California Parks Block Reel Inn Rebuild in Malibu

A beloved Malibu institution has been blocked from rebuilding after January’s deadly Palisades fire.

The Reel Inn, an iconic seafood shack on Pacific Coast Highway that stood for nearly four decades, is forbidden from renewing its lease with the California Department of Parks and Recreation, the Wall Street Journal reported.

The parks department acquired the parcel of then-private land where the restaurant was located in the early 2000s as part of an expansion of Topanga State Park, according to Time Out Los Angeles. Reel Inn owners Teddy Seraphine-Leonard and Andy Leonard had been leasing the land from the state ever since.

That lease expired a month after the fires. Last month, the parks department notified them that their lease would not be renewed.

The owners don’t want to give up, though it would be a difficult path to reopening in a smaller capacity. The Reel Inn could compete for a two- to three-year lease on the site to operate a food truck, but rebuilding any sort of permanent structure is off-limits, per the Santa Monica Mirror.

“Would we like to revive it? Yes, we would,” Seraphine-Leonard told WSJ. “It would be a Herculean task to bring it back.”

Because the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power has set up a staging ground on the site as part of its effort to restore the neighborhood’s power grid, the Parks Department is requiring a competitive bidding process for any businesses interested in signing a short-term lease on the land.

Though most of The Reel Inn’s 18 former kitchen workers have found new jobs, the Leonards were able to assist them financially via a GoFundMe campaign that has raised more than $200,000 for the staff.

The couple has been offered to join other restaurants or open a new Reel Inn location in Marina del Rey. But they aren’t interested and have turned down the offers. For now they’re focusing on other business ventures — namely, working with two of the restaurant’s former chefs on a cookbook and bottling the Reel Inn’s chipotle sauce.

“It’s just not the same,” Seraphine-Leonard said. “We don’t know if this will be retirement.”

It remains to be seen what sprouts up on the site in both the short and long term. The city of Malibu issued its first rebuild permit last month.

— Chris Malone Méndez