On Saturday, Karen and I had the opportunity to present our thanks to a group of Malibu citizens for a job well done when we hosted the The Malibu Times 2000 Citizens of the Year Dolphin Awards. The awards recognize their contributions to our community. This year’s winners are Wayne and Beverly Estill, Fire Capt. Leland O. Brown, Jo Fogg, Anne Hoffman, Deirdre Roney, the Malibu Association of Contractors, Laureen Sills and the late Harry Barovsky.
All these people gave endless hours to make this town a better place in which to live and work, and to raise our children. The choice of this year’s Dolphin winners was not easy, particularly since we have many more candidates now, having opened up the nomination process to the entire town. But we do save the old nominations and certainly expect that many who didn’t win this year may be renominated in years to come.
We look for people who have participated in many aspects of our community life. Strangely, one of the controlling factors on how many awards we give out is the problem of finding a setting large enough for the awards ceremony, which has now grown to 100 plus people. This is the 10th year we’ve conducted this affair, and all the old Dolphin winners are invited back to attend each ceremony.
This time, the setting for the ceremony couldn’t have been better. The event took place in the old Malibu Justice Court Building, which is located on Pacific Coast Highway in east Malibu. It was first built in the early 1930s and was recently restored and refurbished in the best of California Spanish style. It looks like the California 1930s as it was when it was all new; the tile, the fabric, the colors, the furniture and furnishings of the period, which are now all part of the Malibu Mission Club.
Another group of citizens was down at the City Council meeting on Monday pushing to put a bond issue onto a future ballot to raise $15 million for seed money, which they hope to match with government and private grants to buy ball fields, a community center and community wetlands/open space. The timing is particularly propitious because Mayor Tom Hasse and Councilmember Joan House have been talking to a couple of Civic Center landowners about possibly selling their land to the city. There are two separate 16-acre parcels, one owned by Pepperdine University Wave Properties (which has submitted plans for four office buildings, totaling 65,000 square feet) and another by Tosh Yamaguchi (who has not submitted project plans yet). Both said they would consider selling. The city is considering ordering an appraisal, but with Civic Center land going in the neighborhood of $1 million per acre or so, it’s going to take a lot of dollars to buy those parcels.
The school district has indicated it might be interested in selling to the city the equestrian park on Merritt Drive in Malibu Park. The city’s also looking for a place for more ball fields (which are in desperate short supply), a City Hall (we pretty much have a drop-dead exit date of 2003), a community center/senior citizen facility and a small community building in Las Flores Canyon. Suddenly, it seems we’ve got facility needs that didn’t exist 10 years ago. Everyone knows it takes a two-thirds vote to pass a bond issue, which dictates that everyone (some with some very different ideas about where the money should go) has to bury their differences and get on board or it will never fly.
The city’s dance card is getting very full. There’s a wonderful double feature exhibit at the Frederick R. Weisman Museum of Art at Pepperdine. Downstairs there is a Rodin exhibit and on display upstairs are artifacts that were uncovered on an archeological dig in Israel, at the ancient city of Pan, at the foot of the Golan Heights. The museum is close, easy, and the price is right.
The Malibu Film Festival looks like it’s really getting off the ground this year. They’ll be showing films from Feb. 23 through Feb. 25 here at the New Malibu Theater, but the two galas on Friday night and Sunday night are going to take place in Santa Monica at the Fairmont Miramar Hotel because their Starlight ballroom is big enough to handle the anticipated crowd. They’ll be honoring the late Lloyd Bridges, actor, Charles Bronson, actor, Katrina Holden Bronson, director, Arthur Hiller, director, Shirley MacLaine, actor, Nick Nolte, actor, and Barry Spikings, producer. Festival winners and prizes will be announced on Sunday.
If you’re not worn out yet, there is the City of Malibu’s 10th Anniversary Gala, which will be celebrated on March 28. Then there’s the big day, on March 31, where council and staff will play against the local little league (the kids promised to go easy on them) in a softball game. Following there will be a dinner and a bunch of other activities.