Whether the Malibu Township Council will follow through on its threat of a lawsuit over the park’s design is unknown.
By Olivia Damavandi / Staff Writer
Malibu City Council members voted 4-1 in approval of the latest Trancas Canyon Park design plan, which includes $153,500 in modifications for the $3.7 million park, at its meeting last week on Tuesday. The council accepted the new design, despite support from some meeting attendees of an alternative park plan drafted by an area resident and architect.
While the newly modified plan dictates the development of the park, it will also dictate the direction of a lawsuit filed against the city in April by the Malibu Township Council, challenging the environmental impact report of the original park plan.
The newly approved plan, which incorporates $153,500 in modifications suggested by residents last month at a city-hosted workshop, decreases the overall size of the park to 6.68 acres to reduce the grading of the ridgeline; preserves the knoll, a hill area adjacent to the ridgeline; eliminates a planned basketball half-court; and reduces the size of the picnic, parking lot, dog park and play areas.
City staff confirmed the new plan’s compliance with the current environmental impact report and the coastal development permit of the earlier plan for the project, and that no additional environmental analysis needed to be done.
Though the Malibu Township Council and its attorney, Frank Angel, have said the lawsuit would be rescinded if the ridge and knoll areas on the park lot were preserved in the newly adopted plan, City Attorney Christi Hogin on Tuesday said she had not been notified of a decision.
“As far as we know, game on,” Hogin said.
MTC board member Marshall Thompson declined to comment on the status of the lawsuit Tuesday during a telephone interview, but said he thought the modified Trancas Canyon Park plan was “a pretty fair outcome.”
Calls to Angel and newly elected MTC President Steve Uhring were not returned.
Mayor Pro Tem Sharon Barovsky said Tuesday in a telephone interview that she has received “nothing but positive feedback” regarding the newly adopted park plan.
“This [modified plan] is what was decided in the community workshop,” Barovsky said. “If MTC cares what the community expressed in the workshop, then they should drop the suit. If they want to go against the wishes of the community, I guess they’ll continue it.”
Residents since March have battled over the originally approved development plan for Trancas Canyon Park, a seven-acre public park on a 13.5-acre site located at 6050 Trancas Canyon Road, approximately a half mile north of the intersection of Pacific Coast Highway. Supporters say the park will provide a needed recreational area in western Malibu, while oppositionists say it will detrimentally impact the environment and jeopardize the safety of the surrounding Malibu West neighborhood.
The original plan, which has been modified a few times since March after being appealed by residents who also protested the grading of a natural ridgeline, includes a proposed multiuse (practice-only) sports field, picnic area, tot-lot, dog park, a restroom/maintenance building, storage building, shade structures, onsite wastewater treatment system, parking area and a storm water detention basin.
Several park oppositionists at last week’s meeting publicly expressed their support for a design plan recently drafted by architect Ron Goldman, who was hired at a cost of $2,500 by Malibu West residents to create an alternative to the city’s plan. Goldman, at the meeting, said his plan further reduces the size and environmental impact of the park, and would save the city $1 million in construction costs.
Barovsky, however, said this week that Goldman’s plan “did not include any particulars, geology or engineering.
Although, “I was told it would require 20-foot retaining walls,” she said.
Though most council members did not oppose Goldman’s plan, they decided to stick with the city plan that, they said, has been analyzed by staff, engineers and the public, rather than spend more time garnering public feedback, and more money hiring consultants to formally examine the new proposals.
“I think the Goldman plan looks pretty good but I got it at 5:15 p.m.,” Councilmember John Sibert said during the meeting last week. “It came in at the last minute and it hasn’t had as much work done on it.”
Sibert added: “This is not a Malibu West park. This is a Malibu park for everybody in the community. That’s something we’ve lost sight of here.”
Councilmember Pamela Conley Ulich, who cast the only dissenting vote on the new plan, said she was not in favor of spending $3.7 million on a park that wasn’t a dire need or priority for the city, given the current economy.
Earlier during last week’s meeting, Conley Ulich made a motion to continue examining Goldman’s plan through community workshops and to direct city staff to see if his proposed plan would actually knock $1 million off the park’s construction cost.
“If we have the opportunity to save one million dollars in this economy and if we blow it, I don’t know what this city’s future is going to hold,” Conley Ulich said during the meeting. “But I am going to respectively request that everyone out there that is going to be using the park think how much you are paying for it. It’s almost criminal what we are going to do here.”