I support the Whole Foods and the Park Project and would urge Malibu to vote “yes” on Measure W this Nov. 3.
Let me give you my many reasons.
We’ve been a city since 1991 and there has been very little commercial development since then. Our resident population is about the same as it was when we became a city. What has increased is the traffic passing through Malibu en route to work on the Westside, or to home in the West Valley and eastern Ventura County. That’s not going to change; in fact, that’s going to increase. More and more, we are all going to be sticking closer to home because going into town — in any direction — has become such an ordeal. Originally, the thought was if we say “no” to all new commercial development, we could maintain the rural character of Malibu with small mom-and-pop stores and a local flavor. You have to ask yourself: Have we succeeded in maintaining the local flavor? I think not. Just walk through the Malibu Civic Center and count the retail stores. Almost all are national chains, selling primarily women’s clothes and accessories. Unless we do something — and that means creating some new commercial — we’re just going to be nothing but Louis Vuitton and Hermès in quaint little shopping centers masquerading as a town.
There are a group of naysayers in Malibu who see every change as an apocalypse and all of it as a zero sum game. It isn’t so, and it doesn’t have to be so. We’ve had successes and we should try to repeat them. For example, the just totally renovated Trancas Center in Western Malibu is a very well done center, and it includes some wonderful, well thought out public space. We were there recently for a concert, which we watched while sitting on the patio of the restaurant. There were people and families sitting on the lawn, picnicking on a warm summer evening, enjoying themselves. It isn’t just what people build. You can’t reduce it all to a count of car trips or other silly mechanical measurements. If they build it with taste and scale it to our community, it works and adds to our experience of living here.
The Whole Foods project isn’t just a market and some commercial space. It’s also a park and a public space, which we need. It’s designed by local architect Ron Goldman (I admit to be biased because Ron designed my house), and it’s built so the public spaces work and traffic flow is accounted for and handled.
We will have an area that will be an outdoor meeting place for all of us. In Malibu, our public spaces are principally in the private shopping centers. The park, sand pile and play equipment in the Koss Center, originally built by Fred Segal, is really sort of our unofficial town square. Also, when developers develop a shopping center, it’s in their interest to maintain them to attract tenants and shoppers, so, often, their property is maintained much more creatively than public property.
What’s also important in a center development is who is doing the development. I’ve known Steve Soboroff for the 28 years that we’ve owned the newspaper. When the community needs something, Steve is always the first guy to step up and offer to help. He has deep roots in this community, understands it, believes in a good tenant mix, and is very much present and hands on. He’s not some distant, off-shore investment group. He’s exactly what you want in a local developer.
I support this project because we need it. If we don’t add some commercial space, the prices will just keep rising, and local small operators will continue to leave. We can’t always be saying “no” because we’re frightened. It simply doesn’t work — whether it’s here in Malibu or in Washington, D.C.
At some point, we have to be able to get to “yes.”