The city wants to use the land, next to Malibu Bluffs Park, as a ball field. However, the California Coastal Commission says it would better serve the public as a passive recreation site.
By Jonathan Friedman / Special to The Malibu Times
The California Coastal Commission at its meeting last week in Ventura finalized a decision to restrict as passive recreation a 1.75-acre piece of land proposed for donation by a developer. The Coastal Commission also approved a decision that the future residential development could not have a gate. City officials have spoken against the decision on the donated land because they want the property, which is located next to Bluffs Park, to be used as a ball field. Normally they would have to wait six months to bring the issue back to the Coastal Commission, but the commissioners waived that time period.
Malibu Planning Manager Joyce Parker-Bozylinski said on Tuesday she would present the Coastal Commission’s decision to the city council on May 10. If the council decided it wanted to bring the issue back to the commission for further review, she would try to get it on the June agenda since that meeting is taking place in Marina del Rey.
Councilmembers Andy Stern and Pamela Conley Ulich earlier this month blasted the designation of the donated property as passive recreation.
“I think it’s a shame that the Coastal commissioners, because perhaps they cannot be active, are trying to stuff that down to our children’s generation,” Conley Ulich had said. “The last thing our generation needs is to be in a park with Nintendo. These kids need to have activities.”
Developer Steve Ackerman had offered the piece of land as a potential ball field as part of a development agreement with the city that would allow him to build five luxury homes on the 24-acre Crummer site. City officials for years have wanted to build a ball field on the property since it is located next to Bluffs Park. Ackerman could not be reached for comment, but several Coastal Commissioners said at the meeting that he and his representative said they were opposed to restricting the property to passive recreation as well as prohibiting the gate.
Both the restriction of the donated property for passive recreation and the prohibition of the gate were items that came up during a Coastal Commission meeting in February when the commissioners were asked to change the zoning of the Crummer property from visitor-serving commercial to residential. The Coastal Commission approved this request on a 10-2 vote in exchange for a donation of money and land, but added the other two items into the decision after the public comment period.
California Coastal Commission Executive Director Peter Douglas said last week that the gate issue should actually be eliminated. He said he had recommended it in February without actually speaking to his staff, and had he done this he would have learned that even without the gate, the property did not have access to the ocean.
“Eliminating the gates really would do nothing in terms of protecting public access,” Douglas said. “It does have of course the air of exclusivity, but it doesn’t have, as a practical matter, any impact.”
Since the Coastal Commission had already approved the gate restriction in February and last week’s meeting was merely to approve the findings, the commissioners could not remove the item last week. But he recommended that the Coastal Commission waive the rule that applicants must wait six months to bring an item back. However, Douglas said he did not recommend the waiver be given for the ball park item because he still recommended the site be restricted to passive use. Douglas does not have a vote on the commission, but his recommendations are influential.
Several commissioners said they did not think it was a good idea to split the items since it would require the city to come speak on the same application at two different meetings. Others felt the city should get to come back sooner because it did not have an opportunity to respond to the gate and ball field issues, since they only came up during that meeting and were not contained on the staff report for that meeting.
“I don’t think it would be totally inconsistent with the rules of due process and fair play in order to give them an opportunity to address an issue,” said Clark E. Parker, who sat on the commission last week as an alternate for Commissioner William Burke. “We don’t have to agree with them. We certainly don’t have to vote for them. But I think what we would be doing is opening up the door for someone to say, ‘we did not have the opportunity to discuss something that basically was not presented.’”
Commissioner Sara Wan, a Malibu resident said it was a matter of not starting a precedent that, she said, would be a bad one.
“It’s very important that we not say … because you don’t like what was decided, that you can simply seek to come back immediately.”
Wan made a motion to allow the city to come back immediately on the gate issue, but requiring Malibu to wait six months on the ball field issue. Her motion lost 6-5. Another vote was taken to waive the waiting period for both items, and it passed 9-2, with Wan casting one of the dissenting votes.
During the meeting, Fran Gibson of Coastwalk California, praised the decision to make the donated land passive recreation.
“The City of Malibu can use more, not less, coastal access opportunities for the 35 million people who live in this state,” she said.
Gibson continued, “We look forward to this, it will be a beautiful park above Surfrider Beach for all the people of our great state.”
After her speech, Malibu advocate Norm Haynie attempted to speak in favor of designating the land for both passive and active recreation. He was interrupted by Chair Bonnie Neely, and told that he was only allowed to speak about the findings at the meeting.