Rooms With/Without a View : Residents Boil When Ocean Vistas Vanish

Sally Ingrao used to sit back and enjoy spectacular Pacific sunsets from the living room of her San Clemente home.

Today, her view is blocked by the stucco walls of a 5-story hotel being constructed next door.

“When I look at it, I just want to close my eyes” she said.

Ingrao is not alone. All along south Orange County’s rapidly developing coastline, pristine ocean views that once were taken for granted are being gobbled up by high-rise buildings, remodeled homes and even unkempt trees.

Although view obstruction has long been a coastal issue--dominating neighborhood disputes much as barking dogs and loud stereos do in inland tracts--the debate has intensified in recent years.

Rising property values along the south county’s coast have prompted landowners to pack as much building as they can onto their lots, said Jack Connors, a zoning administrator for the city of Laguna Beach. Coastal residents, he said, are adding two and even three floors to their homes in order to enhance their resale value.

Other residents whose views are threatened by the new development are complaining to local officials in growing numbers. In Laguna Beach, for instance, 14 of the 20 items before the city’s Design Review Board’s meeting on Feb. 9 involved view-related issues, Connors said. Four years ago, only two or three out of a dozen items would involve view complaints, he added.

City officials in San Clemente, too, say they are getting more complaints over views. Residents of newly incorporated Dana Point, likewise, have mobilized over the issue.

The complaints can become emotional, as in Laguna Beach, where residents recently jammed a City Council meeting room to debate whether a Crescent Bay Drive resident should be allowed to raise his roof by 3 1/2 feet and extend his walls by 3 feet.

Bill and Ann McDonald’s proposal, which would probably be an innocuous request in any noncoastal neighborhood, had stirred 6 months of controversy over neighbors’ complaints that the addition to the cliff-side home would spoil views and set a precedent for other area homes.

The McDonalds, who are retired, and their supporters claimed that they had a right to upgrade the value of their property, and argued that the proposed addition would only partly block the view of two neighbors. One stood to lose part of his ocean view and another would lose his view of Laguna’s verdant hills.

In the end, the council sided with the neighbors and on Feb. 7 upheld a Design Review Board decision rejecting the McDonalds’ request. They can appeal in court, but friends said they were not inclined to do so.

The design board weighs building requests according to how they would affect nearby residents, Jeff Powers, chairman of the 5-member board, said. View is one of the major considerations taken into account, as it has been ever since the local Surf and Sand Hotel stunned the community by erecting a 9-story tower during the early 1970s. That prompted a huge public outcry that resulted in a local ordinance limiting building heights to 36 feet.

“We value our views highly,” Powers explained.

In San Clemente, residents of the Ocean Hills subdivision are planning to attend a coming City Council meeting to protest construction of a proposed 65-foot-high office building directly in front of their neighborhood.

The building, in the planned Ocean View Plaza shopping center, would eliminate a good portion of the ocean view now enjoyed by Ocean Hills residents, according to Mark Carr, president of the Ocean Hills Homeowners Assn. The council is to decide March 1 whether to allow the building to be constructed that high.

The California Coastal Commission, which has jurisdiction over development along the coast, is conspicuously silent in all the neighborhood battles. Commission spokesman Jack Liebster said his agency’s role is to protect views for the general public, such as from roads, parks and designated scenic vistas.

“We are not involved in neighborhood disputes,” Liebster said.

Judy Rosener, a UC Irvine faculty member who served on the Coastal Commission from 1973 to 1981, said that the commission has never intervened in neighborhood view disputes because there is nothing in the state Coastal Act that says that individuals’ views are to be protected.

The commission has gotten involved, however, when scenic views that were accessible by going through a neighborhood were being threatened by development, Rosener said. She cited as a case in point the commission’s preservation of Crescent Bay Point, a breathtaking vista in Laguna Beach that overlooks Seal Rock.

When developers during the mid-1970s planned to build homes on the point, blocking that view, Rosener said the commission refused to issue building permits.

Rosener explained that the commission wanted to save that view for the general public, not just the local residents who were up in arms over the proposal. The county and city of Laguna Beach wound up purchasing the point and converting it into a park that today provides the backdrop for numerous weddings.

“Because that view was such a major public asset, we felt it (the point) should be purchased by the county and the city,” Rosener added.

More is at stake in neighborhood view controversies than concern over aesthetics. Loss of one’s ocean view also translates into a depreciation of property value.

According to Dana Point real estate agent Joe Lovullo, the so-called “view premium” added for coastal homes with a vista can run from $50,000 to $200,000. Even a “peek-a-boo” ocean view adds value, he said.

Conversely, the inability to upgrade a home also can translate into lost dollars. In their hearings before the city of Laguna Beach, the McDonalds argued that denial of their remodeling request would decrease the value of their property by “at least” $500,000.

The home and others like it in the neighborhood are valued at around $3 million, even though they are situated on tiny lots that would command hundreds of thousands of dollars less in inland areas. And because many coastal lots are so small, there is great economic pressure to build as much as possible on them, said Tom Lorch, a San Clemente city councilman and local slow-growth activist.

“We’re getting to the point that the (building height) maximums are being pushed on every single project,” said Lorch, whose city sets a height limit of 25 feet on residences and 30 to 35 feet on commercial buildings.

Even so, Lorch said, many developers are finding ways to circumvent the height restrictions. Often, he said, a builder will bring in a proposed project at the required maximum height but later threaten to cover it with an unattractive flat roof. The builder finally agrees to use a more attractive, sloped, Spanish-style roof--if he is granted an extra few feet, Lorch said.

Builders also can obtain a variance from the city allowing them to add on one or two additional floors, as was the case in the hotel project so furiously opposed by Sally Ingrao and her neighbors. The City Council, on a 4-1 vote in 1987, allowed the hotel to be built to 5 stories on South El Camino Real.

Although a property owner may have the legal right to block someone else’s view, they have no ethical right to do so, said Linda Farnell, a resident of Crescent Bay in Laguna who helped lead the fight against the McDonalds’ home addition.

“It’s like going to a parade: The short people are pushed to the front and the tall ones sit on the curb,” Farnell said. “Everyone here in Laguna is here for the parade.”

Rick Barrett, another Crescent Bay resident who fought against the addition, added that oceanfront dwellers have a responsibility to be sensitive to the needs of the rest of the community.

“Even though you own title to the land, you are a caretaker of the land and you will be dead someday,” said Barrett, whose cliff-side home boasts a magnificent, 180-degree view of crashing waves and rugged shoreline.

However, Tom Matthews, an aide to 5th District Supervisor Thomas F. Riley, whose jurisdiction includes the south county’s coast, cautioned that there is a “buyer beware” aspect to purchasing property along the coast.

“Unless you have ownership of all the property below you, you’re not going to be able to control that,” Matthews warned.

In San Clemente, meanwhile, residents of homes behind the new, 5-story hotel--which is only weeks away from completion--are trying to adjust to an almost total loss of their ocean view.

Nick and Vi Simat, for example, used to be able to look out an upstairs picture window and watch ships cruising along the ocean horizon. That view is now totally blocked by the hotel. The couple can still glimpse the ocean, but only by standing on their front porch and looking off at a sharp angle.

“I fought it at City Council, but what can you do?,” sighed Nick Simat, 65, a retired machine service technician. “You can’t fight City Hall, I guess.”