April 2009. Mark your calendars. You’re invited to swim in the restored, Julia Morgan designed pool, to play volleyball on the sand, to bring your kids to play in the ‘splash pad’, to picnic, to party. Ride your bike, take the Blue Bus new beach shuttle to the Annenberg Community Beach House.
415 Pacific Coast Highway, the site of the beach house William Randolph Hearst built for Marion Davies in the 1920’s will reopen in 2009 as the Annenberg Community Beach House. The first public beach club on the coast of California is the triumphant result of the work of an amazing cast of characters.
The cast really starts with Hearst, Davies and Julia Morgan who took five acres of iconic Santa Monica beachfront property and turned it into a famous estate and an important landmark for Southern California. Subsequently, the site has been used as a luxury hotel and a private beach club. When the State decided to find a “highest and best” use developer, the site had a brief moment of being planned to return to a luxury hotel site. The voters overturned that idea and for almost 15 years the site languished and was greatly underused.
Enter Wallis Annenberg and the Annenberg Foundation. In a serendipitous moment for Santa Monica, in fact the very day before the City was set to issue a public call announcing the search for a private partner the Annenberg Foundation contacted the City of Santa Monica to say they were interested in the idea of the public beach club and wanted to talk to the City about participating.
On the City side everyone was interested and hopeful. City Council Members and Recreation and Parks Commissioners, Landmarks Commissioners and Planning Commissioners, the Santa Monica Conservancy, Santa Monica residents and immediate neighbors joined the cast. Next came six months of substantive meetings with Barbara Stinchfield, Director of Community and Cultural Services taking the lead for the City team. The result was that the City and the Annenberg Foundation entered into an agreement whereby the Foundation would fund the 27.5 million required for the restoration and rebuilding of the site into a public beach club. Barbara Stinchfield said, “The thing I learned early on was that this gift was a purely philanthropic gesture and the core of our experience was the generosity of the Annenberg Foundation at the direction of Wallis Annenberg.”
Next to join the cast was Fred Fisher Architects, known for their design work and their ability to work responsively with communities. Fred Fisher describes his vision for the Beach House , “It will be, as it has been, a stage for people to create memories. The site provides a rare combination of a dramatic natural setting, important historic architectural assets and an opportunity for a new architectural fabric to bring these together.”
Providing a base for the architects work were planning documents and principles, developed by Moule & Palyzoides through a public process to: “preserve the history of the site, encourage a ‘light touch’, create a community-oriented destination, provide public recreational activities, increase public access to the beach. create a range of uses, encourage diverse users, provide for year-round use, link to the regional open space network” and to do all this in a sustainable way.
For all the growing enthusiasm and support for the project there were large obstacles. The City faced the threat of a lawsuit. Immediate neighbors, citing past problems in working with the City and concerned that the Beach Club would cause them problems, hired attorneys to stop the project unless their concerns were addressed. While these issues were in negotiation the work on the project was ongoing.
Mia Lehrer, Landscape Architects were selected to design the landscape and to insure that sustainable principles were used to maximum benefit. Sustainable requirements included tree shaded parking lots to reduce the heat island effect. Storm water retention ponds were designed to return rainwater to the ground. Water efficiency standards would be met by the use of a native and drought tolerant plant palette and the use of a drip irrigation system. On the energy side the pool will be solar heated, non heat transferring glazing will be used and passive heating and cooling elements are integral to the design. Most important of all, is the fact that this is an historical adaptive-reuse project. The reuse of the site and the building reuse is itself the expression of sustainability.
The lawsuit problems were successfully negotiated and the threatened lawsuit dropped. Credit for that goes to negotiators, the neighbors and to the overwhelming public support presented by the “Friends of 415” organized by Joel Brand of the Santa Monica Conservancy. Construction began in 2007 and in April 2009 there will be a weeklong opening celebration.
In summer of 2009 the Beach House will be officially open to everyone and except for parking and the pool and its facilities, will be free to the public. Picnicking, the gardens, the restored Marion Davies Guest House, children’s play areas, playing volleyball and beach tennis is what visitors can expect free of charge. There will be charges for pool use and parking as well as some of beach sand courts during peak times. Some reservations will be offered for parking and pool use. The Beach House will also be available, by reservation, for special events, parties and celebrations.
Fred Fisher said they “attempted to create a canvas for the widest variety of activities that will naturally and creatively evolve with the community’s embrace and imagination…. We imagine a broad and changing spectrum of activities from the most casual and personal moments, to active group sports, to family poolside lounging, to formal group celebrations. Its success will be in the momentary experiences and recurring rituals that people create on the site.”
