The guitarist for rock band U2 has developed a Web site promoting the five-home development for above Malibu’s Serra Retreat as environmentally friendly.
By Jonathan Friedman / Special to The Malibu Times
A proposed residential development above Serra Retreat that has environmentalists pitted against each other will go before the California Coastal Commission next month at its meeting in Huntington Beach.
The project calls for five homes in unincorporated county land just outside Malibu city limits, and has received international media attention because one of the partners in the ownership is David Evans, known to music fans as U2 guitarist The Edge. A proposed 1,600-foot long private road that will connect the City of Malibu to the development is not up for Coastal Commission consideration. The Malibu City Council in January chose to delay a vote on that road until the Coastal Commission rules on the homes.
Those critical of the project’s environmental issues such as grading, placement of homes on ridgelines and what they say is destruction of sensitive habitat areas have called Evans a hypocrite because of U2’s activist reputation. However, U2 is known mostly for human rights issues and not environmental causes.
In response to the critics and what he called “recent inaccurate media coverage,” Evans created a Web site for the project. It includes design descriptions stressing “green” features, statements of praise from well-known environmental activists such as the Sierra Club’s Mark Massara and former senior advisor to Arnold Schwarzenegger, Bonnie Reiss, a video describing the project and a Myths versus Facts section that includes disapproving comments about the project’s strongest critic, Jim Smith.
As described on the Web site, the project consists of five LEED-certified homes designed by Wallace E. Cunningham that will sit on a Sweetwater Mesa ridgeline. They will be made of “sustainable building materials,” according to Evan’s Web site, and feature “passive design techniques to minimize energy use.” Each home will include a long driveway. A landscape designed by Pamela Burton will include rock formations and native trees.
“I believe strongly that if the environmental activists of Malibu are going to retain our credibility in fighting the projects that are truly harmful to our beautiful community, that it’s very important to support projects like what The Edge is proposing,” Reiss is quoted on the Web site. “And that is to show that we are here to support projects that are not just within the regulations, but are cutting edge in terms of taking into consideration being as environmentally forward thinking as possible.”
This is in sharp contrast to a letter recently approved by the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy that blasted the project for causing “unavoidable significant adverse visual and ecological impacts.”
“Beautiful LEED [Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design]-certified homes do not balance out a continuous chain of average 1,800-foot-long driveways into a core habitat of the coastal zone portion of the Santa Monica Mountains,” the letter states.
Development consultant Don Schmitz, who has worked on the project for several years, said in a telephone interview on Monday that having critics is part of the Malibu planning process. He called the proposed development “the most environmentally conscious project that I have seen in 20 years of land use planning.”
“There will be homes built on this lot by either the present owners or somebody in the future,” Schmitz said. “And I think the present owners have done an exemplary job.”
The project’s loudest critic is Smith, who lives next to the proposed private road. Smith said changes to the road proposal make it close to something he could support. But he is still troubled by the residential project for various reasons, with Smith’s top concern being the large movement of earth that he says will require many truck trips in a sensitive area to move the dirt.
“This is the biggest mislabeling of something that I’ve ever seen to call this an environmental project,” Smith said in an interview on Monday.
But Smith has more than just a proximity connection to the project. He had a lengthy business relationship with Sheldon Gordon, former co-owner of the project property. A 1999 lawsuit settlement regarding the property requires Gordon to pay for the access road. This feature is noted on Evan’s Web site with the claim, “Smith’s chief ulterior motive seems to be sparing his some-time employer Gordon from paying for a road he is obligated to pay for.”
Smith said that is not true and that he has not had a working relationship with Gordon for several years.
“There’s no relationship between Sheldon and myself other than a Christmas card I might get every year,” Smith said.
As of Tuesday when The Malibu Times went to print, a Coastal Commission staff report for next month’s meeting had not been made publicly available.