Marina del Rey Becomes a Playground for the Rich

Tuesday was a distressing day for Marina del Rey. The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors unanimously endorsed a major redevelopment plan for the marina, despite the concerted opposition of boaters for whom the marina was built.

All of the plan's opponents were given a total of 35 minutes to voice their objections. Why was it so little time? It soon became obvious that the supervisors had already made up their minds. Public debate was pro forma.

The project amounts to a public giveaway to developers, slicing parking, boosting congestion. The worse part of the plan is that it will cut out 800 slips for boats under 35 feet in length, replacing them with fewer, larger slips that will have the net effect of restricting access to boating for only the wealthy.

Boating is an activity that can be done for one’s entire life. If you’ve ever seen kids sailing Sabots through the marina, you’ve watched them do more than compete. They are learning responsibility in a real environment, not in a World of Warcraft alternative universe.  On the water their acts have consequences. First hand they grasp that they are not separate from the environment. They are part of it and the way to survive is to stay in balance with it.

While producing an anti-gang documentary I talked to at-risk kids who had gone boating with Ocean Challenge. The group used boats as the great equalizer, so that gang bangers started to bond over both the distress of seasickness and the excitement of leaping a speedboat over the white caps. A couple of former gangsters told me how getting out on the sea had probably saved their lives.

For adults, boating is the one place consistently in the world where we are the captains of our destiny.  For most of us, it’s not true at work. Our roads are crowded and thoroughly regulated, but through boating we experience true freedom.

BJ McCurdy, a pilot who sailed with me, recognized the parallels between sailing and flying, but a plane always has to land. A boat can be one’s home as well as a vessel.

Owning your own boat and captaining it safely creates independence, and that’s what some politicians don’t like these days. Boating builds confidence, but it's always humbling to face the sea, a lesson most of us need to be reminded of now and then.

With a bit of creativity, Marina del Rey can be revitalized as an economic engine for boating while staying faithful to it's mandate according to House Document 389, "making recreational harbor facilities in Santa Monica Bay available to the largest number of boatowners and potential owners in southern California at the least cost."

As now configured, the new  Local Coastal Plan Amendment will restrict boater access to the sea for the working and middle class that built the marina and has enjoyed it since the original marina plan emerged fifty years ago. 

There is one last forum of appeal, the California Coastal Commission. We have until June to try to save Marina del Rey.