Malibu Got a $2 Million Lot. It Should Have Gotten a Fine.

Mark Attanasio's settlement passed 8-0 at the Coastal Commission: no cash penalty, and no order to remove the seawall.

Mark Attanasio, who owns the Milwaukee Brewers, is giving the public an undeveloped Malibu beachfront lot valued at more than $2 million. He isn't paying a fine. The California Coastal Commission approved the package unanimously on Thursday, September 10, 2026, at its meeting in Eureka, according to the Commission's press release, and KBUU/Malibu.FM's Hans Laetz recorded the vote as 8-0.

The beach the public gets isn't the beach the case is about. The Commission's order names 31430 and 31438 Broad Beach Road as the violation site; the donated parcel, per the agency's fact sheet, sits in eastern Malibu. Two different stretches of coast. Whoever walks the tideline at Broad Beach gets the restored version of what regulators say was dug out of it.

The paperwork is Consent Restoration Order No. CCC-26-RO-02, listed on the Commission's September 9-11 agenda as an administrative order directing 2XMD Partners LLC to take restorative actions at the site, "including by restoring the rocky intertidal area." The Commission's fact sheet describes the underlying work as an illegal excavation.

Here's my problem with the deal. A land dedication isn't a penalty, it's a transfer, and a man who owns a Major League Baseball club can make one without feeling it. We read the fact sheet's list of what 2XMD agreed to, and every item on it is non-cash: restore the excavated area, remove the unpermitted development from the beach, dedicate the parcel. The Los Angeles Times' Jack Flemming put it plainly on September 4, 2026: "Instead of paying a fine or a fee," the billionaire donates a parcel. The Malibu Stringer's Holly Bieler described the same arrangement two days later as coming in lieu of a fine.

The strongest argument against me is a good one, and the Commission makes it itself. Its fact sheet calls the package "the proposed restoration order and penalty" — the agency's position is that the land is the penalty, and land is permanent in a way a check isn't. A dedication lands now. An enforcement fight over a Malibu seawall can eat years, and the public usually loses the years.

My read on the parcel actually shifted while going through the record. It isn't a token. Public beachfront in Malibu that nobody has to sue for is a real thing to own, and eastern Malibu is a stretch where the public doesn't have much.

So the gift isn't the failure. What's missing around it is. There's no dollar figure anywhere in the Commission's published materials, which means there's no number for the next beachfront owner to weigh against the cost of moving sand. The order puts the intertidal rocks back and takes part of the armoring off the beach. The published materials don't order the seawall removed.

That's the trade the Commission made 8-0, and it's the one I'd argue with. I'd take the sand back over the parcel. The Commission took both, minus the wall.

Source: ktla.com.