El Sol County Beach doesn't show up on maps of Malibu. Its bluff-top access way remains locked away behind a rusted chain-link and barbed-wire fence plastered with no-trespassing signs. The sandy beach below is effectively walled off by private property and rocky points of land at either end.
As a result, a public strip of beach serves mostly as a private enclave for adjacent property owners, including Michael Eisner, former chief executive of Walt Disney Co., and Gregory J. Bonann, co-creator of the "Baywatch" television series.
This weekend marks the passing of another summer in which Los Angeles County officials failed to open a prime beach purchased 30 years ago with taxpayer dollars on the promise that it would be used "for public recreation in perpetuity."
State officials have nudged the county over the years to ignore objections of the neighbors, offering hundreds of thousands of dollars to build a needed public stairway to the beach below. The latest state grant of $700,000, intended in part to open El Sol Beach, was instead allocated by the county solely to improving access to Dan Blocker Beach down the coast.
Los Angeles County Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky said neighborhood opposition didn't figure into the county's decision not to open the beach. "It's an issue of money," he said. The state money, he said, was better spent on a parking lot and improved access to Dan Blocker Beach than on building an expensive stairway down El Sol's steep bluff face.
Yaroslavsky said he is a strong proponent of public access to beaches and has repeatedly stood up to El Sol's neighbors who would like to purchase the property "to foreclose the possibility that it become publicly accessible." In addition to rejecting several other offers for the land, he said, "we've told Eisner's people -- I've told him personally -- that we are not going to sell it."
But will El Sol ever be opened? "Ultimately," Yaroslavsky said. "The only question is when are we going to do it."
The saga of El Sol began in 1974, when the county applied for state park bond money to purchase the land for a public beach park, according to county records.
"When improved it will provide an excellent location for swimming, sunbathing, surf fishing, surfing, scuba and skin diving and other water-related activities," the application said.
