The ultra-private owner of Malibu Bay Company, Jerry Perenchio, responds to the media frenzy caused by two local environmentalists over a pitch-and-putt golf course on his Malibu Colony property.
By Jonathan Friedman/Special to the Malibu Times
The discovery of a golf course on a postcard has brought the reclusive Jerry Perenchio into the spotlight, a position the billionaire head of the Malibu Bay Company (MBC) normally shuns like the plague.
Perenchio, 72, whose main residence is in Beverly Hills, has received a great deal of media attention during the past couple of weeks because of a three-green, 10-acre private golf course he built in the backyard of one of his four Malibu Colony properties, without a California Coastal Commission permit.
Perenchio’s application for an-after-the-fact permit for the 20-year-old golf course was presented to the commission last Thursday. Although Coastal Commission staff had recommended approval of the 10-acre course with some modifications, Executive Director Peter Douglas overrode the decision and recommended the item be continued. Douglas was out this week and was unavailable for comment. But Coastal Commission legislative coordinator Sarah Christie said the reason for the continuance is to prepare for a lawsuit.
“We know that there is going to be a lawsuit anyway, so we want to make sure that the commission staff has addressed all the issues that were brought up at the hearing,” she said.
In 1982, Perenchio, who is also the head of the Spanish-language television network Univision, had been given approval to build, among other things, a jogging track, a gazebo and ponds behind the Malibu Colony home. But instead, he built a golf course, which, despite the surprise expressed by those who brought the issue before the commission, was well known throughout Malibu.
“The Coastal Commission would not give approval for that golf course if it were presented as a proposal before it now,” Wetlands Action Network (WAN) head Marcia Hanscom said. “So why should they approve it now?”
The environmentalist activist has long sought to turn the Civic Center area into a wetlands.
According to Hanscom, former Malibu City Council candidate Robert Roy van de Hoek, who heads WAN with Hanscom, discovered the golf course when he purchased a postcard of the Malibu Lagoon with an aerial view about a year and a half ago. He wanted to use it as part of a teaching tool for children. With that, he could also see the golf course behind Perenchio’s home.
The two then presented their discovery to the Coastal Commission.
Environmentalists believe pesticides from the course have been harming the lagoon for a number of years.
However, some local residents feel that “blatant politics” are behind the push to deny Perenchio a permit. Ken and Helene Dimin, in a letter to the editor in the July 10 issue of The Malibu Times, wrote that they do not “for a moment believe the rhetoric about the harm that is being caused by a small pitch and putt course.”
The two say that the property was a “snake-infested garbage dump” before Perenchio cleaned it up and “it became a thing of beauty for which all of us in Malibu should be everlastingly grateful to Mr. Perenchio.”
Perenchio, through his representatives, had offered to use fewer pesticides and to build a system to collect run-off from the greens that would stop chemical-contaminated water from reaching the lagoon. It was also pointed out that the property could legally be developed with up to 40 homes under current zoning codes.
Despite being one of the most talked about people in this city, Perenchio does not make public appearances nor does he speak with the media. (Although he did grant an interview with the Los Angeles Times on this issue because, the paper quoted Perenchio, “I thought maybe I should go to my own defense. I feel like the Malibu pinata.”)
Perenchio desires are only expressed to residents through the voice of MBC spokesperson David Reznick.
Perenchio’s lawyer, Rick Zbur, did not return repeated phone calls for this story.