The city approves two versions of the proposed project.
By Jonathan Friedman / Assistant Editor
More than eight years after a group of Chicago developers first proposed the project, the La Paz shopping and office center on Monday night received the City Council’s blessing. The fate of the development now goes before the California Coastal Commission and likely the state’s court system. If it makes it through those obstacles, the complex will become the largest commercial development built in Malibu in its cityhood-era.
The council approved both the 112,000-square-foot and the 99,000-square-foot versions of the project. Both plans include a collection of retail, restaurant and office buildings ranging in size from 6,000 square feet to 17,000 square feet. The larger option requires the support of the Coastal Commission. The smaller one does not. If the Coastal Commission makes modifications to the larger project that the developers do not like, they have the smaller option to fall back on.
The larger version includes a development agreement, with La Paz offering to donate 2.3 acres of land and $500,000 to Malibu for “any municipal purpose,” including a wastewater treatment plant. Other possibilities listed in the agreement include a library, community center, park and open space. Whatever the city decides to build, it would have to go through a permitting process, including public hearings and an environmental impact review.
La Paz has a proposal to build a “state of the art” septic system for its project. Mayor Pamela Conley Ulich asked La Paz officials on Monday if they would scrap that plan and promise to hook up to a future municipal wastewater treatment facility. A La Paz attorney said this would not be possible because there was no guarantee when a city plant might be ready. But she left open the possibility that La Paz could hook up to a municipal system if the city were to build it quickly.
City Councilmember Jefferson Wagner cast the lone vote against the larger development, saying, “It is just too big.”
In the vote for the smaller project, Conley Ulich was the only dissenting voice. She said she could not approve the development without a donation coming to the city.
Following the meeting, La Paz investor Jeff Perelman said, “I’m very excited, very pleased.”
Regarding whether he thought the project would ever receive city approval, he said, “I had my doubts. But I was hopeful.”
Private planning consultant Don Schmitz, who has been working on the project since it was first proposed, said after the meeting, “After almost a decade of hard land-use planning work and overwhelming community support, we appreciate the council’s positive vote.”
A majority of those attending the hearing spoke in favor of the proposal. They included architects not associated with the project and residents. But there were also several detractors, most notably representatives from various local environmental groups. They said the project would create a rise in the groundwater, leading to surface water pollution. Also, they said it would add to Malibu’s wastewater pollution problem.
“Our concern is that it is so overtaxed in the Civic Center right now,” said Mark Abramson, Santa Monica Baykeeper’s director of watershed programs, after the meeting.
La Paz officials say the septic system they are building will reuse all wastewater from toilet flushing and landscaping, and therefore no wastewater will be discharged into the watershed or on land. They say this means it will also have no effect on groundwater levels.
When asked about the proposed La Paz system, Abramson said, “While that system might be a reasonably good design, the whole ecosystem there is overtaxed. And Malibu is on the hook for it,” referring to the state’s threat of eventually fining local governments for water pollution.
The environmental group representatives at the meeting all said La Paz should be forced to hook up to a municipal wastewater treatment facility.
Another opponent of the project is the Gustavson family, who live next to the La Paz site. Conley Ulich said during the hearing that she had recently seen Tamara Gustavson at a party, and Gustavson told Conley Ulich she planned to sue the city if the council approved the project. The couple’s attorney, Alan Block, attended the meeting to speak in opposition.
He said after the meeting that he had not spoken to his clients yet to answer whether Conley Ulich’s allegation was true. However, he said they “may decide to file a lawsuit.”
“I wasn’t surprised,” Block said about the council decision. “But I don’t think the EIR [project’s environmental impact report] was sufficient. It didn’t properly review all the options … There is a valid lawsuit out there.”