Changes in commercial zoning are key issues with 50 acres designated as “visitor-serving,” which could include a hotel, restaurants and shops. More than half would be in Civic Center area.
By Ken Gale/Special to The Malibu Times
The Malibu City Council appears to be in a fighting mood after more than a week of scrutinizing a new land use plan (LUP) written for the city by the California Coastal Commission. An LUP is the backbone of a local coastal plan, or LCP, which coastal cities are required to have under the state Coastal Act of 1977.
“All they did was throw out more than 10 years of planning by the city,” said Councilmember Tom Hasse.
“The principle is this,” said Councilmember Ken Kearsley, “do the appointed officials of the Coastal Commission have a greater right to plan the future of Malibu than the city’s own elected officials?”
That question, Kearsley said, “is going to have to be settled in a downtown Los Angeles court, and if not there, then the state Supreme Court, and maybe even the federal Supreme Court.”
Hasse suggested one strategy might be to join with other coastal cities in a lawsuit questioning the authority of the Coastal Commission to override a city’s own land use plan.
At issue are several LUP changes in zoning designations for residential and commercial land use currently in the city’s General Plan. Changes in residential zonings would not have much effect on overall residential land use, which is parceled out to large- and medium-size estates, smaller single-family homes, apartments and condos, motor homes, and public open space.
But commercial zoning changes are a different matter, especially those that call for “overnight accommodations” in two key locations-the Civic Center and Malibu Bluffs. “They want to change our commercial use from resident-serving to visitor-serving,” Hasse said.
Under the Coastal Commission’s LUP, at least 50 acres–more than half the land available for development in the Civic Center–would be designated “commercial visitor-serving.” That means “a hotel, restaurants, and shops serving visitor needs,” according to Chuck Damm, senior planner for the Coastal Commission. The Civic Center, he said, is “a core area of Malibu for visitor serving.”
Currently, Civic Center property is zoned for small businesses and low-rise office buildings. A major concern is that the Coastal Commission’s visitor-serving designation might kill a development agreement proposed by the Malibu Bay Company that includes a small office park in the Civic Center in exchange for 19 acres of land at Point Dume along with $5 million for building recreational facilities on the land.
Another concern is that a hotel in the Civic Center might upset hopes for reviving wetlands on the property and also create wastewater problems. “A hotel,” Kearsley noted, “will mean more use of water and the Regional Water Quality Control Board has said we already have a surplus of [waste] water in the Civic Center that is being dumped into the ocean. Are they suggesting that we might need sewers to get rid of the water?” Malibu, which mostly uses private septic tanks to manage wastewater, has fought sewers since becoming a city in 1991, worried that sewers would be able to handle more wastewater and open the way for more development.
Further west of the Civic Center there would be another significant zoning change that could affect the city’s plan for developing land on the Crummer estate at Malibu Bluffs, below Pepperdine University. The city is pursuing a plan that would allow Crummer to build homes on part of the land under a “rural-residential” zoning designation in exchange for six acres to be used for playing fields.
The Crummer property would be rezoned for a hotel under the Coastal Commission plan.
Sara Wan, chair of the Coastal Commission, said the Coastal Act emphasizes the need for overnight lodging in coastal zones. “There are only three properties that are zoned for hotels in Malibu now,” she said.
The problem with many of the city’s current zoning designations, Wan said, is that over the years city councils have changed them, “but they have refused to go to the commission to seek certification. They’ve never bothered to ask for certification.
“They don’t seem to understand, as they very well should, that every jurisdiction within the coastal zone has to have their zoning designations certified by the Coastal Commission.”
In preparing its LUP, Wan said, commission staff referred back to the only zoning designations that have been certified, those in the first LUP drawn up for Malibu by Los Angeles County in 1986.
The commission’s LUP does not close the door to changes, Wan said. “There is always the possibility for amendment.”
But there may not be much opportunity for the city to be heard. According to Damm, Coastal Commission staff will hold only one workshop on the LUP within the next two weeks or so. After that there will be a regular Coastal Commission hearing sometime in the middle of November in which the Malibu LUP would be only one item on the agenda. “Staff will be busy with many other matters,” Damm said. The workshop will take place in Malibu, the hearing in Los Angeles at a place to be announced.
The final draft is to be completed by January 15.