Homeowners association ready to end years of frustration with self-funded road that will provide quicker, safer access to area. City backs plan.
By Ward Lauren / Special to The Malibu Times
After more than a decade of unsuccessful plans, proposals, negotiations and unfulfilled hopes, residents of landslide-plagued Rambla Pacifico, and the city of Malibu, are looking forward once again to a possible final resolution of their hilltop dilemma.
A major slide in 1984, and subsequent ones in recent years, have forced residents to drive an extra four miles on a narrow, circuitous route west from Las Flores Canyon to get up to their homes above La Costa, an extra 15 minutes from Pacific Coast Highway. More significantly, in the event of another firestorm like the 1993 fire, it could force them to drive into a fire to escape, and seriously inhibit the ability of firefighters to reach their homes.
In its latest hopeful solution to the problem, the area homeowners association has completed plans and engineering feasibility studies for a new road to be built over the slide. It will connect the upper end of Rambla Pacifico with the upper portion of a private road called Pop’s Pass, which residents can then follow down to Las Flores to reach Pacific Coast Highway.
Because the road over the slide cannot be built to the safety standards required for a city road, it must be privately built. Malibu Mayor Ken Kearsley said the city is fully behind the efforts of the association to build it for a number of reasons.
“Not only is the road going to provide faster access to the area,” he said, “it’s going to mitigate a lot of the future problems with the slide. We’re giving the entire project a complete engineering review, with special attention to drainage so that no water will go back down into that slide area, which we suspect is happening now. We’re working diligently toward being able to issue an approval for their building permit.”
The proposed road represents a considerable expense to the 57 property owners who have signed onto the project. Leslie Barrett, vice president of the homeowners association, estimated the total cost at approximately $20,000 per owner.
“The road will be ‘limited access’ to the extent that anyone who pays a pro-rata share of its original construction cost and maintenance fees can use it,” he said. “But it will be open to absolutely everyone in times of emergency.”
Barrett is an engineer and attorney who has been instrumental in the many designs and routes for the road that have been studied, developed, proposed, and for one reason or another proved unworkable over the past 10 years or more. That has been the history of Rambla Pacifico, which has been described as a “Rubik’s cube” of conflicting interests, property lines, easements, landslides, private permitted and nonpermitted roads and driveways that have muddied its progress.
“We’ve been modifying our plans over a number of years to accommodate the concerns of some of the local residents where the road would pass by their property,” Barrett said. “We’ve come to realize that the road that seeks to avoid impacting the adjacent residents as much as possible is probably the best.”
This conclusion comes from the many times it seemed a solution was in sight only to find they could not reach agreement with a resident over a portion of whose property the road was proposed to be built or passed by.
The route of the road in the new proposal has been designed to connect with the upper portion of Pop’s Pass, Barrett said. That portion, however, is on property belonging to nonresident property owner Guy Poulin, whose father originally built Pop’s Pass.
“Mr. Poulin has property across which, unfortunately, there is no public right-of-way,” Barrett said. “So we’re seeking his cooperation, which should be the last private negotiation in our project.”
Reached for comment on the issue, Poulin said, “I don’t think I can comment at this time due to the fact that it’s so complex.”
Some of Poulin’s road and two connecting nonpermitted roads are gated, with access being allowed only to five residents who have easements to use them. The gates are locked with “Knox boxes” for which the local Fire Department station has the universal key that allows them to obtain each specific gate key, said Greg Bortz, who has one of the easements.
“In the event of any emergency-police, fire, ambulance-the gates are held open,” he said. “Signs say ‘Deerpath Lane Fire and Emergency Access.’ But there has been such frustration on the part of the residents who have had to drive around for 20 odd years because they don’t have a road, and there are residents who don’t have to drive around. So that Rambla Pacifico road is very important. I fully support it.
“I just think it’s important that people know that during fire season they shouldn’t worry; the Fire Department uses these roads on a daily basis and so can they in an emergency.”
“We wish that were the case,” Barrett said. “Reliance on a privately gated road for the residents up here, and for the Fire Department, is very questionable. In the event of a catastrophic fire, most of the fire units would not be from the area. Few would recognize or know of Mr. Bortz’s private, gated, nonpermitted road. The Fire Department has been one of the principal supporters of our building a road.”
Capt. Bob Haskell of Fire Station 70 at Pacific Coast Highway and Carbon Canyon agreed.
“We’re looking forward to it,” he said. “We encourage the Rambla Pacifico project because it will definitely shorten our response time into the area. We would be the first engine company in, in response to a call.”
Echoing the need for emergency access, and stressing its urgency, Mayor Kearsley said, “We have the same fuel load [combustible brush growth] up there we had in 1993; it’s all grown back. On Nov. 3 that year we hadn’t gotten any rain, and we had Santa Anas; the same exact conditions we have now. We’re sliding down a razor blade on this thing.”