City planners on Monday rejected a developer’s traffic plan to widen Pacific Coast Highway in the Civic Center, deeming the application “incomplete” and in need of further study.
Officials with the city told Schmitz & Associates, the firm behind plans to construct the La Paz office and commercial building in the Civic Center, that more information is needed if they wish to remove an environmentally protected sycamore tree at the corner of Cross Creek and PCH in order to widen the highway toward Malibu Lagoon.
A letter sent to Joseph Meisinger of Schmitz & Associates asks for an inventory of native trees in the area, photographs, viewshed impact study, planned mitigation measures and analysis of environmental impacts if a protected sycamore is removed.
In order for La Paz to be built, a traffic report found PCH must be widened to accommodate an onslaught of traffic likely to be brought on by more development in the Civic Center.
For more on the tree and project in question, read last week’s story, Can A Tree ‘Save’ Malibu?