The story is still relevant today because it captures a tension within California’s coastal protection law, which Governor Brown signed that summer more than 27 years ago. The hotel was on the beach. The Coastal Act allows for, even encourages, hotels to be built along the coast, but it also requires protection for the beach. Communities and the state are to “maximize public access to and along the coast and maximize public recreational opportunities,” while also protecting what the public comes to enjoy: beaches, scenic views, coastal farms, wild lands, and the special character of coastal communities. “Public access” includes places to stay overnight—for all members of the public, not only those who can afford the best. The law makes that clear: “Lower cost visitor and recreational facilities shall be protected, encouraged, and where feasible, provided.”

That’s a tough assignment. How well has it been fulfilled? Are there enough hotels, inns, and other overnight accommodations that meet the needs of coastal visitors of all income groups without major damage to the coast?

The answer is mixed. The Coastal Act, as administered by the Coastal Commission under the watchful eyes of citizens, has spared California’s shoreline from the degradation inflicted on many other beautiful shorelines in this country and abroad. It prevented the construction of view-blocking high-rise beach hotels (a few, including those in Ventura and Santa Cruz, were built before the Coastal Act took effect). A sizeable number of new mega-hotel complexes have been built in recent years, but each has had to meet stringent design and environmental requirements. In addition, small inns have proliferated along the entire coast, particularly in central and northern California, most of them fitting easily into the landscape.

However, prices are steep. “From the beginning of the coastal protection movement in California, there was a concern that the coast would not be affordable,” says Peter Douglas, the Coastal Commission’s longtime executive officer. That concern has proved well founded.

A Place to Stay If You Can Pay

In southern California, some major resort hotel complexes have been built since 2000, including the Bacara Resort in Santa Barbara County, with nearly 400 rooms priced at $425 to $895; the St. Regis Monarch Beach Resort and Spa, in Orange County, with 400 rooms and advertised rates of $375 to $435. The Montage Resort and Spa in Laguna Beach quotes rates at $450 to $625, with bungalows and suites going for $950. The Lodge at Torrey Pines in San Diego opened in 2002 with 175 rooms priced at $325 to $625.

The Hyatt Regency Huntington Beach advertises somewhat lower rates, starting at about $200 per night for its 575 rooms and suites. Perched on a bluff at Half Moon Bay in northern California, the 261-room Ritz-Carlton, opened in 2001, advertises rooms from $325 to $695. Farther north, no coastal hotels of this scale have been built because of limited road, water, and sewage disposal capacity, as well as community resistance. These factors and lack of airports also exclude the convention trade. There you find the smaller inns, scattered north to the Oregon border.

The huge hotel complexes clearly serve a limited clientele. They cater to conferences and conventions, competing with similar complexes in Arizona, Hawaii, and other places endowed with natural beauty and benign climate. Guests tend to fly in and spend much of their time within the complex.

If you’re looking for a place with fine amenities at a much lower price, you can now find it in the far north of the state, in Crescent City’s new 54-room beachfront Hampton Inn. Opened in fall 2003, the
hotel offers rates of $100 to $125—moderate for most of the coast, although considered high-end there, according to Diane Mutchie, the City’s planning director. Crescent City is 750 miles from Los Angeles, 350 miles from San Francisco.

Among alternative accommodations—not exactly low-priced but more affordable and coast-friendly—are the bed and breakfast inns. Most are owned and operated by local residents who participate in their communities and have a self-interest in protecting coastal resources that attract their guests. B&Bs have mushroomed in coastal areas in the past two decades, with the Coastal Commission’s blessing. In 1980 there were fewer than 50 in the whole state, but by 1986 there were some 500, according to Pat Hardy, former Santa Barbara inn owner and cofounder of the Professional Innkeepers Association. An internet search showed rates ranging from about $135 to $280 along the entire coast. Bed and breakfasts don’t draw conventions; the attraction is usually the coast itself.

Why So Many Big, Pricey Hotels?

Land use decisions are affected not only by the Coastal Act’s goals but also by community preferences, potential tax revenues, market demand, and other factors. Hotels bring in money. They are economic engines for coastal communities, generating jobs, sales taxes, and income from transient occupancy taxes—nine to 10 percent of room receipts in most coastal counties (14 percent in San Francisco). That tax is one of the few sources of unrestricted funds available to local governments. A large hotel with $300 to $400 rooms brings in much more, of course, than a more modest one with lower-priced rooms.

Not surprisingly, luxury hotels often get a friendly reception among impoverished local governments. Residents also tend to prefer them to more moderately priced hotels, according to Steve Bone, president and chief executive officer of the Robert Mayer Corporation, which built the Hilton and Hyatt Regency hotels in Huntington Beach. “If the neighbors are being asked whether they want a Best Western or a Hyatt Regency next door, they’ll go for the Hyatt,” he said.

Coastal Costs

So what about the other side of the equation? Have the new hotels been built, and inns established, without major damage to coastal resources?

Coastal Commissioner Mike Reilly points to improvements in the quality of what has been built under the Coastal Act, including hotels. “In the last few years,” he says, “we’ve had exponential growth in information about polluted runoff and water quality, wildlife corridors, and other resources. Projects are better now, because of the conditions that are placed on them.”

There is no way to build anything large on the coast without damaging natural resources. How bad the damage is, what the trade-offs are, depends on the makeup of the Coastal Commission at the time the development takes shape and on what citizens demand. Not every large project is approved. Oceanside’s Manchester resort project, for example, which would have closed off public streets and intruded on the beach, was turned down by the Coastal Commission in June 2002.

In 1997 the State Parks Department signed a lease with a developer who wanted to build a luxury resort in Crystal Cove State Park in Orange County, on a site occupied by a rambling array of small cottages. The plan was greeted with such protest that in 2001 State Parks bought back the lease with a grant from the Coastal Conservancy. The cottages will be restored, and about 90 lucky people a night will be able to stay there for $25 each.

Experiencing the Coast

As in the case of Crystal Cove, what’s at stake is more than the price of rooms in new inns or hotels. “In the days when Proposition 20 [the Coastal Initiative of 1972] was being written, those involved thought that tourism was a driver of the economy, but also that tourism was a way to encourage stronger support for conservation,” says Peter Douglas. The idea was that those who visited the coast and experienced its opportunities for recreation and learning would be likely to support protection of coastal resources.

That is more likely to happen among those who stay in the smaller establishments. The new high-profile coastal resorts seem to focus on opulent comfort rather than nearby attractions, including the natural world at their doorstep. Advertising features 400-thread-count bed linens, marble baths, and “relaxed luxury,” items that are presumably available at expensive resorts anywhere in the world. These hotels may not need coastal protection to make a profit. They are largely self-contained, like luxury liners, offering ocean views and the scent of salt water.

It’s different for smaller inns and bed and breakfasts. Pat Hardy, founder of the Professional Innkeepers Association, says bed and breakfast guests expect to be told about local resources, whether historical, natural, or other. “They don’t look for those little folders in the lobby,” she says. “They expect a packet of information in the room.” Barbara Reed, of Mendocino, says, “We are well aware that tourists come to our areas to enjoy the scenic beauty. It’s in our own self-interest to protect our environment.”

For now, the boom in major hotel construction seems to be over. With average occupancy rates of the southern California coastal resorts down from 76 percent to 63 percent over the last three years—perhaps reflecting the recent increase in the supply of rooms—new projects are looking less attractive, says Steve Bone. Large hotels require 10 to 20 years of planning, he says. The number of bed and breakfast inns has been growing at a rate slower than in the 1980s, but the overall room count has continued to grow, because inns have typically increased in size.

Meanwhile, ecotourism has taken hold in some communities, especially on the central and north coast, bringing modest new income and creating opportunities for hotel development that is harmonious with coastal resource protection. The City of Arcata has been supportive of a proposed overnight facility that combines camping options with a 30-to-50–room lodge, built using sustainable materials. A major tourist attraction is the Arcata Marsh and Wildlife Sanctuary, created on the site of a degraded marsh, as well as the community redwood forest and coastal trails. “We have an economy in concert with protecting those areas,” said Michael Sweeney, director of the Institute for Ecological Tourism at Humboldt State University. Ecotourism is a way to encourage saving resources by supporting the local economy. California’s coastal protection program makes that possible.