The development tries

The list

The box score above is every documented attempt to develop, subdivide, rezone, or acquire a development entitlement over land in Abalone Cove — or directly affecting Abalone Cove — for which the Foundation has found a dated record. Cumulatively, across eight decades, the list is long. Cumulatively, the number of units that have ever been successfully built and occupied on the coastal side of the Portuguese Bend / Abalone Cove landslide complex after 1956 is small. That asymmetry is the point of this era.

The 1976 Palos Verdes Properties application is a useful anchor. D. Loring Marlett, PVP's general manager, told the RPV City Council the largest of the two application parcels "contains the landslide area" — and counted 281 buildable acres anyway, proposing 389 units. PVP's attorney, John P. Pollock, framed the litigation risk as the company "not completely abandoning its options to litigate," and noted the company "would soon file a claim with the city for damages to protect its rights." Councilman Robert Ryan — on the council since 1973 incorporation — asked that the proposal be rejected; the majority approved a staff study anyway. No PVP project was ever built in the landslide area. The staff study is on file.

Wong, Hartman, and the 1986 reversion

In 1979, the Wong family acquired the 0 Clipper Road area through the Filiorum chain. In 1980 the Wong subdivision Tract 32977 (Book 950 pages 14-15) laid out four single-family residential lots plus open space. Six years later — 1986 — Wong reverted the subdivision: Tract 43725 (Book 1063 pages 91-92) collapsed the four lots back into a single 1.56-acre parcel. The reversion is why, when the 2026 CTC title report was commissioned, the recorded chain of title for APN 7573-006-024 referenced only Tract 43725, not any of the founding Palos Verdes Corporation declarations. Colyear v. Rolling Hills Community Association (B308382, March 2024), which narrowed the enforceability of a master declaration absent a clean chain-of-title incorporation, gave that fact new weight.

The Wong-to-Hartman sale closed in December 2005 for $1,800,000. Thomas J. Hartman's mailing address on the 2005 grant deed was 28 Sea Cove Drive — a WPBCA member lot. The parcel was vacant in 2005, vacant in 2010, vacant in 2015, vacant in 2020. Hartman held the land as an asset through the 2008-2014 California housing downturn, the COVID-19 period, and the 2021 housing spike. In October 2021, Hartman sold the parcel to Clipper Development LLC for $2,200,000.

Clipper Development LLC

Clipper Development LLC is a California limited liability company with a mailing address at 4199 Bandini Boulevard, Suite A-B, in the City of Vernon. Its principal, per the October 2021 grant deed mail-to, is Ali Vahdani. Vahdani is a civil engineer and the founder of Optimum Seismic, a seismic retrofit firm active in Southern California. This appears, on the public record, to be Vahdani's first residential development. He has been a documented political donor to Rancho Palos Verdes campaign committees, including those of former Mayor Cruikshank.

In November 2025, Clipper Development LLC refinanced the parcel with a $2,100,000 commercial loan from Hankey Capital LLC — approximately double the original purchase loan from First Republic Bank ($1,100,000, April 2022; released November 17, 2025). The First Republic loan had been assigned to JPMorgan Chase via FDIC receivership on November 30, 2023, when First Republic failed. The current Hankey Capital note carries a commercial loan profile consistent with development financing.

The proposed development on APN 7573-006-024 is 14 townhomes plus 2 cottages, for 16 total units. Site 16 — the City's internal designation for the parcel in its Housing Element inventory — is the only site in Rancho Palos Verdes's Coastal Zone. The proposed density calculation uses the parcel's full 1.56 gross acres. The 1985 assessor map for the area — annotated "250 ft no plumb add on other restriction a variance" — shows the usable lot is approximately 1.01 net acres after the 0.57-acre creek / flood-hazard area is excluded. The effective density is therefore closer to 16 units per acre than the ~10 the entitlement implies.

The 2024 rezoning

On April 16, 2024, the Rancho Palos Verdes City Council unanimously adopted the Revised Final 2021-2029 Housing Element. The adoption included the rezoning of Site #16 — APN 7573-006-024 — from RS-4 (residential single-family, 4 units per acre) to RM-22 (residential multi-family, 22 units per acre). Forty-three members of the public spoke at the hearing. In the following sixty-three days the City adopted three additional ordinances — 678U, 680U, and 681 — implementing the Housing Element's zoning changes.

The City had not received — and did not seek — a certification from the California Coastal Commission for the rezoning. The 2013 Long Range Property Management Plan for the adjacent sister parcel (APN 7573-007-900) had stated, on the City's own record, that Coastal Commission approval "would be unlikely." The parcel that was rezoned without Coastal Commission involvement sits inside the Coastal Specific Plan's Subregion 4. A flag pole at Trump National Golf Course, in the same Subregion 4, had previously required an LCP amendment (see Era 5).

The litigation

On September 11, 2024, the Community of Abalone Cove filed a Verified Petition for Writ of Mandate under California Code of Civil Procedure § 1085, case number 24TRCP00352, in Los Angeles Superior Court, Torrance, Department B, before the Honorable Douglas W. Stern. The petition alleges four causes of action: violation of the City's General Plan, violation of the California Coastal Act, violation of the Political Reform Act, and common-law conflict of interest.

The City filed a demurrer on November 27, 2024, arguing mootness and statute-of-limitations defenses. Petitioners filed an opposition on December 18, 2024, arguing under the supersession doctrine and Government Code § 65860 (which sets a 90-day window from a zoning amendment). The case is pending. The Foundation does not represent any party in this litigation and takes no position on the outcome; it records the filings here because the record of development attempts at Abalone Cove is not complete without them.

What this era comes down to

Eighty years of attempts. Three generations of developers. Two state-court appellate decisions, three US Supreme Court cert petitions, one Superior Court writ of mandate. Dozens of housing-element cycles. One moratorium made permanent in August 2025. The parcel that was the object of the 1972 Shore Club fight is a park. The parcel that was the object of the 1976 PVP application is open space. The parcel that was the object of the 1980 Wong subdivision was reverted in 1986. The parcel that is the object of the 2024 RM-22 rezoning — one of the last privately-held developable-on-paper pieces of the original Parcel 106 — is still, as of this writing in April 2026, a vacant 1.56-acre lot.

The Foundation's position paper asks whether the 24-inch line on and adjoining that parcel and its Shoreline Park sister is a remnant of the pre-1956 Palos Verdes Coast Road right-of-way and, if it is, whether anyone maintains it. Those are questions Era 9 cannot answer. But they are questions Era 9 makes impossible to avoid asking.