If the soul of Malibu resides anywhere, it is at the beach. It is what lends our constantly threatened seaside village its identity, value and enjoyment.
That is why, however peripheral, the Westward Beach Parking Proposal must be stopped. And thank you, Andrew Ferguson, for lifting the pandemic fog shrouding our City Hall and alerting us on Nextdoor.
The proposal for no less than a paved parking lot, no doubt conceived by myopic benighted residents and ravenous pro-development interests and rendered by an abject City Hall, is a raw defilement of our planning mission, repeated here:
“Malibu is a unique land and marine environment and residential community whose citizens have historically evidenced a commitment to sacrifice urban and suburban conveniences in order to protect that environment and lifestyle, and to preserve unaltered natural resources and rural characteristics.”
Whether this appalling proposal must be stopped by a consortium of citizen commissions, the city council, the LA County Board of Supervisors or the coastal commission, whatever, it must happen, or surely like the sand of our beaches Malibu as a distinctive community will drift away.
And also, not incidentally, this newspaper, whatever it’s worth.
Sam Hall Kaplan