In what appeared to be a rather incongruous move, during Monday's meeting, the Seal Beach City Council voted to authorize eminent domain proceedings against a small piece of beachfront property. AT the meeting, the property owners' attorney, John Murphy, offered to donate the property to the city at no cost to Seal Beach. After Murphy testified, and with no discussion or questions, the council voted unanimously to move forward with the eminent domain proceedings.

The property involved is two parcels which total 21,001 square feet at the West end of the beachfront. This is where the access road goes down to the parking lot and public restrooms near the River's End restaurant. The city wants the land because it includes the public access road and also the end of the sewer line and a clean out. The disputed parcels are part of the 10 plus acre former Los Angeles Department of Water and Power land. According to Edward Selich, the Project Manager for the property owners, the City offered the owners $48,000 for the land. This represents $2.29 per square foot, which might seem a little low for prime Orange County beachfront property. The two parcels are the last remaining undeveloped beachfront properties in Seal Beach.

The city valued the land as undevelopable, but Selich disputes that and says it could be developed for single family homes. According to Selich, the price for beachfront land is closer to $700 per square foot, than it is to $2.29. If the owners got the full $700 per foot, it would cost the city about $14 million. Selich said the owners will not accept the city's $48,000 offer and expects to go to court over the eminent domain proceedings. He expects a jury would award them considerably more than the city's offer.

Getting more cash for the land, is not however, what the owners are after. The owners want to develop a 150 room resort on the entire 10+ acres. At the meeting on Monday, and again in our telephone interview yesterday, Selich said the owners want to donate the 21,001 square foot parcels to the city in conjunction with the approval of their resort plans. The problem with the resort plans is how much of the 10 acres should be open space and how much should be built on.

The owners filed their development plans in June and are working to complete the application according to requests from the city. Selich said the application should be completed shortly. The development plan calls for construction on about one half of the land, leaving the other half for open spaces. According to Selich, the city wants development on only 30% of the land.

Selich said the city wants the 150 room hotel built on about 3 acres, but with a 35 foot height limit. That is not possible. He said to put a 150 room hotel on 3 acres, it would require more like a height of 80 or 90 feet.

Another aspect of the eminent domain proceeding relates to the public necessity. It was mentioned at the council meeting that the owners have posted permissive use signs on the public access road and this was suggested as the reason why the eminent domain is needed now. But according to Selich and Murphy, the owners have not restricted public or city access to the area and have no plans to do so. Selich said they posted the signs, with notification to the city, because if they did not, they could loose ownership to the land in question.

The city's attempts to purchase the property and the eminent domain proceeding was discussed in the council's closed session before the open meeting. During the public meeting, the city attorney reported that there were no reportable actions taken during the closed session. Since the council asked Murphy or Selich no questions and did not discuss the motion during the public session, it appeared that their decision was already made before the vote was taken in the public session. Your editors attempted to contact the city manager and the city development director, to understand the city's position, but we were unable to reach them before deadline.

Thanks to the intervention of Councilmember Gary Miller, your Editors were able to reach City Attorney Quinn M. Barrow, Esq., last night. He indicated that the public necessity of the city getting ownership of the land was because of concerns about access in the case of a sewer emergency and also to ensure public access to the beach.

Prior to the purchase of the land by the current owners, it was owned by the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power and the city had an access agreement. When the land changed hands several years ago, that formal access agreement terminated.

Barrow indicated the new owners did not enter into a new agreement with the city to grant access. Thus, for several years, the city has not had a legal right to get to its sewer clean out or the public parking lot. He said "If you don't have access to your sewer line and something happens to it, you need to get to the property, and the public has the right to get to the beach." He continued "The basic concern is that they've got the right to restrict access to their property."

When Murphy spoke at the meeting on Monday he assured the council that the owners had no intention of restricting access. Barrow said "I'm not aware of any incident that they've restricted access." However, Barrow referred to the unwillingness of the owners to enter into a new access agreement when they bought the property, as an indication that they might restrict access. But, that was years ago. We asked Barrow what was causing this to come before the city council this week. He said "I think its the age of the sewer pipe."

Note: When first published, this article indicated that the city manager did not return our call.  The text above has been corrected to indicate that we were unable to reach him before our deadline.