The controversy over the future of the Malibu Civic Center has always been portrayed as a dispute between “no growthers” and the rest of us normal people. I believed this portrayal until a look at the facts proved it unfair and that indeed, Malibu is facing a crisis. I’m amazed that the City Council we elected is not correcting a hideous legacy that our town inherited from L.A. County that will completely destroy the quality of life in Malibu.
In 1980, before cityhood, L.A. County projected there would be 385,000 residents in Malibu. To serve this population, the county zoned over 100 acres of commercial land in downtown Malibu – enough for a major metropolitan city. There are over 94 acres of vacant commercial land left (Mayor’s Report 3/01). If the landowners are given variances for their projects or do amenity swaps, this land will be improved with over 1,150,000 square feet of new buildings.
To give you a visual, this is roughly equal to 10 new Malibu Colony Plazas. (Ralphs shop-ping center is 120,000 from end to end.) The commercially developed acreage in the Civic Center will be larger than three South Bay Gallerias, one of the largest regional malls in L.A. County. Add to this the 5,000 parking spaces required for all this development and we will have so much traffic, noise and pollution that none of us will want to live in Malibu and the property values of houses within blocks of PCH will decrease significantly.
As a property rights activist, I am a strong defender of these property owners’ rights to build the projects allowed by the zoning code and reflected in the purchase prices they paid. But these developers do not have any right to ruin my quality of life and my property values by getting variances, increased density and crass development standards as proposed in the Civic Center Guidelines. (Zero lot setbacks, increase in building heights of 25 percent up to 30 feet, etc.)
The residents who are concerned about the scope of development have spent the time that City officials should be spending studying the matter. Far from being “no growth,” they are simply paying attention and are advocating smart growth – like every other small, beautiful and wealthy town in America. This is why they’re asking the City Council to make every effort to purchase as much open space in the Civic Center as possible, to avoid the commercial megatropolis that the County Planners from whom we seceded had envisioned.
Anne Hoffman