The AVP Long Beach Open could save this year’s Sea Festival. So why hasn’t anyone told the Coastal Commission about it?
By Dave Wielenga

Charles Posner has heard about the big professional beach volleyball tournament that’s being rightly hyped as the centerpiece of this summer’s reorganized Long Beach Sea Festival. He knows its most-compelling story line: the homecoming of Olympic gold medalist Misty May-Treanor, who led Long Beach State to an undefeated season in 1998.

Then again, Posner works only a few blocks from Marina Green, where Sea Festival organizers intend to hold the AVP Long Beach Open on July 19-22—where they held a huge press conference to announce the event on March 1. He can practically see it through the windows of his 10th floor office.

Still, Posner kind of expected that someone would have told him about it personally—or more to the point, officially—inasmuch as he’s a coastal program analyst for the California Coastal Commission . . . the government agency that issues permits for events on the waterfront. So far, however, not a word. Not a phone call. Not a scrap of paper.

“Nobody has contacted us,” says Posner. “No one from the city, no one from AVP, not even [Sea Festival executive director] Chris Pook.”

Consequently, the AVP Long Beach Open isn’t yet legally permitted to hold its fun and games on the beach, all the advance ballyhoo notwithstanding.

“It’s a little weird,” Posner acknowledges. “I’m reading about it, expecting something to come in, but instead just getting this strange kind of silence.”

Permits are mandated by the California Coastal Act of 1976, which protects equal “public access to the shoreline and recreational opportunities and resources.”

“Basically, you cannot deny people access to the beach,” explains Posner. “That includes parking at the beach, getting to the beach and using the beach.”

Acquiring a permit for an AVP tournament is not just a formality, Posner emphasizes, although the Coastal Commission annually approves AVP events on the waterfronts of Huntington Beach, Hermosa Beach and Manhattan Beach.

“Every event has its own issues regarding its location, its parking plan and its admission policy,” he says. “Each is considered on a case-by-case basis.”

There isn’t much time left for Long Beach’s case to be heard.

“The Coastal Commission only meets once a month, and the next time is June 13, 14 and 15,” says Posner. “Preparations usually begin four or five weeks in advance and the hearing must be publicized two weeks before. It’s not something you can do at the last minute.”

Besides, that assumes that the permit would be granted, while Posner describes the venue chosen by Sea Festival officials as “problematic.”

“They want to put it on the beach near First Place, one of the busiest places in the city, with a prime parking lot, on a weekend in July,” he says. “Remember, you can’t deny people access, to the beach or the lot. If they are thinking of closing that lot, we will need an answer.”

Before that, of course, the Coastal Commission needs to be able to pose a question—to engage in some kind of communication with somebody associated with the volleyball tournament.

“The permitting process for a volleyball tournament isn’t anything new,” says Posner, “but what is unusual is that we don’t have any information about what is being planned in Long Beach. We have been requesting information, but we haven’t heard a thing, and time is short.”

There’s always the possibility that this is part of a strategy by Pook. Back in 2005, when he began angling to attract the AVP to Sea Festival, Pook sent an e-mail to AVP executive David Williams that foreshadowed possible problems with the Coastal Commission—and insinuated that he could dispatch Long Beach government resources to handle them.

Wrote Pook to Williams: “I have affirmed that The City is prepared to ‘go to bat’ on your behalf if the Castal [sic] Commission gves [sic] us any ‘crap’.”

Maybe the Sea Festival simply intends to avoid all that “crap” and put on the volleyball tournament without a permit.

“There are penalties,” says Posner, solemnly, “for people who violate the law.”