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Los Angeles

Family to sell Bruce’s Beach back to LA County for $20M

Beachfront land was returned after it was seized from Black owners a century ago

Charles and Willa Bruce with Bruce’s Beach (California African American Museum, Getty)
Charles and Willa Bruce with Bruce’s Beach (California African American Museum, Getty)

Six months after Los Angeles County returned Bruce’s Beach to the descendants of Black owners, the family is selling the property in Manhattan Beach back to the county for $20 million.

The Bruce family, whose beachfront property was returned in July after it was seized nearly a century ago because they were Black, will sell two parcels back to the county, the Torrance Daily Breeze reported. https://www.dailybreeze.com/2023/01/03/bruce-family-to-sell-recently-returned-land-to-l-a-county-for-20-million/

George Fatheree III, the Bruce family’s attorney, who negotiated the reparations, announced the family’s decision to sell the land during a KBLA radio interview. County Supervisor Janice Hahn confirmed the upcoming sale, which must occur by the end of the month.

“My clients were essentially robbed of their birthright: they should’ve grown up as part of a hospitality dynasty like the Hiltons,” Fatheree said in the radio interview. “The ability to sell the property and invest the funds presents an opportunity for my clients to get a glimpse of that legacy that was theirs.”

The return of the land last summer marked the nation’s first apparent act of property-based reparation.

The land once housed Bruce’s Beach Lodge, a seaside resort owned by and operated for Black people as a recreational haven in the early 20th century, when African Americans were barred from many public beaches. The Bruce family was harassed by the white community and the Ku Klux Klan.

The city of Manhattan Beach used eminent domain to take the land owned by Willa and Charles Bruce, along with nearly two dozen properties, for a park that wasn’t built for decades.

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The 1924 seizure, historical records show, was initiated to force Black people out of Manhattan Beach. In 1948, about 20 years after Manhattan Beach took over the land, the city gave the property to the state. The state gave the parcels to L.A. County in 1995, on the condition the county couldn’t transfer the property. A state law cleared the way for the land return.

The Bruce family formally received the deed to the two parcels on July 20, more than 90 years after Manhattan Beach seized the land bordered by 26th and 27th streets, and Manhattan Avenue and The Strand. The Bruces’ great-grandsons, Marcus and Derrick Bruce, own the 7,000 square-foot property, valued at $20 million.

When the Bruces received the deed, they agreed to lease the property back to the county for $413,000 a year for two years. After that, they had the option of selling the property back to the county.

The family has already told the county it wants to sell the property, according to Hahn, who spearheaded the legislative effort to return the land.

“The seizure of Bruce’s Beach nearly a century ago was an injustice inflicted upon not just Willa and Charles Bruce,” Hahn said in a statement, “but generations of their descendants who almost certainly would have been millionaires.”

— Dana Bartholomew

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Tags
Commercial Real EstateEminent DomainLand SaleManhattan Beach