Monday night’s council meeting was full of protestors and supporters of the Trancas Park project; Cornucopia Foundation supporters also added their voice to the dissonance asking the council to issue Cornucopia a permit to operate a farmers’ market.
By Olivia Damavandi / Staff Writer
At what was inarguably its most uproarious meeting of the year, the Malibu City Council voted to continue discussion of the traffic and parking problem on Morning View Drive to its March 23 meeting, and to authorize an application for state funding for the construction of Legacy Park. The council also approved a conditional use permit for the construction of Trancas Park.
Although the issue was not on the city’s agenda, a cacophony of clapping and hooting erupted from the audience in response to numerous public speakers who fervently pleaded to the council to issue a permit to allow the Cornucopia Foundation to hold a farmers’ market in Malibu.
“The county will give Cornucopia its permit for Malibu farmers’ market,” Deborah Bianco, co-founder and president of Cornucopia, said to the council. “We are here to find out if you’ll please join with the community and support the farmers’ market.
“The county said yes, the school said yes, the residents said yes, the kids said yes, everyone’s saying yes,” she continued. “We could do this in 30 days, the vendors are ready.”
In last week’s issue of The Malibu Times, Mayor Pro Tem Sharon Barovsky was quoted as being in support of a farming collective that Alan Cunningham, owner of Vital Zuman farm, is forming and also of a farmers’ market that would result from the collective. Barovsky had said Cornucopia’s farmers’ market in the past did not flourish because of permitting issues, among other problems.
There has been contention in the past over who would be able to operate a farmers’ market in Malibu. In March of 2007, three entities, including Cornucopia, had submitted applications to the city for conditional use permits. However, to date, none have been issued.
The county of Los Angeles owns the land (in the Malibu Library parking lot) where the Cornucopia Foundation wants to operate its farmers’ market. Bianco said on Tuesday the county told her last week it would lease the property to Cornucopia for a farmers’ market. However, the city must issue a conditional use permit to Cornucopia as well.
Bianco, on Tuesday, said the city has not recently denied Cornucopia a CUP, because they have not submitted an application for one.
They plan to submit one in the future.
City approves CUP for Trancas Park
Though many attended Monday’s council meeting in support of the farmers’ market, an overwhelming amount of people, many of them youths, appeared to support or protest the construction of Trancas Park.
Well more than 45 local elementary, middle and high school students wore green clothing and held signs with slogans such as “build it and they will come” and others holding “save our ridge” signs outlined the perimeter of the City Hall council chambers in anticipation of the council’s decision.
Those in opposition to Trancas Park cited fire hazards, earthquake effects, associated impacts from the grading of the Trancas ridgeline and inadequacies in the park’s final environmental impact report as reasons the council should honor two appeals filed against the project by five residents.
Frank Angel, attorney for the Trancas Park appellants, said, “The objectives of the park could be met with significantly less cost to the environment and to taxpayers.”
Angel requested that the city not approve the final EIR because, he said, it was developed without information from grading studies and it excludes disclosure about a number of things such as the park’s daily water use, among others.
A number of pro-Trancas Park residents expressed support for the third alternative stated in the EIR, a reduced dog park and picnic/playground area, to minimize impact on the Malibu West neighborhood, but the EIR states the third alternative would not fulfill the objectives of the park. Others suggested building the park on the DeWind property in the Point Dume area.
Trancas Park, a seven-acre public park on a 13.5-acre site located at 6050 Trancas Canyon Road, approximately a half mile north of the intersection of Trancas Canyon Road and Pacific Coast Highway, will contain a multiuse (practice-only) sports field, a basketball half-court, picnic area, tot-lot, dog park, a restroom/maintenance building, storage building, shade structures, onsite wastewater treatment system, parking area and a storm water detention basin. The total preconstruction cost is estimated to be $610,000, and the total construction cost at approximately $3.4 million.
The approved application also grants a request to allow grading to exceed the maximum quantity of 1,000 cubic yards per acre, and a request to allow construction on slopes steeper than what is allowed by code.
City to apply for Legacy Park state funds
The council also authorized an application for funding from the State Revolving Fund Program under the Federal Economic Recovery Program to cover storm water-related construction costs of the Legacy Park Project. The Regional Water Quality Control Board will discuss the loan in a hearing on March 17.
The state’s funding program allows cities to apply for long-term, low-interest loans for specific construction projects. The city was recently informed that the Legacy Park Project would probably be eligible. The application ensures that the park will take priority on the Regional Water Quality Control Board’s project list before the hearing.