The old way and the new way

    0
    184

    It isn’t often that within the space of one week you find two perfect examples of the contrast of the old way of doing business in Malibu and the new way of doing business in Malibu.

    The old way:

    The gathering of the opposition to any realistic Civic Center plan made its pitch at the Malibu Township Council meeting Saturday for a large undeveloped central park type of a plan for almost the entire undeveloped Civic Center area.

    It’s not that there is anything wrong with their plan, it’s just that the only way to make it a go is to buy the 80 Civic Center acres. This means, for starters, spending roughly $95 million to buy it, then another $20 million or so to build it out, plus another $5 million or so to build a city hall, and another $5 million or so for the community center. Then there is the cost of unknown millions for the creek and wetlands element, and it’s now up to around $150 million, plus or minus.

    Now I suspect they know they’re never going to raise that kind of money, so really what they’re proposing is a scorched earth policy. Fight any Civic Center development at every turn, block it, slow it down, and, in time, you may wear the other side out and ultimately they’ll sell cheap. It actually could work, but most likely it will end up in court and that gets very risky, as the next example will show.

    The old City Council followed the old way of not looking for a reasonable middle ground when the city put in an extreme rent control ordinance for the mobile home parks, particularly Paradise Cove Mobile Home Park, almost 10 years ago. The mobile coach owners at that time were militant and had the ear of the City Council. The city fought every request for a raise in rents. The coach owners were constantly going to the district attorney, asking for criminal charges to be filed against the Kissels, owners of the Paradise Cove Park, for failure to maintain the park. It was a continuous battleground of charges and countercharges. People hated each other. Resale on the coaches was terrible because of the battle. Few wanted to live in a war zone and the battle went on for years. The mobile home park owners finally beat the city in court and the city ending up shelling out almost $2.5 million in damages, costs and attorney’s fees. Everyone lost and, after a while, many of the militants moved away.

    At Bluffs Park, where the ball fields are located, the old way was to go to war with the state and the Coastal Commission and refuse to budge and give up the ball fields. The city practically sat on their hands, did nothing to find sites for new ball fields and virtually dared the state to kick the kids off the fields, which the state was of course loath to do. The relationship between the city and the state was horrible, antagonistic and perpetually angry.

    The new way :

    The voters got tired of all the negativity, kicked out the old guard and a new group took over and the first thing they did was to start talking to everyone. That meant the State Department of Parks, the Coastal Commission and to Roy Crummer, who owns a bunch of land up next to Bluffs Park. The new council actually talked to the Kissels, the owners of the Paradise Cove Mobile Home Park, who have two pending lawsuits against the city. The new guard worked on getting the coach owners to sit down with the Kissels and let them try and hammer out a deal everyone could live with.

    Well, at the Monday council meeting it was announced a settlement has been reached with the Kissels. Actually, most of the deal was reached between the coach owners and the Kissels. The coach owners already voted on it and, I understand, by a vote of 104 yeas and 40 noes, they approved the new deal.

    The deal is that the Kissels get a sizable but preset rent raise for the next seven years and they will fix the septic systems at a cost of about $2.2 million without passing the costs on to the coach owners. And there is a special escape clause to protect low and elderly moderate-income owners. Additionally, there are no more lawsuits, no more uncertainty, and no more potential swords hanging over everyone’s head. It happened because the coach owners and the Kissels were reasonable and the city was fair and didn’t try to stick it to one side to protect political allies, as often has happened in the past.

    The same thing is happening on Bluffs Park. They’re very close to a deal, a land swap where Roy Crummer is going to give up a hunk of land on the Bluffs for new ball fields, so the ball fields can be moved.

    The state then gets its land back, and Crummer gets to build his eight single-family residences. It’s not quite a done deal, but it’s very close. It’s complicated because it involves the state, the city, a private developer, the Coastal Commission and probably some other agencies to make it work, but everyone is trying.

    I suspect we’re facing the same choice in the Civic Center. We can negotiate some realistic choices and tradeoffs or just bury our heads in the sand and pretend we can have it all. If we take the latter course, it probably means more years of warfare.