Who's Fixing La Jolla's Coast Walk This Fall, and Which Stairs Are Open?

"For those of you who don't know, this is a monumental accomplishment," La Jolla Parks & Beaches member Melinda Merryweather told her board on Oct. 5. She was talking about a 1920s beach staircase that is getting new concrete pavers. "We've talked about it coming up on two years now, and to get all the permissions, the right contractor and the money, it was quite an accomplishment," she said, as the La Jolla Light reported in the San Diego Union-Tribune.

That staircase at Whale View Point is under repair this week, and its two-year wait explains most of the coastline. Between Coast Walk Trail and Whale View Point, nearly every repair this fall has been funded by local donors and organized by a nonprofit. The city signs off on that work and inspects it. Whether your stretch of shoreline is open, closed or roped off depends mostly on whether someone has raised the money for it.

The Whale View Point Stairs Set the Pattern

Work on the stairs in the 400 block of Coast Boulevard started Oct. 14 and is scheduled to run through Wednesday, Oct. 28. Crews are on site from 7 a.m. to 3 p.m. Until the work wraps up, swimmers and surfers can reach the beach from the stairs by the Surf Shack, across from 333 Coast Blvd.

The repair is modest. Crews are clearing sand off the steps and applying a slurry to smooth them. Pavers made offsite will then be bonded over the existing concrete. Landscape architect Jim Neri said the materials were picked through several rounds of review with the city of San Diego, and they are meant to look similar to the originals without matching them exactly. Ellen Browning Scripps paid for the original stairway in the 1920s. Bob Evans, a project volunteer and former La Jolla Parks & Beaches president, described it as "really crumbled, rough and eroded" and said he doubted it had been maintained in the last 100 years, according to the same Union-Tribune report.

The stairs fall inside the La Jolla Park Coastal Historic District, which went on the National Register of Historic Places in spring 2024. The district covers about eight acres of coastal parkland, including La Jolla Cove and the Children's Pool. Volunteers started raising money for the stairs at the district's celebration that November. Once the money was in hand, the project went to the La Jolla Coastal Conservancy. The conservancy uses a city right-of-entry permit so private groups can repair city land without starting the approval process over for every project.

That permit is how most of the coast gets repaired now. The conservancy pays for and runs the job, and the city reviews it.

Where the Pattern Stalls

The South Casa Beach stairs, near the Children's Pool lifeguard tower, are the clearest case of how the arrangement stalls. Storms damaged the base of the stairs in early 2024, and the city chained them off. They have been closed ever since.

The design is done and the city has approved it. The conservancy would cover the costs, the engineering, the construction contract and the permit applications. The city would help prepare the permit materials, coordinate department reviews and inspect the construction. Conservancy chair Brenda Fake told the Parks & Beaches board, as the Union-Tribune reported, the remaining "big hurdle" is money. One anonymous donor has pledged up to $100,000, and the conservancy is applying for grants. Fake said there is no exact cost estimate yet, but she cited "an estimate of $5 million based on other people's projects."

If that rough figure holds, the pledge covers about 2 percent of the cost. The design is approved and the division of work is settled, and the step Fake described as the big one is funding.

The Smaller Projects Are Getting Done

For smaller projects, the same arrangement moves quickly. The conservancy's Oct. 1 update on lajolla.ca lists several jobs that were completed or underway in September.

• Coast Walk Trail. Ahead of winter, crews built up berms and runoff areas and installed small rock-filled gabions to slow and spread out stormwater before it reaches the trail. More straw wattles and sandbags will go in as money becomes available.
• North of Whale View Point. More post-and-chain barriers now mark the pedestrian path along Coast Boulevard. SoCal Outdoor Services built them with a San Diego County Neighborhood Reinvestment Program grant.
• The white fence from Goldfish Point to the Cove. An Eagle Scout candidate and fellow Scouts finished the first prototype section. They replaced failing wood and added marine-grade stainless-steel bird protection wire. OluKai La Jolla provided the initial funding. As of Oct. 1, the conservancy was about $13,000 short and was aiming to finish by year's end.
• The Whale View Point belvedere and the Cove lifeguard tower. The belvedere is due for exterior painting later this fall, paid for by the BirdStock Music Festival. Work on shutters for the Cove lifeguard tower comes from La Jolla Sunrise Rotary, the La Jolla Cove Swim Club and the San Diego Fire-Rescue Foundation.

The conservancy's invitation-only Cocktails at the Cove fundraiser on Oct. 1 raised about $70,000 for these and future projects. BirdStock proceeds included $20,000 toward painting both the belvedere and the Whale View Point Surf Shack. The Kiwanis Club of La Jolla offered $8,000 toward the fence's funding gap.

The Kiwanis gift covers most of that $13,000 fence gap, and the full fundraiser total is a fraction of the rough South Casa estimate. So the projects that cost tens of thousands of dollars are getting done, and the one that may cost millions is still waiting.

The Coastline, Stretch by Stretch, in Late October

The Stretches That Run on the City's Schedule

The coastal work the city runs directly follows the city's capital-project process, which sets its own dates.

The Torrey Pines Road guardrail shows how that process works. In January 2018, a car went off the road and landed in the yard of a Coast Walk home. A concrete K-rail went up soon after as a temporary fix. Construction was originally planned to start in winter 2025 and finish by summer 2026, but the city pushed the schedule back while it confirmed where underground utilities run. Palm Engineering was then scheduled to start Oct. 6. The project will replace the K-rail with about 420 feet of metal bridge rail, with completion projected for March 2027, according to the Union-Tribune's report.

Crews work from 7 p.m. to 3 a.m., Sunday through Thursday. On some nights the northern westbound lane closes. The northbound bike lane is closed for the entire project. When the sidewalk closes, pedestrians will use a protected path behind a temporary K-rail on the south side of the road, open around the clock, reached by the crossings at Prospect Place and mid-block between Amalfi Street and Princess Street.

Access rules for wildlife are also set by government, and they are the most fixed parts of the shoreline. The city's Point La Jolla page explains that City Council made the Point La Jolla and Boomer Beach closure year-round on Sept. 18, 2023, under Coastal Development Permit Amendment No. 6-22-0113-A1. The posted signs separate the no-entry closure area from an ocean access corridor that is for swimming only. Dogs are prohibited in the closure area at all times. The Children's Pool beach closes to the public every year from Dec. 15 through May 15 for harbor seal pupping season, so its next closure starts in mid-December.

The Cove is the stretch still being decided. At the Coastal Commission's Oct. 8 meeting, executive director Kate Huckelbridge said commission staff had met with the offices of Mayor Todd Gloria and City Council President Joe LaCava. They are drafting a letter asking the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to enforce the Marine Mammal Protection Act at the Cove or to deputize city park rangers to issue citations. LaCava told the La Jolla Light that the goal is "to avoid closure, preserve coastal access, and maintain appropriate distance from sea lions," according to the Union-Tribune's coverage. Commissioners raised the idea of partial or temporary limits on access at their Aug. 14 meeting, but nothing has been adopted. The Cove remains open.

The Coast Calendar Through Mid-December

Walks along Coast Boulevard through the end of October overlap with a busy run of Village Halloween events, listed in the Union-Tribune's Halloween roundup.

1. Oct. 23 and 24, 6 to 8:30 p.m. Birch Aquarium's Halloween Aglow, with trick-or-treating and science demonstrations.
2. Oct. 28. The last scheduled day of stair work at Whale View Point. That evening, the Village Trunk or Treat runs from 5:30 to 7 p.m., and Draper Avenue between Kline and Prospect closes from 3 to 8 p.m.
3. Oct. 30, 3 to 6 p.m. The Creepy Candy Crawl through the Village's shopping streets, with candy bags at 908 Kline St.
4. Later this fall. The belvedere painting at Whale View Point and more sections of the Goldfish Point fence. The conservancy is aiming to finish the fence by year's end.
5. Dec. 15. The Children's Pool beach closes for pupping season through May 15.

The South Casa stairs don't have a date on this list. The design is city-approved, and the project is waiting on grants and donations to the La Jolla Coastal Conservancy.

At Luxury Coast Group Barry Estates, we track La Jolla's coastline the same way we track its market, one stretch and one date at a time. If you'd like to talk through what this shoreline means for a home near Coast Boulevard, Schedule a Private Consultation.