Changes ahead: Keep your eyes, ears open
There are many things going on around town.
The city narrowed down the search for the Malibu Lumber site to a team that includes Weintraub Financial, headed by local Malibu developer, Richard Weintraub, and Richard Sperber of ValleyCrest Companies, whose company projects are always interesting with striking exterior spaces, walkways and plantings. No one is talking, but rumors are flying about a restaurant or two, open space and boutique shops. But I suspect all of that is currently in play in the negotiation.
Repairs are finishing in the Malibu Creek Shopping Plaza, including the burned out Malibu movie theater which sadly won’t be finished in time for the Oct. 4-8 dates of the Malibu Celebration of Film, but the other stores are coming online shortly. The newly redesigned Casa Escobar is opening soon and there have been some dramatic improvements in the layout, including outdoor seating, an enlarged bar and a redesigned dining room, which is no longer L-shaped. Greg O’Conner of Malibu Eye Center is finishing his renovation. Bay City Beauty Supplies and Fast Frame have reopened for business. Unfortunately, Ben & Jerry’s ice cream shop won’t reopen for another couple of months at least.
Across PCH: In the Malibu Colony Shopping Plaza, the center that houses Ralphs market and the newly rechristened CVS Drugs (formerly Sav-On), there’s open space and a variety of rumors. One is that Randy Gerber, Cindy Crawford’s hubby and a well-known W hotel bar and club impresario, is looking at Granita for a possible steakhouse, although it’s rumored that he’s thinking of cutting up the space a bit because it’s so large.
Close by in the old Blockbuster locale, Malibu Village Wines is looking at the space for a wine bar and a possible retail wine operation, but there may be some lease issues. Way back when, before some of you lived here, the Malibu Creek Shopping Plaza (where the Wells Fargo Bank and movie theater is now located), was owned by the actor Tom Selleck, his brother and a few others. And, if my memory is correct, the plaza had very low rental and long-term leases for tenants, including a food market. Roy Crummer, who had just developed the Malibu Colony Plaza Shopping Center next to Malibu Road, wanted the market as an anchor tenant, so a deal was cut. The market moved across the street. Selleck and company agreed not to rent to another food market, and got rid of a long-term tenant with a low rent, so the value of their center increased. When the market, which was Hughes at the time, moved across the street, they had some tough conditions about what could and couldn’t be in that center, and Malibu Wines may be running into some of those conditions. Most of these types of things can generally be worked out with money, but with the shortage of commercial space in Malibu, and the high demand, some of these negotiations can get brutal.
In another sign of our times, Starbucks, the 800-pound gorilla of the cappuccino world, just bought all of the Diedrich Coffee shops, which means that sometime between December and February, Diedrich will become Starbucks. I don’t have anything against Starbucks, but they’re so damn corporate, and it’s only a matter of time before you can no longer get a bagel toasted, or a sweet roll heated, or they bring in their incredibly boring line of pastries, and next they throw out all the free newspapers and magazines, because they apparently don’t want anything around that doesn’t make a buck. Unfortunately, the turning of Malibu into a giant mall continues with only high-end, big buck stores or large corporations being able to survive.
Another major battle has been brewing in Ramirez Canyon for a long time. And, after a recent mediation between the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy and Ramirez Canyon property owners failed, not surprisingly, things began to happen. Years back, Barbra Streisand donated her compound in the back of Ramirez Canyon to the SMMC for what was supposed to be an environmental center. It turned out that running the center was a great deal more expensive than the conservancy had anticipated. They looked around for ways to make some money and decided to turn it into a facility for events like weddings, bar mitzvahs and such. The locals went ballistic with all these vans trucking in people and goodies for the events, and ran screaming to the city, which told the conservancy it had to get a permit to run a commercial facility in the canyon, which is within city limits.
The conservancy basically said we’re a state agency and you’re a city, so we outrank you. To put it simply, they told Malibu to go to hell. The language was somewhat more legalistic, but that was the message. There was a lawsuit and much to the surprise of many, the conservancy lost.
Next, to get around the court decision, the conservancy, in its inimitable fashion, went to Plan B and snuck through a change in a state statute to try and knock out the court decision. Even though the bill passed, it was so vague (never mentioning the court decision) that SMMC head Joe Edmiston and the conservancy tried another route. They tried to include the Ramirez center in a regional park plan, evading the requirement that they must get a city permit to run a wedding chapel, which is really what they want to do. First, they wanted the city to put the regional park language into the city’s proposed amendments to the Local Coastal Program and the city refused. Next, the conservancy called it a “public works plan” so they only need permission from the California Coastal Commission, and the city has no say. If history is any guide, the California Coastal Commission, which has had grave difficulty in ever saying no to Edmiston and the SMMC, will soon roll over and give Edmiston whatever he wants, and the entire package will end up back in the court system for umpteen years.
Well, there is a great deal of other stuff but I’ve run out space.
P.S. Don’t miss the Malibu Celebration of Film coming up Oct. 4-8. This has nothing to do with the old Malibu Film Festival, but is something new and exciting, which we all hope will become a big annual event. The city of Malibu, Pepperdine University and The Malibu Times are among the sponsors, and I hope you’ll all catch some of the films and festival events.