Santa Cruz County’s beach access battle
Leaders say backyard patios that homeowners used for decades are part of public path
Annie Vaudagna loves to spend sunny days in Aptos sitting on her beachfront patio or leaving her door open to hear the crash of waves.
But it’s an experience she has enjoyed far less since Santa Cruz County began arguing that her patio, along with those of her neighbors, is actually part of a public walkway.
The escalating fight over nearly 800 feet of walkway — a clash of private property rights and public access to the coast — has cost millions of dollars and counting. It pits homeowners who have fenced off more than two dozen properties for decades against both the county and the California Coastal Commission, which argue the public has a right to walk through the area.
For property owners, being told that land they had been using and maintaining for years was no longer part of their homes came as a shock.
“It is an unsettling feeling. I think anybody would feel that way about their backyard,” Vaudagna said.
For proponents of public access, it’s an issue of accessibility. Although most visitors can walk to the beach, named Rio Del Mar, there is no other paved area wide enough for people with wheelchairs or strollers to get through, they say.
“It sends a broader message that the coast is available to a select few, either those that are well resourced or those that don’t have mobility challenges,” said Santa Cruz County Supervisor Zach Friend, who represents Aptos.
Individual homes by the beach are valued from $2 million to $5 million, according to Zillow estimates.
For the moment, the walkway is blocked off by a green plastic and chainlink fence. For more than half a century, a permanent fence and stone wall boxed in the ends of the walkway, but they were demolished by the county in 2018. In late January, a new fence went up after the homeowners secured a legal victory — though the county has since appealed.
“We want to be the nice place people want to come and visit, not a place with fences,” said Barry Scott, an Aptos resident who’s
“It sends a broader message that the coast is available to a select few, either those that are well resourced or those that don’t have mobility challenges.” Zach Friend, Santa Cruz County supervisor who represents Aptos
been organizing neighbors against the fence.
Rio Del Mar is hardly the only hot spot in the debate over coastal access. Just 7 miles up the coast, the Coastal Commission is investigating whether a private fence improperly blocks an unofficial trail to Twin Lakes State Beach in Santa Cruz. In San Mateo County, Martins Beach has become the focus of a decadelong effort to restore public access after a homeowner shut down the private road leading to the beach. The homeowner there has agreed to keep the road open during the day while the case is in court.
On Beach Drive in Aptos, the public sidewalk is narrow and at times uneven. Expanding it to make it easier for strollers and wheelchair users would mean cutting into an equally narrow road where most cars already cross over the centerline when passing through. (It also wouldn’t have a view of the beach.) Behind the Beach Drive homes, by the shore, high tides rise all the way up to a rock retaining wall, precluding the county from building any new path, according to Friend.
That leaves the existing walkway as the best solution for people needing wheels, Friend said. When the original barriers were still up, he remembers having trouble getting through the sidewalk on Beach Drive with his son in a stroller.
“It was constantly obstructed by homeowners’ trash cans, cars that are parked up against the curb,” Friend said. “On the other side, it was much safer and accessible for everyone in the community who deserves to have access to that walkway.”
Tensions over the walkway began rising in 2018, when some of the homeowners filed a lawsuit seeking to resolve a longstanding debate over who could access the walkway. One month later, the county tore down the decadesold barriers.
The county’s argument came down to one line in a 1980 permit obtained when the homeowners were first building the rock seawall. It called a stretch of land extending 37 feet behind the homes a “public easement” and mandated that “the public shall have the right to use a walkway.”
The homeowners argued they had built the walkway and the seawall protecting it with no financial help from the county — and that the barriers to public access had previously existed without objection.
Earlier this year, a county judge finalized a ruling that there was no easement and ordered the county to pay the homeowners $3.7 million in damages and legal fees. The county has appealed that decision.
The Coastal Commission points to a separate coastal development permit, also issued in 1980, that required the homeowners to follow the requirements of all local permits. That permit, it argues, makes the public access clause enforceable, whether or not the county owns the land. At a December meeting, the commission voted to fine the homeowners more than $5.2 million for restricting public access, as well as what it said were other permit violations. The homeowners in turn sued the commission, and litigation continues.
The debate has spread from the courtroom to social media, where talk of the fences has dominated local Facebook groups. Scott, who lives up the hill from Beach Drive, believes free public access is well worth the millions of dollars the county is paying in an effort to fight the fences in court, though he said he wishes it didn’t have to be that way.
“I’m all for (the cost), if that’s what it takes,” Scott said.
Not every owner of the 27 homes that line the walkway is involved in the two lawsuits. Vivian Neasham, one of the few full-time Beach Drive residents, told Lookout Santa Cruz that she would be in favor of restricted access — such as allowing walkers, but no bikes or scooters.
“I’m hopeful, at the end of all this, there’ll be something that actually works for the entire community down there. I think it can still happen,” Friend, the county supervisor, said.
In the summers that the barriers were down, Vaudagna, a longtime homeowner, recalls almost a thousand people a day walking along the pathway. Sometimes, Vaudagna said, she would be cooking in her kitchen and look up to see people staring in her window or sitting on her patio furniture.
At least once, she said, things turned violent. In 2018, Vaudagna said, an elderly homeowner who asked a group of teenagers to leave his patio was beaten and hospitalized. Greg Poncetta, president of the homeowners association for the Beach Drive properties, said his home was broken into while the fence was down.
Now that the temporary fence is back up, Vaudagna said she feels safer and has seen fewer people entering the walkway. Some still walk through an open carport or come up the stairs from the beach.
Poncetta said the homeowners have no problem with the public having a walkway in the area — as long as it isn’t directly behind their back doors.
“It’s crazy,” Poncetta said. “The reason we are all here is because we all love the beach and love to be able to spend time here.”
Advocates for access to the walkway might say the same thing.