The staff of the Coastal Commission has vindicated Frank Angel’s Sierra Club lawsuit against the proposed “Forge Lodge” development. The Coastal Commission staff concluded that the proposed development did not conform to the minimum 100-foot setback from environmentally sensitive habitats, consistent with Angel’s complaint.
This vindication has not stopped the attorney representing the proposed Forge Lodge development from continuing to maintain that Frank Angel’s Sierra Club lawsuit is “frivolous.” I beg to differ.
Daniel and Luciana Forge have a permit from the Coastal Commission to begin building an 18,000 square foot shopping center and parking garage at their four-acre site. They reluctantly replaced that get rich idea with another, the Forge Lodge. As originally proposed, the Forge Lodge included 28 condominium-sized two-story residential units, each with 680 square feet, or a total square footage of 19,040 square feet of development.
Because the property was not zoned for hotels, the owners called their development a “bed and breakfast” but their proposal did not conform to the definition of a bed and breakfast as defined by Monica Taylor’s “Start and Run a Profitable Bed and Breakfast.”
In fact, the original “Forge Lodge” proposal conformed a little too closely to the Malibu City Municipal Code’s definition of a hotel as “a facility offering transient lodging accommodations to the general public and providing additional services, such as restaurants and meeting rooms.”
Just before the hearing before the City Council, the owners suddenly revised their application, converting one of their proposed condominium-sized units to a kitchen. They now claimed that their Beau Rivage restaurant was a separate business and would have nothing to do with the operation of the Forge Lodge, even though the two properties would be contiguous.
Despite the transparency of the owners’ true intentions, the Malibu City Council approved the development plan as a “bed and breakfast.”
The circumstances under which council member Jennings engineered this City Council approval continue to nettle me two years later, as his actions showed clear favoritism to these particular applicants, violated normal City Council protocol, and showed clear disregard for the public good. Frank Angel’s Sierra Club lawsuit, far from being frivolous, has already been partially vindicated. I predict further vindication when his lawsuit is heard by higher courts.
William J. McCarthy