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Whose property is it?
by John Tawa
You might want to rest on the bench after a strenuous walk on The Strand. Or pack a bag lunch and eat it on the lovely patch of grass while listening to the ocean.
You can, and there isn't anything anybody can do about it.
That's because the areas shown, as well as large portions of the front and side yards of most of Manhattan Beach's 1,100 walk street homes, are in the public right of way. That means they don't belong to the property owner, but are controlled by the city to be used as sidewalks, streets and utilities right of ways.
"The walk streets were laid out as drive streets, so they're pretty wide," said city attorney Bob Wadden, who estimated that most are 60 feet across. "And the required setback is fairly minimal on those properties. So there's a lot of property between the end of the sidewalk and the beginning of the property line."
Wadden said that the city typically grants owners of property next to a walk street an encroachment permit. The permit lets property owners use the public right of way.
"There's a limit to the kind of structures they can put on the right of way," Wadden explained. "But most people want to do something with it, like putting a planter or trees on it."
Does the property's public nature give any member of the public the right to use the property?
"It does," Wadden said. "That question's come up a number of times. You're not trespassing. Even if it may be encroached upon, it's still public property. The public nature of it doesn't change. The encroachment just gives somebody a right to locate on it; it doesn't give them an exclusive right to use it."
That may come as a surprise to many walk street residents.
Douglas Hocking has lived in the 100 block of 6th Street for 27 years. He knew the land in front of his property was public, but was taken aback by the notion of someone lunching on his patio.
"It'd be disconcerting," he said while pruning roses in the public right of way. "Maybe not so much you," he told the reporter, "as some of these bums. But I never thought anybody would be so nuts as to do that."
An attorney who asked not to be identified was shocked to learn he could not do anything to remove trespassers from his front yard in the 100 block of 3rd Street.
"I thought that even though it was public property, we were given an easement for use," he said
"Our situation with walk streets is extremely unique," commented city manager Geoff Dolan. "In all practical ways, it's treated as private property when in reality it's public property. It creates some unique policy and legal issues."
Dolan said the city council might consider transferring the land's ownership to the adjacent property owners or changing the way the city regulates it.
Wadden favors transferring the property out of the public's hands by a relatively simple statutory process known as "vacation."
"It's a really good idea," Wadden explained, "because this is property that's not needed. It's in this weird kind of gray area between being public property and private property. Most of it is being used by private property owners."
Wadden added that passing the property to the adjacent property owners would let them keep people off the land, while eliminating the city's exposure to liability arising from public use of it.
"It would also have the effect of allowing people to build bigger lots on homes, unless you changed the setback requirements," he noted.
Wadden said conveying the property also would raise property taxes slightly.
"That's probably one reason people have been hesitant to go forward and vacate because there might be some opposition," he explained.
While property taxes would increase, the property values would not, said Jane Sullivan of Jane Sullivan & Associates Realtors.
"The only way the property would increase in value is if the city were to relax the restrictions on the land to allow owners to use that property to build homes or decks," she said.
Hocking said that he wouldn't accept a conveyance of the property solely to keep people off of it.
"It wouldn't be to my advantage because the property taxes would increase but the market value would stay the same," he said. "Unless you could build out here, but I don't want that to happen."
The unidentified attorney agreed.
"I don't need to purchase it if I have a right to use it. But if it becomes a problem if other people use it, then I'd want the city to do something about it." ER