Almost precisely a year after news broke that developer Richard Weintraub’s longtime dream of opening a resort-style hotel at the foot of Malibu Canyon Road had been slain and resurrected as a cemetery/memorial park, the developer and his team have taken their first steps toward the light.
Last week, the Malibu Planning Commission unanimously decided that a proposed cemetery that could host over 60,000 permanent visitors is an allowed use under the city’s commercial visitor serving zone guidelines.
“It is sort of the ultimate Hotel California — you can check out any time you like, but you can never leave,” Fred Gaines, legal counsel for the developers, said wryly.
Gaines, Weintraub and development consultant Don Schmitz, who is also the official applicant for the project, then set about seriously urging the commission to approve the use of a cemetery on the three-parcel plot at 4000 Malibu Canyon Road.
According to the staff report, permitted uses for the land include such things as hiking trails, book stores, amphitheatres and professional offices. Conditionally permitted uses could include hotels, bars, museums, parks and places of worship.
Gaines made the suggestion that the memorial park could be considered in terms of a museum, a park and a place of worship.
“Cemeteries around the world are considered to be museums,” Gaines told commissioners. “If you’ve ever been to Normandy, it’s a similar type of feeling being out on this property and looking at the ocean. Sometimes we travel all around the world to look at a cemetery or include that in the things we do.”
“The one major structure we do have there is going to be a chapel,” Gaines later added.
Schmitz then presented the numbers, telling commissioners the overall impact of the land use would be much smaller than that of the earlier proposed Rancho Malibu Hotel, which had been pushed for nearly 30 years.
According to Schmitz, the hotel would have been 274,000 square feet, generating traffic from 4,300 trips per week and 43,000 gallons of wastewater per day. The proposed cemetery, by contrast, would have a building area of 17,500 square feet, “half of which is a subterranean parking garage.” The memorial park is also predicted to cause about 471 vehicle trips per week and generate about 1,950 gallons of wastewater per day.
“Traffic is obviously exponentially less and the wastewater is significantly, significantly less than that of a hotel or a shopping center,” Schmitz said.
Data included in the staff report shows initial plans for the memorial park include 154 parking spaces, an 8,500 square foot chapel, 45 free-standing mausoleum structures, 45,000 crypts and 15,000 individual cremation burial sites.
The Rancho Malibu Hotel, which was once marketed as the “single-largest economic generator in the city” by proponents, was proposed to include 146 hotel rooms, 19 two-story secondary hotel buildings, retail spaces, a restaurant and bar, and other amenities. Reports stated the construction project would employ 910 construction workers and generate $48.3 million annual once completed.
There have been no projections as to possible revenues from the new proposed use as a memorial park, but planning commissioners are already in support of the plan.
“First, I’d like to thank Richard Weintraub for coming up with a very creative use of that land and ending a 20-year battle with everybody, one side or the other, and especially making everybody from slow growth to pro growth in favor of it,” Commissioner John Mazza said.
“I look forward to having the project come before us,” Commissioner Jeffrey Jennings added.
