Q&A: History professor at UVA on public beach access
The issue of parking and beach access in Boca Grande is not unique to Gasparilla Island, or even Southwest Florida. University of Virginia historian Prof. Andrew Kahrl studies the social and environmental history of land use, real estate and racial inequality in the U.S., and teaches courses on African American history, real estate and U.S. urban history.
One of Prof. Kahrl’s research specialties is beach access, and is the only one who has written multiple books on the subject. The overall question? Who owns, and has access to, our public beaches?
Kahrl is the author of “The Land Was Ours: How Black Beaches Became White Wealth in the Coastal South” (UNC Press), which was awarded the Liberty Legacy Foundation Award from the Organization of American Historians as well as “Free the Beaches: The Story of Ned Coll and the Battle for America’s Most Exclusive Shoreline” (Yale University Press). He served as the principal investigator for the study of the History of African American Outdoor Recreation for the National Park Service.
In his book “Free the Beaches” he explains how these issues are derived from lonstanding ideals, and practical considerations:
“As people privatized the shore, the shore itself changed. The public trust doctrine defines the foreshore as public land, a legal principal that dates back to the Roman era and was incorporated into American jurisprudence from English common law at the founding of the republic. But the line separating public land from private property along the shore could more accurately be described as a moving target….With each passing season, the shape of a beach changes. Erosion can steadily transform yesterday’s real estate into tomorrow’s seabed. A single massive storm can, in an instant, render a shoreline unrecognizable.”
The Beacon reached him by phone to put our issues in a national context:
Beacon: How did you got interested in the subject and decide to write that book about Connecticut and public access to the beaches?
Kahrl: I’m a historian with an expertise in the history of land use, public space and public access in the U.S. My work has looked at the history of coastal development, and the history of beaches. In particular, I’ve looked at the struggle over public access to coastlines, which has been fought in the courts, as well as in local politics and played out in various different contexts.
Beacon: The aspects of Connecticut and the northeast, are they particular to those states? Or is this kind of a national issue?
Kahrl: Relative access to beaches varies considerably by state and by region. In general, the most restrictive access to beaches is in the northeast. Connecticut is one of the more exclusionary states when it comes to its coastline. This is sort of a matter of legal interpretation, because every state’s courts interpret the access rights and the boundaries over coastal areas differently. Florida is different from Connecticut, which is different from Massachusetts, so on and so forth.
Beacon: Here, it’s traditionally been very depopulated, compared to the rest of Southwest Florida … we’re the last place where they can go easily. And we’ve also had beach renourishment, which has meant that the beaches that traditionally were not too good or not very big, are now okay.
Kahrl: What you’re describing here is part of a pattern that you see in coastal areas that have grown in both intensive development and popularity, which also means existing communities might respond through tightening restrictions. If the courts are going to declare a coastline or beach public, then the next stage of that battle turns to the other means of accessing them – mainly parking and transportation – that can maintain exclusivity in the face of growing demand.
Beacon: You have written about some of the situations there in Connecticut, how are they resolving.
Kahrl: In Connecticut, it was even more extreme. You had towns that had public beaches, but they only allowed residents to use them. Essentially, if you did not live in the town, you could not access the beach, and the state Supreme Court ruled that you couldn’t do that. You could charge a fee for non-residents, but you had to provide a means of beach access to any member of the public. Towns responded to that by then removing parking access and making it incredibly difficult for non-residents to be able to park near beaches.
Beacon: The discussion here is a ‘tiered’ parking system for residents. For merchants, there are almost no parking lots on the island at all. The island is protected by the Gasparilla Conservation District Act. But that means that the old hotel that’s here, and every merchant and every church, of which there are three along the waterfront, rely on street parking.
Kahrl: Throughout the 1970s, there are many cases that were being contested. Several state Supreme Courts handed down rulings, mostly pertaining to interpreting the ‘public trust’ doctrine and what access rights the public had to the foreshore. But there have also been battles happening in California in recent years over efforts by wealthy beachfront homeowners to cut off access to the state’s coastline, in violation of their own state constitution.
Beacon: What is the idea of ‘public trust’ doctrine in terms of the citizens who have had access to it over generations?
Kahrl: Essentially, it’s a kind of common law that predates the U.S. Constitution. The coastline has been public land that can’t be privatized, and it’s entrusted to the states for use by the public.
Beacon: Is there any sense that implies access from the land?
Kahrl: This is where many of these court cases have played out over the question of, ‘Okay, well, if this is public land, then how do we ensure that the public can actually access it?’ Because the response of wealthy homeowners, towns or others will be to utilize restrictions on getting to the beach to effectively nullify its public status.
Beacon: What thoughts would you have for us?
Kahrl: Well, I don’t know if I can give advice, other than just to say that what’s happening here is not happening in isolation. It’s something that has long been a struggle in coastal areas between the interests of local homeowners and the broader public. There’s also a kind of three-way struggle, as I see happening here. You have on the one hand, beachfront homeowners whose property value is derived in part from the exclusivity of the shoreline. Then you have the interests of safe commerce, commercial proprietors and other business interests that want to have more commerce in these areas, which is only possible through increasing access and making it a place where more people can shop. And then you have the wider public who wants to ensure that they can access something that is legally and socially understood to be public space. There’s a lot of different interests in play here.
Beacon: What is your research on African-Americans in their beach access?
Kahrl: Race is just one among several different factors at play here. In some contexts, it’s not fear of people of color or desire to exclude them, it’s more class driven. It’s driven by a desire of maintaining exclusivity, which again, is tied up with real estate values, and tied up with a whole host of other interests. It’s no surprise to see that these types of exclusionary practices are playing out in areas where race isn’t really much of a sort of driving force.
Beacon: Any other thoughts?
Kahrl: I have no firsthand familiarity with Boca Grande, so I can’t really speak to what you’re facing down there other than what you just shared with me. But I would just say, again, these are issues that have been playing out in coastal communities for decades now. It is not a surprise to me to see these types of tensions emerge, especially as this is an area where now you’re seeing more development happening, and we’re seeing more interest in more diverse populations seeking out these areas, in the sense of class diversity.
Beacon: Is there any preservation element in this?
Kahrl: Well, preservation is a good thing, but sometimes the whole issue of limiting parking access can be a sort of a cynical ploy. Rather, claiming that limits on parking access are motivated by a desire to protect fragile environments.
Sometimes, that can be cynically used. It’s a way of making your argument more legitimate when it’s motivated by other factors. But for many others, that’s also a very motivating force here – limiting cars in certain areas, especially fragile ecosystems that can only take so much use.
But then the question becomes, ‘Okay, well, if that’s the issue here, then how are you doing anything to facilitate access in a less intensive way?’ Maybe it could be through having public transit, buses that can drop people off. The question I always ask when people invoke environmental protection as the interest is, ‘What are you doing to ensure that the public can use these spaces without doing that kind of damage?’ If it’s just about limiting cars, then what you’re also ensuring that is that only people who either live on the beach or the few who can snag a parking spot will actually be able to use it.
