, did anyone think of that?

[Steve Sinai]

"If the property owners feel they do not want to do that, all they have to do is say so."

That's like catching a robber in the act, and the robber says "gee, I was just asking if this good citizen could lend me some money."

[Summer Rhodes]

"I have to think that if the council allowed 200 homeowners to lose their dwellings there would be a bigger stink. " Too funny. Does anyone really think that City Council can manage the sea? I'm sure we'd all have to say, no it does not.

Build in a flood plain, one day you will flood. Build beneath a clay hill, one day that clay will slip. Build on the edge of the ocean, one day you will fall in.

[Frank Siciliano]

That cliff is falling into the sea. Maybe not immediately, but eventually. No amount of rocks will stop that from happening.

You're going to fight the Pacific Ocean? For what? Temporary tax revenue? Doesn't that seem like a misplaced priority?

The owners of the apartment building should be looking for ways to divest from it, and the tenants there should be looking for a safer place to live. Wouldn't it make more sense to spend tax dollars helping them relocate than on fighting off the inevitable?

Or, will the taxpayers end up paying for the property owner's hubris, with scarce Public Works dollars getting dumped into that cliff, and eventually FEMA relief for an "act of God" that was entirely preventable (by vacating)? Who will end up paying the price for propping up a building in a place it doesn't belong?

[Andrew]

Dan, we're not talking about a path between the apartments and the bluff. Come take a look out the back of 320. There's not only no room for a path, the tenant's own back 'yard' is an 80' drop. You could literally jump from inside the apartment to the beach below with a good runup.

I have to think that if the council allowed 200 homeowners to lose their dwellings there would be a bigger stink. Think about it: the council says the entire Rockaway community will be lost because there's nowhere to stage rocks. Especially not the one spot the council has neglected to the point that they themselves want the community to pay for a makeover, if they let them stage rocks!

But Pacifica continues to treat renters as second class citizens.

Which is fine, and as I said, is why Pacifica will see the back of us and our wallets if we're allowed to lose our 'home'.
And why we'll sue. As would any homeowner in our situation.

Sorry, but it'll be you 'higher class' citizens who'll be in a similar case to the HMB folk, forced to pay higher rents for the next few decades because the council thinks a dump is worth more than a community.

[Peter Loeb]

Before you get your moral outrage on, put the quoted part in context. The bit about the coastal trail is the very last and least important thing in the article. And it ends with the city engineer saying "If the property owners feel they do not want to do that, all they have to do is say so."

[Dan Underhill]

Also, The ocean has been chomping away at the coastline for eons. We all have known about that for a long time. The ocean is gonna get us all eventually. Some businessmen thought it would be worth the risk to build there and be able to charge handsomely for apartments with fabulous views. I'm not sure they should have been allowed to build there in the first place. If the City of Pacifica has said what constitutes compliance and the La Esplanade Apartments owner argues until some disaster happens,the property owners should sue themselves.

[Dan Underhill]

I don't really know much about it. I know that to get a permit for a bathroom remodel on my house, I had to sign a paper saying that I would provide whatever kind of curb or sidewalk the city might ask for. A sidewalk is really inappropriate for where I live, and my neighborhood has successfully fought off the idea whenever it came up since a long time before I got here. If the city was to want a curb sometime after the economy recovers, it might not be unreasonable for me to provide one. I think that the city probably won't be asking for even that at a time when most of us would have to go to loan sharks to make it happen.

As for the La Esplanade Apartments, would the path be between the apartment building and whatever they are installing to hold up the cliff? If so, might not the walkway be only very slightly different from the easement from the property line required of everyone in any jurisdiction anywhere? There is going to have to be some kind of a top to whatever they are building there, so why not a public access pathway, especially in light of the point of my last letter? Mr. Jim Heldberg said it better, but I have always felt that the only way this will be a destination, which is something it needs to be, is by our making the most of the natural beauty around us, by maintaining it and by making it accessible wherever accessibility won't interfere too badly with the wildlife.

Proposition 13 is why the city can't come up with the chips anyway. When Jarvis and Gann were on the private-sector side of the revolving door, they were lobbyists for the apartment building owners association or some such. Prop. 13 was of, by, and for apartment building owners, and if one were to balance $60,000 against what the last 30 or so years of tax breaks were, I would say they are getting off pretty easy.

[mike bell]

I live here on purpose, too. I love the same ocean and the same natural beauty as you do. The upside-down priorities that are threatening these homes are the same upside-down priorities that are threatening the future of Pacifica. It's going to take a lot more than a few bucks spent by hikers in a sandwich shop to fix Pacifica's economic mess.

[Andrew]

The idea that putting a load of rock on the bluff between the abandoned houses and Edgewater Apartments would cause potential erosion of council land is vacuous.
Yes, it might. Though probably not as much as the weight of 5 giant apartment buildings that are a lot closer to the edge than those rocks would be.
And that empty bluff isn't exactly a jewel anyway. It's been ignored by the council for years. The fence is falling down and it's full of trash.
They tried to fix up the short stretch between the houses and the RV park, and put in unsuitable plants that promptly died, and now that's becoming an eyesore too.

I tell you what, I live in one of those apartment blocks, have done for 7 years. And if I have to move I'll be taking part in any suit against the city. And Joe's Farmers Market will lose the $200 a week we spend in there, because I'll never again live in this town that I love if the council allows my home to be lost.

I would imagine the other 200-plus folks in these buildings feel pretty much the same way.

Plus, if the city has to pay out the owners, you'll be looking at a $20 million-plus cost to taxpayers. And more to move all the pipes, cables, etc. across the street.

All so that an unused, unloved piece of land doesn't lose a couple of yards of bluff. What a joke.

[Steve Sinai]

Dan - are you really defending the way the city tried to use the situation, where the apartment owner and residents are probably somewhat panicked, in order to ask that the owner build a trail as a condition of getting approval to make repairs?

For me, it's not even about the trail. It's that it's blatantly immoral for the city to ask for a third-world-style bribe before it does it's job.

[Riptide]

That man is Jim Heldberg, Pacifica Democrats newsletter editor.

[Dan Underhill]

At the Pacifica Democrats meeting, the gentleman (I should remember his name) who owns the Segway dealership in Rockaway expressed great appreciation for what trails we have and cited several instances where people who came here take Segway tours on the trails that presently exist and have ended up coming here often and spending money in this town on many things, including real estate. I also think such trails capitalize on what we have rather than trying to turn Pacifica into a second-rate version of someplace else. Many of the fabulous ideas that out-of-town developers bring in look like someplace else to me. I live here on purpose.

[mikie bell]

What! A misplaced priority in Pacifica? This PSD Council has been building trails, giving away land, destroying business and placing the well-being of frogs and snakes before human beings since the day they took control of our city. Term limits, anyone?

[Lois Rogan]

Why does this not surprise me? Is this going to be another lawsuit in the future?

The City powers, to me, are like Nero, fiddling while Rome burned...

When will common sense prevail?