In Malibu, long known for homes that display their owners’ worldly success, a 5,000-square-foot place used to be large, but now people are building at twice that size or more. Mary Daly Riordan, wife of Los Angeles Mayor Richard Riordan, has a Coastal Commission permit for a 14,210-square-foot oceanfront home, with a deck of over 7,000 square feet that will extend along the ocean side of the Pacific Coast Highway across three combined lots. Cher’s walled blufftop spread of about 20,000 square feet, nearing completion on the ocean side of the highway, is already a landmark.

The big house phenomenon “kind of snuck up on us, one house at a time, in Malibu,” says Gary Timm, district manager for the Coastal Commission’s South Central District. “Now it’s spreading to other parts of the coast.”

Lee Otter, chief planner for the Commission’s Central Coast District, says “Houses of 10,000 square feet or more are being appealed in San Mateo and Santa Cruz Counties, in San Luis Obispo County near Harmony, and in Monterey County at Point Lobos Ridge, and with more sure to follow in Big Sur.”

While a typical spacious three-bedroom ranch house might have 2,400 square feet, some of these houses are big enough to be museums or city halls. “They are monuments to affluenza gone mad,” says Celia Scott, former mayor of Santa Cruz and a veteran advocate of coastal protection.

With rare exceptions, coastal towns have no size limits. (One that does is Pebble Beach, where tourists pay a fee to drive along Seventeen-Mile Drive in hopes of seeing luxurious estates. Monterey County’s Local Coastal Plan, adopted in 1986, limits the “footprint” of new houses to 5,000 square feet. At the time, that seemed plenty to all concerned, says Otter. Consequently—and ironically—Pebble Beach is one place where no oversized houses are being proposed today.

The impact of the big-house trend is, or soon will be, especially dramatic in rural areas—and nowhere more so than along the beautiful open stretch just over the ridge from Silicon Valley, between Santa Cruz and Half Moon Bay.

This region, known locally as the Coastside, has a character all its own. To the north, Highway 1 clings to the steep edge of Montara Mountain and is often washed out by winter storms at Devil’s Slide. Here it travels across fertile terraces, past lush marshes and abundant, accessible beaches backed by eroding bluffs. Forests of redwood, fir, and pine form a deep green background on hills to the east and, in some places, descend to the shore. With few roads leading into it and a strong agricultural heritage, the rural Coastside has managed to survive as an intact landscape, not much changed for more than a hundred years, despite explosive growth of the San Francisco metropolitan area.

Now, however, a wave of money has begun to wash over the coastal ridge from Silicon Valley, threatening to carve this landscape into building sites for megahomes on former ranches and farms. A few have already drawn public attention and controversy, and more are in the wings.

The money available for luxury living is immense in the heart of the new economy. In late 1999 there were 13 billionaires in Silicon Valley, and several hundred residents worth at least $25 million, the San Jose Mercury News has reported. More than 65,000 Santa Clara County households—one in nine—had assets of a million dollars or more, not counting their homes. Add the homes—in seven Silicon Valley cities the median value exceeds $1 million—and it is clear the number of people who could pay top dollar for coastal land is huge.

With real estate prices in the Valley spiraling out of sight, traffic congestion along major highways worsening almost daily, and land overlooking the Pacific available just over the ridge, it’s only natural that building on the coast has appeal. New electronic technology has made “computer commuting” possible and, with it, a new kind of sprawl. That technology has opened the way to turning the Coastside into the Silicon Coast.

The Costanoa resort was a harbinger of changes to come. In the 1980s a complicated deal was struck to save as much as possible of the historic 4,000-acre Cascade Ranch, a few miles north of the Año Nuevo State Reserve. One part of it, fronting on Highway 1, was designated in the deal for a “low impact, low visibility visitor-serving use” and sold. The buyer wanted to build a health resort and spa that would have accommodated more people than live in any of the communities between Half Moon Bay and Santa Cruz. He met with community opposition and went bankrupt. After several years of permit appeals, lawsuits, and politicking, the next buyer built the Costanoa, scaled down from the original plan, with lodge rooms renting for up to $350 a night and “pitch your own tent” sites for $40.

Costanoa set off alarm bells that the up-scaling of the Coastside and the down-grading of its landscape were under way. Those bells began to ring off the wall in 1999, when construction began on the Pigeon Point Inn, directly in front of the Pigeon Point Lighthouse, the region’s signature landmark. The inn had been approved years ago by a Coastal Commission distinctly more friendly toward development than today’s, and the current Commission could do nothing to stop it.

Residents and visitors gazed in disbelief at new buildings being erected on the lonely point, at the foot of the lighthouse. A path to the cove beach on the Point was closed. When the San Francisco Chronicle ran a photograph on its front page, it set off shock waves.

Then, in a completely unexpected move, the Peninsula Open Space Trust (POST) stepped up like the royal messenger who saves the hero from the gallows at the final minute. POST bought the 2.5-acre property for $2.65 million and announced that the new buildings would be taken down and given away. The view would be restored to the public, as would the path to the beach. “Our goal is to preserve the extraordinary rural character of the coast,” says POST executive director Audrey Rust.
That was a happy story for Californians, but it is one not easily repeated. When development begins on a beautiful open shoreline within reach of a metropolitan region, it fuels the pressures for more.

Controversial Megahomes

Fifty-five miles south of San Francisco, a rocky point juts out into the ocean. It is part of the Año Nuevo State Reserve, where elephant seals mate, give birth, and rest. Since the 1970s, they have returned from the brink of extinction. Each year, tens of thousands of people take docent-led tours to see them.

You can stand on a 30-foot dune in the Reserve and listen to the bellows of two-ton bull elephant seals as they slam their bodies against each other in battles for domination. If you turn full-circle, you can see the land much the way it looked 150 years ago. As Rusty Areias, director of State Parks, recently put it: “This kind of experience, so near a major metropolitan area, is found nowhere else in the state.”

In these same hills overlooking the Reserve, just across the coastal highway, two huge new houses have county approval. In late November, both were on appeal before the Coastal Commission. Brian Hinman and Suzanne Skees propose to build a three-story Gothic Revival mansion, modeled on the 150-year-old Rose Hill plantation in South Carolina. Hinman, who owns a broadband communications company, believes that when this one is finished, it will look like it had been there for 150 years, fitting right into the landscape. With 15,000 square feet of space, it would be a second home for him, his wife, and their two children. Also proposed are some accessory structures and a swimming pool.

Hinman’s mansion, designed by Kirk Peterson, would rise three-fourths of a mile from the coastal highway and the Reserve. According to plan, a row of tall eucalyptus trees on the western property boundary would screen the 51-foot-high building, all but the top 10 feet of the chimney. A row of Monterey cypress would be planted along the access road.

A Coastal Commission staff report has recommended that a permit be denied, partly because of the “enormous mass and scale in relation to existing agricultural north coast character and because it may induce a similar type of future development.” Endangered species habitat is also at issue. A wetland on the 50-acre property is used by the red-legged frog. The northernmost of only four remaining stands of Monterey pine is in the Año Nuevo watershed and Hinman’s house would be built among pines. Building farther down the hill, however, would intrude on the wetland.

Hinman has the support of several neighboring landowners and homeowners. Among those opposed to the mansion are the State Parks Rangers Association, Friends of the North Coast, and the Sierra Club.

Directly west, on the ocean-facing side of the eucalyptus row that would partly screen Hinman’s mansion from Highway 1 and the Año Nuevo Reserve, David Lee, an attorney in Menlo Park, would build a two-story 6,500-square-foot home, its several elements extending 256 feet along a ridge that overlooks the Reserve and the highway. Together with its basement four-car garage, the accessory building, patios, lap pool, pond, and shade structure with spa, the Coastal Commission’s staff report found that the proposed project would require a total of 23,590 square feet of developed area.

As first proposed, and as approved by the County, Lee’s project would have been only half-hidden by landscaping, even after the years required for plantings to mature. After it was appealed to the Coastal Commission, Lee lowered the roofline and proposed to build two earthen berms in front of the structures. These would be planted with coyote bush. “The people in the house will have a framed view between two berms,” said the architect, Stan Field.

While the Hinman and Lee projects are on adjacent parcels, they are in different counties, so two different sets of Local Coastal Plan (LCP) standards apply. The Coastal Commission’s staff report on the Lee proposal states that it “would be the first very large residence not associated with agriculture in the immediate area that would be readily visible from the highway, and would be visible from distance views of the Año Nuevo Reserve.”

Three miles north of Hinman and Lee, a third large home is on appeal to the Commission. Steve Blank and Alison Elliott want to build on 250 acres behind the Costanoa resort and adjacent to the Cascade Ranch Farm, a working farm owned by the Coastal Conservancy. From the beginning Blank was committed to making his home invisible from the highway and nearby park trails. To achieve that goal, he planted numerous trees as soon as the house site had been chosen. Later, after discussions with Coastal Commission staff, two berms planted with brush were added to the design. The total square footage is 15,000, like Hinman’s, but 6,000 would be underground: the site is between two faults and the basement is designed to be an earthquake-safety feature. Blank’s architect, Loring Sagan, designed the house to resemble a complex of barns built over time. Steve Blank, who retired a few months ago at age 47 from his software company, says he will live here year-round with his family, and that his two daughters will attend local schools and learn to take care of the land for their grandchildren. They intend to have horses and grow raspberries.

The Commission’s decisions on these proposed projects will affect not only the character of their immediate surroundings, they will also set precedents for other proposed megahomes. And there will be many more. The wholeness of the Coastside landscape is illusory. Hundreds of invisible lot lines have carved it into plots ready to be snapped up by people who can afford them.

Hinman, Lee, and Blank have different goals and visions, reflected in the homes they propose. Individual decisions such as these will play a part in the future of this beautiful coastal region. That future will be shaped by the interplay of three forces: planning and regulation, conservation purchases, and the grace, or lack thereof, of new wealthy landowners and home builders.

Regulation is Not Enough

Coastside citizens have been careful stewards of their natural wealth. In both Santa Cruz and San Mateo counties, policies are in place to safeguard agriculture and the countryside. Those who would build new homes on undeveloped land must demonstrate that adequate water (a locally scarce resource) is available, and must show that residential use will not diminish water supplies for agriculture or in-stream wildlife. Farmland must be kept intact; geologically hazardous and significant natural resource lands must be avoided. New structures must fit the area’s character, be as unobtrusive as possible, and not detract from natural and visual qualities or from open space.

The impact of new homes on open land goes far beyond the buildings themselves. When paved drives and entrance gates replace dirt farm roads, and when fences, outbuildings, and other country estate features appear on the land, the change can be dramatic. It is not just the size of a new home but its relation to the local environment that affects the character of a place. In Carmel, known for its cottages built on tiny lots, a house that would be small in another town may be way out of scale, altering an entire neighborhood. On a forested slope in the Año Nuevo Creek watershed, the appearance of a new house on a hillside is a momentous change in the landscape. The Coastal Act and local policies address these issues, but they require interpretation.

To date, the push and pull of the regulatory process on the Coastside has produced mixed results. A landowner recently proposed to build a 3,500-square-foot Mediterranean-style house on a bluff next to the Cowell Ranch agricultural preserve just south of Half Moon Bay. The Commission required the house to be reduced in size, moved off the open terrace to a spot adjacent to preexisting development, and redesigned to reflect the historic farmhouse architectural style characteristic of the Coastside. The applicant sued, contending the Commission did not have the authority to require such changes, but the Superior Court upheld the Commission. The applicant subsequently sold the property (for considerably more than the original purchase price) to a young couple who enthusiastically embraced the new design requirements as consistent with their desire to live in harmony with the special qualities of the coast.

Planning and regulation are essential for coastal protection, but—as the example of the Pigeon Point Inn shows—they are not enough to realize the citizens’ goals embodied in the 1976 Coastal Act. The values and attitudes of landowners play a key role, as do acquisitions for conservation.

Cultivating New Stewards

“The only solution we’ve found in Santa Cruz County is to acquire the land and take it out of the market,” says Celia Scott of Friends of the North Coast. “In Santa Cruz County, from the western edge of the city, where city voters passed a bond measure November ’98 to purchase a greenbelt to the San Mateo County line, almost all the land along the coastline is protected,” she says. “Citizen involvement has kept the land open until it was possible to acquire it.”

Thousands of acres have been purchased for agricultural, habitat, and open space conservation by POST, Coastal Conservancy, Trust for Public Land, Save the Redwoods League, Packard Foundation, Wildlife Conservation Board, and others. Much more acquisition will be needed.

In the 1970s, a city of 30,000 was in the works for land that is now Wilder State Park, Scott points out. There are legal lots for 51 houses at Bolsa Point, north of Pigeon Point, on the 1,700 acres that POST is now trying to buy for $39 million. “That’s an incredible amount we have to put together,” says Rust. “We’re hopeful that with the help of the Coastal Conservancy, the Wildlife Conservation Board, and private donations we’ll be able to do it. I do see increasing donations for land conservation—by all kinds of people in many walks of life,” she says. “That’s a bigger trend than big houses.”

“It’s not the housing that’s an issue, it’s the nature of the land use and how it affects the resources,” says Rust. “Practices that cause erosion and damage natural resources are doing more damage to the environment than a big house per se. We have every intention of continuing acquisitions at an aggressive pace.” Toward that end, she is trying to enlist some of the wealthy newcomers, the very people whose purchasing power has raised land prices enormously.

Steve Blank is one who is already engaged. “There are several trillion dollars sitting over the hill. What are we going to do about it?” he asks. “How can we get people who are interested connected to people who historically have protected the coast? Some conservation and community organizations make it difficult by assuming that if you can afford to build a big house you have to be a rapacious guy.”

Silicon Valley is a hothouse where new ideas are nurtured and grow. As the coast falls increasingly under its sway, will the old patterns prevail, with development destroying the very things that attracted people to the place, or will a new model for conservation-minded land ownership take hold? If the affluent newcomers from Silicon Valley contribute creativity and financial resources to the patient efforts of longtime coastal stewards, this tranquil coastline may yet survive to be passed on intact to future generations.

Jack Liebster was on the staff of the Coastal Commission for 22 years, and from 1996 through 1999 was responsible for reviewing plans and projects on the Coastside, including the Lee proposal. He is now a project manager at the Coastal Conservancy. Rasa Gustaitis is the editor of California Coast & Ocean.