A two-part oral history mining the origins and controversies surrounding California?s most bucolic planned community?and forecasting its future
The Sea Ranch is a residential development along the northern coast of California, situated about halfway between Bodega Bay and Mendocino?officially in Sonoma County, and basically in the middle of nowhere. Its ten miles of prime coastline were scouted and bought from a sheep rancher by a Hawaii-based developer called Oceanic Properties in 1963. That developer, led by a former architect named Al Boeke, then hired a team of design professionals (first, the already-renowned landscape architect Lawrence Halprin, plus architects, a graphic designer, and a contractor) to plan the site and build its first structures?the land and the buildings being the best advertisement for potential buyers. The architects originally tapped to design the Sea Ranch?the four partners of Moore Lyndon Turnbull Whitaker, plus Joseph Esherick?are responsible for the best-known and most-recognizable buildings there, but a relative few of the now roughly 1,800 total homes. Construction was, in fact, stopped altogether at the Sea Ranch during a fraught decade, from 1976 to 1984, while a bitter fight with the California Coastal Commission ensued. It resulted in landmark public access laws in the state of California, as well as an entrenched attitude on the homeowners? behalf to guard the Sea Ranch?s remaining rights and bylaws. Today, strict adherence to ...