The first of two major decisions about future development in Malibu’s Civic Center was made by the Planning Commission last Thursday when about 70 community members gathered in City Hall to hear the Commission pass the long-debated Whole Foods and the Park environmental impact report (EIR), specific plan, zoning text amendments and lot mergers.
Commissioners held three separate votes on the various elements of the Whole Foods plan, though all parts passed with varying degrees of support.
The meeting, which stretched from 6:30 p.m. to past midnight, tested the patience of the Commissioners, who were snapping at each other by the end of the long night.
“I’ve got a law practice to get going to in the morning, and I’m walking out of here if we can’t get this going,” Commissioner Jeffrey Jennings told his colleagues, specifically Commissioner John Mazza, who came to the meeting equipped with a slew of questions.
Not long afterward, Chair David Brotman cut Mazza off from continuing to question staff on the validity of the much-debated traffic study included in the EIR.
“You won’t let me ask my question?” Mazza asked Brotman.
“You’re voting against it anyway, so what difference does it make?” Brotman shot back.
One of the most debated elements of the EIR has long been the traffic study, the validity of which residents and stakeholders have questioned since the draft-EIR was first published in January. Residents cite a surprising lack of increased traffic shown in the EIR, as compared to reports from similarly located proposed developments, such as the La Paz office park. At the meeting, the City’s traffic engineer, Sri Chakravarthy, from the firm Kimley-Horn, explained how traffic counts were made.
“What the traffic study shows is actual counts that were collected in July 2012 in summertime. Those were the actual counts that were counted in those locations,” Chakravarthy told Commissioners. This, he said, was not the case for numbers collected for the La Paz and Legacy Park EIRs, where “the volumes that were used in those traffic reports were estimates” based on 2003 numbers.
“[It is] pretty common in traffic engineering to use a one to two percent growth factor so we plan for the worst-case scenarios,” Chakravarthy explained. “What we found out is … the traffic counts at all these intersections have maintained a consistent … trend.”
Resident Steve Uhring, speaking on behalf of several Malibu residents, including Measure R ordinance authors Rob and Michele Reiner (who attended the meeting but did not speak), called these results into question.
“Who believes that traffic has really decreased or that traffic is really lower than it was 15 years ago?” Uhring asked.
Commissioner Mikke Pierson, who with Mazza did not vote to approve the EIR, also had questions for Chakravarthy over the validity of the numbers.
“I went back to every single date during these traffic studies and I looked at what I could find on the internet as to the weather, and by amazing coincidence — or by I don’t know what to make of it — virtually every count in the last 10 years were made on foggy or even drizzly days,” Pierson said. “I don’t know what the odds are on that; they seem thin.”
Chakravarthy assured Pierson there was no intent to mislead with the numbers.
“When we collect traffic counts, we are absolutely looking for good dry conditions,” Chakravarthy said, but even so, the type of traffic most prevalent in the counts, such as parents taking their children to school, wouldn’t necessarily change because of weather. “It doesn’t matter if it’s a little warmer or a little colder; those things still happen.”
Jennings said that though the lack of increased traffic was unexpected, it was hard to give credence to Uhring’s numbers.
“[The] most detailed was Mr. Uhring’s approach, which I’d have given a lot more weight to had these people gone out and hired a traffic engineer to come out and tell us there are these problems,” Jennings said. He went on to vote to approve the EIR.
The final vote included an amendment ensuring no construction vehicles would use Cross Creek Road.
In the end, Commissioners voted to also approve the project’s specific plan in a 3-2 decision with Mazza and Pierson against, and Jennings, Brotman and Commissioner Roohi Stack in favor.
Brotman described the Whole Foods project as one “we die for,” saying Civic Center Task Force members want everything Whole Foods and the Park provides.“All [Task Force members] talked about was the things they wanted in these projects that they weren’t going to get in La Paz, but they’re all in this project. It’s what they want,” Brotman said.
Whole Foods developer Steve Soboroff responded to the decision in a statement provided to The Malibu Times.
“We are gratified by the outpouring of local support for not only Whole Foods, but for the park and the community benefits derived from our inclusion of the Shane’s Inspiration Playground and Kitchen Community Garden,” Soboroff wrote. “We also appreciate the Commissioners’ recognition of the exceptional design that our local Malibu architectural teams presented.”