Tucked Along the Coast

Mary and Bob Eide were looking for a little more space than they had in their Pacific Palisades home of 20 years, and they wanted a bigger yard and a more rustic environment.

Two years ago, they tried Montana, where Bob took a job managing a cattle ranch. “That was a bit too remote,� he said.

They considered Colorado, then the Northwest. They

even moved back to their

home state of New York a

year ago last winter.

“The cold made us shudder,� Mary said. “We were used to the Southern California weather and its lifestyle.�

So the Eides returned to California and looked for a house to buy near Zuma Beach, where they had often taken their children swimming when they lived in the Palisades.

The Eides bought a three-bedroom two-bath house with just under 2,000 square feet for $650,000. They moved in with their son, now 13, and daughter, 9, in July 1996.

Built in the 1950s, the house is on about an acre, with a swimming pool and a barn, on Point Dume, a peninsula in Malibu between Zuma Beach and Paradise Cove.

Point Dume is a community of contrasts, from its residents to its housing.

“You can go to the local coffee shop and see a day worker, a cowboy, a surfer, a jogger and a movie star,� Mary Eide said.

Sometimes rural-looking, sometimes exquisitely landscaped, Point Dume has large lots and a mix of housing, ranging from mansions to mobile homes, all on a promontory with access to a few sandy beaches.

Point Dume is bounded by Pacific Coast Highway on the north, Heathercliff Road on the west, Zumirez Drive on the east, and Westward Beach Road and Cliffside Drive along the ocean.

Heading toward Ventura, Point Dume is beyond the Malibu pier, the civic center of the 6-year-old city of Malibu and Pepperdine University.

Point Dume has had its name on the map longer than the pier, the city or the school, but people are still confused about how to pronounce it.

Retired Judge John J. Merrick, the local judge for more than 20 years and a resident of Malibu since the late 1940s and Point Dume since 1967, researched the pronunciation when he was teaching a class in Malibu history at Pepperdine during the 1970s.

What he learned is that Point Dume is not called “Du-May.� It is called “Doom.�

How to Say It

The preferred pronunciation was provided by the Rev. Francis J. Weber, archivist for the Los Angeles Archdiocese of the Roman Catholic Church.

Point Dume was named in the 1790s by explorer George Vancouver for the priest Francisco Dumetz, who had been Vancouver’s host at Mission San Buenaventura, in what is now Ventura. It is called Dume and not Dumetz because Vancouver misspelled the priest’s name, Weber said.

Point Dume didn’t look much different than it did in Vancouver’s days when Merrick first saw it in 1941 when, as an Army staff sergeant, he had target practice there.

In those days, there wasn’t a house on the Point, as the area is also known. The first houses were built in the late 1940s, when a hotel was planned on the peninsula’s knoll.

“The soil was unstable, so they never built the hotel, but they flattened the top,� said Merrick, who built a house in nearby Latigo Canyon after his discharge.

“I bought a lot with 50 feet of beach for $2,300 and 10% down,� he said. He got a VA loan for $10,500 at an interest rate of 4%, and that paid for his lot and a prefabricated house.

At the same time, lots along Cliffside Drive on Point Dume were selling at $2,400 each with 10% down, but Merrick wasn’t interested, he said, because Point Dume was a wind-blown place with no grass, houses or trees.

Today it is a verdant community with 850 houses, 152 condos, 18 apartments and 300 mobile homes, said Katie Ribnick-Bentzen of Fred Sands Realtors, Malibu.

Selling prices during the last year or so have ranged, she said, from $33,000 for a two-bedroom 1 1/2-bath mobile home to $2.8 million for a four-bedroom 4,000-square-foot house on 1.5 acres of rolling lawns and flower gardens.

Asking prices vary from $65,000 for a two-bedroom mobile home, with a monthly park fee of about $1,700, to $15 million for a six-bedroom estate on 1 1/2 acres with two guest houses and a gym, Ribnick-Bentzen said. Apartments, rarely available, rent from about $1,300 a month.

The median sales price is about $650,000 for a four-bedroom 2,000-square-foot house built in the 1960s on about an acre with horse facilities.

Many homes on Point Dume are built on an acre or more, and a lot of the homeowners keep horses and other animals. The Eides have two miniature donkeys and three pot-belly pigs.

A financial consultant, Bob Eide is taking some time off to refurbish their barn. Mary Eide works mainly at home for the Center for Environmental Education.

Their flexible jobs make it practical to live as far out as Point Dume, 36 miles from downtown Los Angeles.

The Eides’ willingness to work on a fixer also paid off. The couple, in their 40s, bought their house at a low point in the market. Then they did a lot of work on the property.

“The pool was full of mud,� Mary said, “but I could see past that.�

Carol and Ken Paquette, who have two grown children, also had the vision to buy an older house that needed fixing when they moved last fall to Point Dume from Pacific Palisades. They bought a 1952 house, on 1 1/4 acres, for $485,000.

They’ve already expanded the house from 1,700 to 2,000 square feet and aim to make it 4,500 square feet by the time they finish. “It’s a lot of work, but fun,� he said.

Semi-retired, Ken Paquette has done a lot of the work himself. Carol Paquette, who owns En Route Travel in the Palisades, has helped with the design and decorating.

“We liked the idea of being more rural but didn’t want to be any farther than an hour from a major airport,� she said.

The country feel of large lots on streets with no sidewalks has combined with a sense of community and an improved economy to draw families to Point Dume once again.

The result has been the reopening of an elementary school, closed for years because of low enrollment and the construction of Malibu High School, for grades 6 through 12. It had its first graduating class last year.

It was the schools that induced Kim and Bruce Mautner, who have three children, to move from Topanga Canyon. “I like the personalized attention they get in the Malibu schools,� Kim Mautner said. The schools are run by the Malibu-Santa Monica Unified School District.

The Mautners bought a three-bedroom 2,800-square-foot house on about 1 1/2 acres in January for just under $1 million.

It was a 1950s fixer, which Bruce Mautner, a contractor, refurbished himself. “The day we took possession, the septic tank was bubbling down the driveway,� Kim Mautner said.

Now Kim, 39, and her husband, in his 40s, are so happy that they decided to cancel a planned trip to Hawaii. “Why go away?� she asked. “It’s like a vacation here.�

She likes being close enough to walk to the ocean, and she is happy that her children go to the beach now instead of to the malls.

The Mautners are more relaxed than they were in Topanga Canyon about their school-age children going places on Point Dume by themselves for several reasons.

“The geography is different,� Kim said. The streets are flat and wide on Point Dume, and they have little traffic. The Mautners also believe that the upper-middle class neighborhood is safe.

Crime on Point Dume is, in fact, “negligible,� says Deputy Sven Crongeyer of the L.A. County Sheriff’s Department, although in April, a bank at the entrance to Point Dume was robbed for the third time in five months.

“We caught the guy,� Crongeyer said. “It was an alarm for this area but nothing for most anywhere else.� He said the crime rate on Point Dume is “very low,� adding, “I can hardly even remember anything bad going on. Oh, sometimes we issue parking tickets.� He chuckled.

Point Dume even seems to be immune to the fires, floods and mudslides that occasionally occur in Malibu.

Rachael and Rob Abbey, avid tennis players, were lured to Point Dume by some Malibu friends who have a tennis court. The Abbeys, first-time home buyers, bought a contemporary multilevel unit with Zuma Canyon views for $270,000.

“We were in escrow during the fire last fall, and I was a bit concerned but then realized that fire doesn’t usually cross [Pacific Coast Highway],� Rachael Abbey, 29, said.

A video technician, Rob Abbey, 40, was living in Marina del Rey before he married the composer and photographer from London, a few months ago. “Point Dume is paradise for an English soul,� Rachael said.

Like most Point Dume homeowners, they have access to a private beach, but they still play tennis on the court of their friends, who eased any brush fire fears that the Abbeys had. “They’ve lived here a long time, and they aren’t concerned,� Rob said.

Other longtime Point Dume residents also voice little worry about fires, floods and mudslides.

Joyce Fante, the widow of novelist-screenwriter John Fante, has lived on Point Dume since 1951. “I’ve been through all of the fires, and none ever actually entered Point Dume,� she said.

Dr. Genevieve May, a psychiatrist who has lived on Point Dume for 37 years, is more fearful of development than of natural disasters.

“Those of us who are longtime residents out here are trying to keep the younger folks in check, so they don’t ruin the place,� said May, the widow of Dr. Philip R.A. May, a UCLA professor of psychiatry whose research into schizophrenia brought him international recognition.

The Changing Face

“When we moved here, there were only three small houses on my street,� she said. “Now the houses on either side of mine are like mansions, and many of the older people who bought here for very little have sold for a lot and moved to Oregon and Colorado, where they can get more for less.�

When Merrick first saw Point Dume, he said, “I never thought it would grow up as it did, with celebrities living here and the land so expensive.�

But he likes to reminisce about his “56-year love affair� with Point Dume.

And Fante, who raised four children on Point Dume and whose late husband wrote the novella “My Dog Stupid� (published posthumously in 1986) about the area, said:

“I love it here. I wouldn’t live anywhere else.�