• The Malibu condo market was hot in 2017 and, for the first time, the median price of the 75 condos sold in the Malibu area broke $1 million.
• Longtime Malibu local Bonnie Reiss—a close friend and associate of former California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, and a major figure in Sacramento policy and politics—died at age 62 after a long battle with cancer.
• The ongoing battle between the Malibu citizens of Sycamore Park and Joe Edmiston of Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy over use of private roads took a strange and ominous turn when the MRCA (a satellite agency of Edmiston’s) sued the citizens of Sycamore Park personally, for what they charged were violations of the Coastal Act, and asked for fines of $15,000 per day. The MRCA, of course, used a government-paid attorney, among others, to bring the lawsuit.
• The school district, still struggling with the problem of what to do with the problem of PCBs in the middle and high schools has begun to shift its thinking and consider as just tearing it all down and starting over, Later in the year, they shifted again and said they wanted to tear it down over a five-year period—and an immediate fire storm of opposition broke out.
• The City of Malibu took a major plunge into real estate ownership and bought nearly 30 acres of commercially-zoned land from the Malibu Bay Co. (its principal, Jerry Perenchio, died in 2017) for $42.5 million. The buy included the 9.65 acre piece known as the Ioki parcel (where the Chili Cook-Off is presently held), 1.11 acre triangular piece at Civic Center Way and Webb way, and 18.48 acres in western Malibu on PCH (the site of the Christmas tree lot).
