Malibu City Council approved the purchase of Trancas Field on Aug. 8, 2016 — $11.4 million for a 35-acre plot of vacant land located near the intersection of Trancas Canyon Road and PCH. The real estate transaction closed in November, and council tasked the Parks & Recreation Commission with gathering data and community input on the best use of the property.
Recommendations to the council will be based on the Parks & Recreation Department’s Master Plan Needs Assessment, as well as a Trancas Field community wide questionnaire/survey, community workshops and focus groups. The city says it is using multiple methods of collecting input to “ensure active public participation in addressing priorities, issues, and concerns associated with the project.”
An online survey was posted for the community on Oct. 12, which will remain up until Dec. 12. It asks a series of questions about the kinds of facilities, if any, residents want at Trancas Field, covering over 50 different options — sports activities (everything from a swimming pool to ballfields to a skate park), or just leaving the land in a natural condition with hiking trails, or constructing a building to be used for seniors, teens or the arts. Residents have until Dec. 12 to take the online survey at malibucity.org/trancasfield.
Workshops for the community, covering basically the same options as the online survey, were just completed. The first community workshop was Nov. 2 with approximately 100 people attending at the Malibu West Swim Club, and a second community workshop was held Nov. 30 at City Hall, with about 80 people attending.
Resident Jo Giese wrote The Malibu Times about the first workshop with complaints, saying there was “an enthusiastic turnout… neighbors arrived in high, friendly spirits expecting, as advertised, a workshop, an opportunity to share ideas as to what Trancas Field could become,” but that, “very quickly, most of us ended up feeling angry and disrespected.” Apparently, at least at that workshop, no real discussion took place.
At both workshops, attendees were shown a series of display boards with photos of possible uses, and asked to stick a green dot for a “Yes” or a red dot for a “No” on them — a process that turned out to be less than scientific. At the first workshop, Giese reported that each attendee was given only 10 stickers even though there were photos of 50 different options.
“I asked a woman who looked official, ‘Who thought this up?’” Giese wrote. “She identified herself as Lisa Soghor, assistant city manager, and explained, ‘I’m new. I don’t know anyone here. [City Manager Reva Feldman] and the city council put this together.’”
Feldman, for her part, has defended the first meeting and the second meeting followed the same format.
At the second workshop, resident Sam Hall Kaplan reported that the number of dots ending up on the photos far exceeded the number originally handed out. It seems the culprits were young people somehow getting extra dots and putting them on the skate park option.
Feldman ended the workshop, according to Kapan, by saying the comments and questions would be taken under advisement, but that most likely nothing would move forward on Trancas until the Coastal Commission finishes reviewing the city’s proposed plans for Malibu Bluffs Park, for which many of the same uses have been proposed.
Feldman did not reply to multiple requests for an interview.
Once all the data has been gathered from the public, as well as other sources, it will be presented to city council to determine the next step.
The previous owner of Trancas Field, developer Trancas PCH, LLC, agreed to sell the property to the city as part of a lawsuit settlement after nearly 30 years of expensive off-again on-again litigation involving the city and, at times, the Trancas Property Owners Association (Broad Beach) over various proposed development schemes.
A city-commissioned appraisal valued the property at $26 million. Though, according to the agenda report, “some of the hillier portions of the property are unstable and not suitable for development.”
While the city has a reserve fund, pulling the entire purchase price of $11.4 million from there would have dropped the balance below the council-suggested minimum (50 percent of the operating budget), according to a city staff memo. Feldman suggested solving that problem by having the city issue Certificates of Participation (COP), which are similar to bonds and pay tax-exempt interest.
Newly appointed Parks and Recreation Department Director Jesse Bobbett was not available for comment.