The Malibu Planning Commission is having its cake and eating it, too.
Less than a month after the Planning Commission declared Caltrans and the City of Malibu should find a way to mitigate traffic to Malibu’s growing Civic Center while sparing the life of a historic native sycamore and five additional eucalyptus trees, a verbal agreement has been struck between Caltrans, the agency that will issue the development permit, and the city.
“We’ve come to a verbal agreement where we met with Caltrans,” City Manager Jim Thorsen told The Malibu Times Tuesday. “We worked out a solution where we don’t have to move the curb line on that south side.”
The intersection in question, where Cross Creek Road meets Pacific Coast Highway, is in need of a right turn lane in order to lessen the impact of increased traffic to the area, and earlier plans axed a 150-year-old sycamore in order to widen the road.
On June 15, the Planning Commission decided “that intersection needs to be safer,” but the “historic, iconic trees need to be saved,” in the words of Commissioner Mikke Pierson.
This new plan will do just that, said sources from the City of Malibu, as well as Caltrans and spokespeople for the La Paz development.
“So far, the tree stays,” said Peter Jones, a spokesperson for Caltrans, on Tuesday afternoon.
Details of the plan have yet to emerge, however, and the City is still working with Caltrans to smooth out how to most safely mitigate traffic.
“The issue with the lanes —they’re going over that now to figure out the best geometry out of that space that they have left,” Jones said.
According to Thorsen, lanes will likely be narrowed.
“Some of the lanes won’t meet their standards,” Thorsen said. “There’s just a deviation from the standards, and they’ll come up with a schematic.”
The standard lane width was a sticking point during the June Planning Commission meeting, with Caltrans District 7 Office of Permits Chief Omid Ghaemi telling commissioners safety would not allow lane narrowing.
“It’s a couple of feet, can’t you do something?” Chair David Brotman asked Ghaemi at the meeting.
“If I’m being honest, maybe in the future, someone will come to me and say ‘why didn’t you just add those two feet and save my daughter or save my son?’” Ghaemi replied.
Ghaemi was not available for comment on Tuesday.
Thorsen added more details about planned mitigation strategies, though he stressed that the verbal agreement is not a finalized plan.
“They’ll maximize all the right-of-way on the north side, so what it’ll entail is the curb and gutter to be removed, the sidewalk to be removed and put all the way to the right-of-way and the sidewalk to be reduced from six feet to five feet,” Thorsen detailed. “I think between those two items there, you’ll add two to three feet of lane width, which can be utilized in the lanes themselves.”
“We haven’t seen the final design, but the sycamore would be preserved and, at this point in time, we think it’s very likely that the five eucalyptus would be able to remain,” Thorsen said.
Don Schmitz, spokesperson for the La Paz project, said developers are pleased with the breakthrough.
“I tried for a little over a year to come up with some iterations that would not require the cutting down of the tree, so we’re very much on board with that,” Schmitz said.
Next steps, Thorsen said, include La Paz developers drawing up designs and receiving Caltrans approval.
“The next steps will be that the applicant will submit a preliminary design, which we’ll send up to Caltrans to make sure that’s what they’re looking for,” Thorsen said. “Once they give the nod of approval for that, they’ll give the final design.”
Schmitz said designs are underway.
“[Our consulting engineers] are working on it as we speak,” Schmitz said Tuesday. “They’ve not given us a firm completion date yet, but I have impressed upon them that I’m anxious to see it.”