City of Malibu staff has released its response letter to the draft environmental impact report for Pepperdine University’s proposed Campus Life Project, which the City Council will consider and finalize at its meeting Monday night.
Rhiannon Bailard, assistant vice president for Governmental and Regulatory Affairs at Pepperdine, responded to the city staff’s criticisms in a phone conversation with The Malibu Times on Friday. Bailard said university officials discussed the issues with city staff on Thursday.
City staff expressed the following concerns, to which Bailard responded, about the DEIR for the expansion project:
• Seven intersections within the City of Malibu limits identified in the DEIR will suffer “significant and unmitigable” impacts during large events at the Athletic and Events Center (AEC), which occur during peak traffic hours. The letter asks how the county could approve a project with impacts that are not within its jurisdiction, and make a determination that the project’s benefits would outweigh impacts to Malibu. Pepperdine spokesperson Bailard said that most events at the AEC would not occur during peak hours, which she listed as 7 a.m. – 9 a.m. and 4 p.m.- 6 p.m. on weekdays. Bailard said only six events were sold out at Firestone Fieldhouse, site of the proposed expanded AEC, during 2010, and none of those occurred during peak traffic hours.
• The city notes that the DEIR fails to mention if the AEC will be used for concerts or shows. Residents of the Malibu Country Estates Homeowner’s Association had expressed concern about the traffic generated in the area if concerts took place at the AEC. Bailard said that Firestone Fieldhouse currently hosts concerts and will continue to do so in the future, but that the AEC is not being built with concerts in mind.
• The city also notes that the DEIR discusses upgrading the soccer, basketball and volleyball venues to NCAA requirements, but does not specify those requirements. It recommends listing those requirements, so that if the planned expansion exceeds the requirements, the university might consider reducing the size of the expansion. Bailard said most of the requirements were listed in the DEIR, but not in the initial “project description” section at the beginning of the report. Bailard said Pepperdine officials spoke with city staff about the issue on Thursday.
• The city questions the necessity of the plan outlined in the DEIR to raise the track/soccer field by 10 feet in elevation, saying that the raised elevation could “add to visual and lighting impacts from the field onto nearby residences.” Bailard said Pepperdine would mitigate the lighting impacts by using new lighting technology. She said that with the new technology raising the lights, although it sounds counter-intuitive, will actually decrease scattered light by focusing the light more downward.
• The city notes that the project has been touted as being environmentally efficient, but the only environmental plan is an expansion of a campus recycling program that already exists at the university. Bailard said that in addition to the recycling program, Pepperdine will use reclaimed water for the project, and install a central “chiller” for the main campus. Bailard said that currently each building on the main campus currently has an individual chiller for air conditioning, but that a central chiller would reduce energy consumption.
The city council will meet Monday at 6 p.m., in City Hall chambers. Public comment on the Campus Life Project DEIR is due by Jan. 10.
The DEIR can be viewed at planning.lacounty.gov/case/all, under Project No. R2007-03064.
—Knowles Adkisson