In an action defended as an opportunity to erase “wreckage from the past,” Malibu Mayor Joan House rallied fellow council members on Monday to send a letter to the California Coastal Commission (CCC) requesting the coastal panel stop renewing a 27-year-old permit for a 300-room hotel on the site where the 146- room Rancho Malibu Hotel is currently planned. Stopping renewal of the permit would make the City of Malibu the lone permit authority for the hotel project.
The council also approved a bevy of new expenditures totaling more than $1 million, including $625,000 to fund the creation of a Civic Center design guidelines and specific plan for land uses in the area.
Letter to Coastal Commission
As it stands, the current Coastal-approved permit for a 300-room hotel is a fallback option for hotel developer Richard Weintraub. The CCC issued it in 1986, six years before Malibu incorporated. In 1998—six years after Malibu incorporated— Weintraub obtained a separate permit from the City of Malibu for updated plans on a 146-room hotel on the site.
Some speakers on Monday accused House of wanting to take the project away from the stringent eye of the CCC and allow the current hotel plans to be smoothly passed through the city permitting process.
“The Coastal Commission is one of the most stringent, environmentally spun out groups out there…this project needs all that scrutiny,” said local Hamish Patterson.
But House reminded the room that she was the lone “no” vote against issuance of a conditional use permit (CUP) for the project in 1998. She said transferring power of approval from the Coastal Commission to the city would not signal easy passage for the project.
“This [CCC permit] has been around since what 1986, and we became a city in ‘92. And since that time, the Coastal Commission has kept giving them a permit to keep their application alive, alive, alive,” House said. “You know what? The hotel is in the City of Malibu, I trust our planning department, I trust our planning commission, I trust the residents and I trust this council.”
Weintraub did not attend Monday’s meeting. On Tuesday, he said the city’s decision to write the letter was hard to comprehend. He said he received one phone call about the agenda item before Monday’s meeting.
“The person who called me really didn’t have a sound explanation as to why [the city wants to be the permit authority.] Quite frankly I don’t understand either,” Weintraub wrote in an email.
The 146-room plan, environmental reports and conditional use permit are currently under review by the city. But Weintraub’s development firm, Green Acres, has also simultaneously renewed the 300-room permit with the Coastal Commission every January since then.
“Every year for 27 years the Coastal Commission has extended the life of this 300-room hotel. Why? Because the developer, the owner of that property, is hedging his bets. If it doesn’t work out over here [with the city], he’ll have this [Coastal Commission permit] to defend,” Hogin told the Council. She called the decades-old permit “wreckage from the past.”
Allowing the permit to expire in January would preclude Weintraub from reverting back the 1986 300-room permit and strip the CCC of permit authority for the project, Hogin said.
Councilman Lou La Monte backed House’s idea.
“I don’t want a 300-room hotel here and if this is one of the ways to stop it, I think that we should write this letter,” La Monte said.
Steve Hudson, the local district manager for the CCC, said on Tuesday the coastal panel would have to determine whether circumstances surrounding the project have changed since 1986 in order for the CCC to let the permit expire.
Hudson did not wish to comment more specifically until given a chance to evaluate the city’s letter. City Manager Jim Thorsen said the letter would likely be sent to the CCC this week.
Spending
City coffers are also a little lighter this week, as the Malibu City Council agreed to new expenditures on Monday totaling more than $1 million. Up to $625,000 in city funds were allocated for the creation of a Civic Center site plan and design guidelines, while $350,000 of county funds were directed to be spent on the local library.
Of the county allocation, $100,000 will fund ten speakers for the 2014 library speaker series. The funding also covers hiring of a part-time librarian, for $50,000, and ongoing maintenance work.
Other expenditures on Monday included raising the budget to hire a consultant to draft a citywide nighttime lighting ordinance. A previous budget of $25,000 attracted only one bidder for the job, at $40,000. The council also approved spending $60,000 to buy biofiltration equipment.
Each of the spending votes was unanimous.