For decades, the sprawling Paradise Point resort on Mission Bay, with its stunning water views and tropical lagoons, has been well known as a go-to destination for vacationing families and locals looking for an indulgent getaway.
What’s far less known is that for years, the San Diego vacation spot has been in violation of the California Coastal Act by by failing to get state approval for development on the resort that has long inhibited public access to a prime piece of city-owned land ideally situated in the middle of Mission Bay.
But that’s all about to change.
Following months of intense negotiations, the staff of the California Coastal Commission has secured a landmark settlement with Paradise Point’s ownership that not only calls for removing multiple impediments to free movement around the island resort and shoreline, but also extensive new signage and improvements that will invite locals and out-of-towners to visit tranquil beach areas now hidden from view.
On top of that, the negotiated settlement provides for a $1 million penalty, with the proceeds going into a special statewide reserved for such initiatives as improving public coastal access, acquiring open space, and completing regional trails. The total value of the agreement, which includes building new public restrooms near one of the beach areas where currently there are none, is more than $3 million, according to the Coastal Commission.
“Getting access to the coast is the key to the kingdom in California — the natural world here sures even our famous amusement parks, and, amazingly, it is free,” Lisa Haage, chief of enforcement for the Coastal Commission, told the Union-Tribune. “The Coastal Commission was created to not only protect the magical coast of California but to ensure everyone, not just the wealthy, can enjoy it. It is literally why we are here and we work every day to ensure this.
“This area is gorgeous public land from which the public has been effectively excluded for decades, and that is about to change. We are thrilled and hope the public is, too.”
The agreement comes just a month after the commission’s executive director, Kate Huckelbridge had sent a letter to the resort owner advising it of the agency’s intent to commence formal enforcement proceedings because of the Coastal Act violations.
“As you know,” she wrote, “the permits and the public trust require public access at the tidelands of Mission Bay. of the public must be able to reach the shoreline within Paradise Point Resort at Vacation Isle.”
Before the multiple of the settlement can go into effect, buy-in will be needed from California Coastal Commissioners, who will consider the matter at their Sept. 6 meeting. Specifically, before the commission will be an already agreed to cease and desist order requiring removal of unpermitted development and obstructions to public parking areas, plus the provision of “public access amenities” at the resort. The commission also will be asked to levy monetary penalties on the resort for violating the public access provisions of the Coastal Act.
The effect of the new conditions would be to “create by far the most dramatic improvement of public access in the nearly six-decade history of the Leased Tidelands,” states a staff report released Friday in advance of the commission hearing. A crucial part of that will be an uninterrupted pathway across the three-quarter mile length of of the bayfront within the leased site.
The agreement, should it be approved by commissioners, will presumably clear the way for a longstanding plan to reposition the more than 50-acre property as a Margaritaville Resort. First announced in 2019, the transition to the Jimmy Buffett hotel and restaurant brand was expected to happen within a year, but between the pandemic and the unresolved, years-long violations, the then $35 million project was sidelined.
“Ideally, we would have liked to have been done by now, but it’s a journey and we’re one step closer,” said Raymond Martz, chief financial officer for Maryland-based Pebblebrook Hotel Trust, a real estate investment firm that acquired Paradise Point in 2018 as part of a larger transaction to take over the entire lodging portfolio owned by LaSalle Hotel Properties. “When we invest in a property we invest in that community, which includes being a good neighbor, and if there’s a violation that wasn’t being addressed we like to correct that.
“That’s why we wanted to get this resolved and we wanted to be in good standing.”
Still, the violations have lingered for years, although most of them predate Pebblebrook’s acquisition. The previous ownership was warned in 2017 that it was in violation of public access requirements in numerous areas throughout the resort yet the violations persisted.
As recently as last June, Paradise Point was on the Coastal Commission agenda seeking permission to redevelop the property as a Margaritaville. The planning staff was prepared to recommend approval, along with several conditions to make up for the longstanding violations — although they were far less onerous than what is contained in the current agreement.
The staff report at the time cited coastal access concerns on a property that telegraphs the feel of an exclusive, private resort.
At the last minute, Pebblebrook asked to pull its application from the agenda, presumably in the face of strong opposition from organized labor and local elected leaders, including San Diego Mayor Todd Gloria and County Board of Supervisors Chairwoman Nora Vargas.
“The Resort has established years of non-compliance with previous CDPs (coastal development permits) at the expense of the public,” Vargas wrote in a February letter to the commission. “I urge you not to incentivize this bad behavior any further by granting them yet another CDP, but rather to send a clear message of your ‘commitment to identifying and eliminating barriers, including those that unlawfully privatize public spaces, in order to provide for those who may be otherwise deterred from going to the beach or coastal zone that aligns (with) your environmental justice policy.”
So where’s the beach?
While increased signage may not seem like a particularly game-changing requirement, it will make a huge difference, says Haage, at Paradise Point where there is little or no indication as you approach its address on Vacation Village Road that idyllic beaches reside within the resort, not to mention hundreds of public parking spaces.
“There are a lot of areas on the site that are already protected for public use but nobody knows that,” Haage said. “And some of them are completely unused because they’re hard to get to or they’re hard to find, and no one knows that they’re public. People who are really law-abiding or who’ve got their kids along and they don’t want to get kicked out of an area, they really won’t go someplace unless it’s clear that it’s public.
“So these signs are hugely important here, especially given that the resort is on public trust land.”
Especially grievous is the dearth of signs at the Paradise Point entrance advising the public that this is not a resort for the exclusive use of paying guests, says Rob Moddelmog, statewide enforcement analyst who made an unannounced visit back in May as part of the commission’s planned enforcement action.
“If I were driving by, I would have no way of knowing that this area is open to the public,” he said. “Currently, none of the vehicular or pedestrian access points have signs explaining that there’s public access to beaches and parking within. So you would have to already know that there’s public access and walk all the way in or drive all the way in.”
As part of the consent agreement, Paradise Point will be required to install 70 signs across the entire resort, including around parking areas and along an uninterrupted bayfront trail, Moddelmog explained. And for motorists approaching the resort, the plan is to have signs installed in the median on Ingraham Street pointing toward Paradise Point that clearly indicate public access to the shoreline. Those signs, Moddelmog said, will literally be attached to the resort’s own entrance signage.
As part of the commission’s effort to make the Paradise Point site more inviting for people who simply want to stroll the area and wander off to the sandy shore, it is also asking the resort to remove anything that interferes with an uninterrupted walk around the site’s perimeter — be they uncovered dumpsters and fencing blocking pedestrian pathways or heavy landscaping and trees.
On one visit by the Coastal Commission, enforcement staff discovered that the dining area at the popular Barefoot Bar & Grill had been expanded, which required moving an entertainment stage directly in the path of a mandatory 5-foot public accessway required by a previous commission permit.
Monetary penalties
In addition to a $1 million fine, Paradise Point has agreed to fund an educational outreach program to bring lower-income students and their families to the resort for free overnight stays. That initiative is valued at $500,000, double the amount Pebblebrook was going to have to invest when it was scheduled earlier this year to get its Margaritaville redevelopment plan approved by the Coastal Commission.
“We’ve really increased our efforts to include things that like that in our settlements, because there are so many people in the state of California who can’t easily access the coast,” Haage said, “and we’re really trying to reach out to those people to make sure that they are not priced out of being able to enjoy the beauty that is the coast of California. So (Paradise Point) will be paying for disadvantaged kids to come and explore the coast.”
Another key step Paradise Point has agreed to take is implementing a marine debris reduction plan that will involve such measures as installing water bottle refill stations, discontinuing the use of single-use plastics at the resort and restaurants, and adding laundry filters to avoid microplastic discharges. The ownership will also be required to ensure that all dumpsters and waste are stored in bins that are covered so that native species cannot get into them.
Pebblebrook has also agreed to come up with a plan for improving water quality within the resort’s bayfront lagoon where a pump and pipe previously installed without commission approval has been sucking in water from Mission Bay, possibly trapping small fish, Moddelmog said.
While the Coastal Commission lauded Pebblebrook for working “very quickly” with its enforcement staff to reach an agreement, resolution of the public access issues has been a long time coming given that many of the violations were identified nearly a decade ago. Part of that is due to limited staff that simply can’t keep up with an overwhelming number of enforcement cases up and down the state needing their attention.
A 2022 annual report by the commission pointed out that its enforcement unit had lost 60 percent of its staff that year. Given its chronic staffing shortages, the commission’s backlog of open, unresolved cases grew from 2,846 at the beginning of 2022 to a record high of 2,967 at the end of the year.
“I think that we always want to do more and do it faster. But we have extremely limited staff time, and it’s also difficult in a large, complicated facility like this resort, where there are so many moving parts,” Haage said. “So it really is taking an incredible amount of time and effort to make sure that we think through all of the impediments to public access and get them taken care of.
“And a lot of the of the order were designed to try to make sure that this doesn’t ever happen again.”
