Appeals Court blocks commercial activity at former Streisand Center.
By Arnold G. York/Publisher
The long battle over whether the Santa Monica Mountains conservancy would be allowed to run a commercial banquet operation in back of Ramirez Canyon finally received an answer recently when a Court of Appeals turned down the conservancy and said they needed the City of Malibu’s permission to continue.
The legal battle over what the conservancy would be allowed to do with the five-residence compound, formerly owned by Barbra Streisand and later donated to the state, has been back and forth in the state court system for several years. Unless the current decision is appealed to the California Supreme Court and reversed again, it will become final. Then commercial activity in the back of Ramirez Canyon, which is accessible only via a private road through the canyon, will stop-that is, unless the city gives them a Conditional Use Permit. This appears highly unlikely since it was the city that sued the conservancy to block the commercial activity to begin with.
Monday night, Joe Edmiston, executive director of the SMMC, told his board they didn’t intend to give up without a fight and intended to appeal this latest court decision to the California Supreme Court.
The center, consisting of a cluster of five structures, was formerly the home of entertainer Barbra Streisand, which she gifted to the Santa Monica Mountains conservancy, a state agency that originally indicated it intended to turn it into an environmental think tank.
According to reports, the cluster of homes and the elaborate gardens, originally called the Streisand Center, were expensive to maintain. The conservancy, prohibited by law from using state funds to maintain it, soon found themselves in a terrible financial bind, which they attempted to alleviate by renting out the facility for parties, weddings, bar mitzvahs, photo shoots and corporate events, and advertised the facilities in various advertising media to the special events trade.
The Streisand Center was a popular venue and there was often a constant weekend procession through the canyon of vans carrying guests, caterers, food, wait staff, florists, musicians. The Ramirez Canyon neighbors went ballistic and, of course, sued. Somewhat later, the City of Malibu also sued, charging that the area was zoned R-1, which is residential and therefore illegal to run a commercial operation there. The trial court disagreed, found for the conservancy, holding that the state was immune from the city zoning, which meant they could legally ignore the city’s zoning. The city appealed to the Court of Appeals.
In the meantime, the city had also complained to the California Coastal Commission that the conservancy was operating the Streisand Center without a Coastal permit, which the city charged was a violation of the Coastal Act.
After much prodding by the city, the conservancy, with great reluctance, observers reported, finally applied to the California Coastal Commission to run a commercial catering facility at the location. When it came for the hearing before the Coastal Commission, the Coastal staff recommended that the conservancy be denied and the Coastal Commission sent the conservancy away, empty handed, with instructions to modify their project and come back again. That they did, but when they came back it was not with a smaller project, but with more events for larger numbers of people. This time, instead of calling it a commercial facility, it was called a facility for inner city children and senior citizens. According to rumor, this was the result of a public relation expert’s advice, who the conservancy had hired to help get the project through.
City officials and neighbors testified at the Coastal hearing that it was ridiculous to site a commercial banquet facility in the back of a box canyon, in a fire hazard area, with only one access road in and out. Even Streisand demanded that they remove her name from the center since she hadn’t donated it to be a catering hall. Nevertheless the commission approved the larger project in a unanimous vote and granted the conservancy permission to continue.
Critics charged that the entire deal was rigged and that the state agencies simply rolled over for each other and maintained a double standard-one environmental standard for the public and quite another for other governmental agencies, particularly environmental agencies.
Former Malibu City Attorney Richard Terzian, whose firm handled the appeal for the city, summed it up, this way: “If it were you or I or the Disney Corporation, the California Coastal Commission would have been down on us like a ton of bricks. I have to wonder why they’re different with the conservancy.”