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Doctor makes international house call
Although the “in” box was filled above the rim in her Malibu office, Dr. Heather Holmstrom, family practitioner at the UCLA Medical Group offices in Malibu, decided to take a nine-day vacation in March to make some house calls.
But these were not ordinary house calls.
Holmstrom joined a team of 14 people made up of doctors and other volunteers who wanted to make a difference in the lives of others in Central America.
The group’s final destination was a small town on the Atlantic coast in Nicaragua called Puerto Cabezas. There, the volunteers, who use vacation time and pay for their own supplies and expenses, offered medical care to local residents.
This was Holmstrom’s first trip abroad as a doctor and she mostly assisted with pre- and postoperative procedures while Janet Salomonson, a plastic surgeon, performed cleft lip and palate repairs on children.
During their stay in Puerto Cabezas, the doctors not only performed surgery, they also taught local doctors and medical staff how to use the equipment they had provided for them.
“A woman with whom I play soccer introduced me to this trip,” said Holmstrom. “She has gone many times, and introduced me to the rest of the group. I then asked my dad to go.”
Holmstrom’s father, David Holmstrom, had done a lot of traveling but never to a Third World country, she said. He came on the trip to take part in a construction project that would provide a warehouse and a training facility near the hospital.
“We decided to be the first of our family to try the experience, in the hopes that we would later add more family members to the trip,” she said.
“I think he may have been partially motivated to go so that he could keep an eye on his daughter … to make sure I didn’t get into trouble,” joked Holmstrom.
“This was really a family contribution,” said the doctor about her overall journey. “I was the person who actually went on the trip, but my 5-year-old son spent hours with me beforehand helping to organize and prepare the supplies, including sample medications from generous companies and pharmaceutical representatives.”
And Holmstrom’s husband, Pedro Garett, a computer programmer, took the week off to care for their two young children full time while she was gone.
While Holmstrom was modest about her endeavors, Salomonson had different thoughts. “Her role was broader than that,” she said, recounting an event where a child was evaluated by Holmstrom and found to have a heart defect that would not withstand the surgery necessary to repair a cleft palate. “She was doing the medical management of the patients,” said Salomonson.
In Nicaragua, the local staff was not as familiar with using monitors to check on patients after surgery. In the case of oral surgery, “you can interfere with the airway, because of swelling,” said Salomonson, emphasizing the importance of after-surgery monitoring.
Salomonson detailed another instance of Holmstrom’s dedication and professionalism when she followed up on the recovery of a small child who had undergone surgery, despite practical difficulties. Holmstrom went back and forth checking on the child’s well being many times, even though the child was out of recovery.
Holmstrom grew up in Utah and wanted to be a doctor ever since she was in first grade. After graduating from high school, she attended Michigan State University College of Medicine.
She and her husband moved to Southern California, where Holmstrom attended UCLA and completed her residency at Santa Monica Medical Center. She began to work as a family practitioner in Malibu about a year ago.
“We wanted to live someplace warm and in a diverse environment,” said Holmstrom.
Realizing how fortunate they were, the Holmstroms decided to give back, starting with this trip to Nicaragua.
“I am extremely grateful to the people of Nicaragua for sharing their lives with me, and teaching me about their culture,” said Holmstrom about her overall experience. “I hope that we were able to touch their lives in the same way that they touched ours.
“I also met some incredible people that went on the trip with us,” she added. “Their courage and stamina was inspiring. It was definitely a bonding experience.
“Doing a trip like this, and sharing the experience with people who share your same goals, is something that no one can ever take away,” said Holmstrom, comparing the trip to sharing a freshman year in college with a roommate, but with a much quicker and more intense bonding.
Salomonson summed up the personal satisfaction of going on these trips eloquently when she said: “It punctuates my life. While most people go on with a weekly routine that seems to make time go by without notice, endeavors like these international medical trips give back a sense of time, they slow the passage of time down for a while for those who participate.”
Holmstrom plans to go back to Nicaragua, possibly next spring, but in the meantime, she will treasure the time she spent there in many ways.
“I learned about ‘Nicaraguan time,’ ” she said, of the more relaxed way that locals pass and spend time there. “Even though we were working all day, it felt much more relaxed because you took things more slowly, and got to them when you could. When I came back I really noticed how fast we all move, and how much more stress that adds to the day.”
A 10-year roller-coaster ride
As Malibu prepared for incorporation in 1991, optimism held for greater increases in property values. It was not to be.
The average sale price of a home hovered at just more than $1.3 million during 1991, but sales fell off dramatically. The sales results of ’91 portended a local real estate market that would drop off the map and bring the local industry into a near depression.
The average price 10 years later is 33 percent higher, at more than $1.7 million, but the ride to current levels began in 1991 as a roller coaster ride with the scary part first.
The incorporation of Malibu had a negative influence on Malibu real estate prices in two particular ways.
First, in anticipation of a new city government that was assumed to be unfriendly to new construction and expansion, many home building projects were rushed through county approvals in the months preceding the March incorporation. As a result, while buyer demand was declining, new homes glutted the market and forced prices down.
Secondly, the new city council immediately instituted a building moratorium and other restrictive measures that made property in Malibu less useful, and thus less valuable. Within three years after incorporation, raw land values sank by as much as 60 percent. Though the supply of homes was limited, the underlying land component was reduced so greatly that overall values diminished. The cost of fighting local bureaucracy, a problem that remains to this day, further subtracted from local values.
Within a few years, hundreds of local homeowners owed more on their mortgage than their property was worth. Dozens of longtime residents fled Malibu, forced out by foreclosure.
The median average of a Malibu home in 1991 was $925,000. By 1995, it was $680,000. The market had fallen more than 25 percent.
The new city council was not entirely to blame for Malibu’s plummeting real estate values. Southern California’s economy was weakening overall in 1991, led by reductions in the defense industry after the Cold War ended. Rioting in the wake of the Rodney King verdict cast a further pall on Southland real estate.
The market, similarly to today’s, may have been due for a “correction” after the blitz of the late ’80s. Nobody could have predicted, however, beginning in 1991, that the market would experience its worst decline in history. At its lowest point, one-third of Malibu home sales was foreclosures and an additional number were sold with short payoffs to the bank, a new concept whereby lenders agreed to allow homes to be sold and accepted less than they were owed.
The downward momentum changed in 1997. The median average rose above $700,000 that year, and broke $1 million in 1999. Last year, it went to $1,250,000.
Several homes that were for sale in 1991 have been listed or sold again in recent months. Here’s a look at their market history through the years.
A home at the top of Malibu Country Estates was listed for just under $1 million in the summer of ’91. It had three bedrooms and an ocean view. It sold the next year at $890,000. The same home sold again in ’96 for $735,000. Recently, it was listed at $1,125,000.
On 55 feet of Las Flores Beach, one of the nicer beach homes in the neighborhood was listed 10 years ago for just under $4 million. The home remained on the market for most of the decade. It finally sold last year for $2,750,000, a high for that beach.
A Point Dume home, with a small lot but nice ocean views, was listed for $835,000. It finally sold in 1994 for about $500,000. The house and property were completely redone and had brief market exposure recently at roughly $1.5 million.
Several new homes on Ramirez Mesa behind the Malibu Villas were listed in the $2.5 million range. None sold for even close to that. Through 1997, the most any sold for was $1.5 million; to date, none has passed $2 million.
Rick Wallace of the Coldwell Banker company has been a Malibu Realtor for 13 years. He can be reached at RICKMALIBUrealestate.com.
Adamson Hotel on its way
For more than 20 years, the Adamson Company has been planning to build a hotel up on a bluff on a 28-acre triangular lot created by the intersection of Pacific Coast Highway, Malibu Canyon Road and Civic Center Way.
To date, not a spade of earth has been turned, but that may change later this year, if things go as planned. The long-awaited, hotly debated and often controversial 146-room Adamson Hotel may actually go into construction by the end of this year.
The proposed hotel will have 146 luxury guest suites in villas surrounding private courtyards, which will be built on the 28-acre parcel. Construction will take place in two phases. In the first phase, 106 rooms will be built. In the second phase, two to five years later, according to developers’ current estimates, 40 rooms will be added. The facility will have a state-of-the-art 10,000-square-foot sunlit spa/gym, outdoor tennis courts, a lobby bar, and a fine-dining restaurant and a cafe inside. A 6,000-square-foot banquet and meeting space, a cultural center and landscaped parking are also slated for the design.
The architectural style is along the lines of a Southern California garden hotel with a historic Spanish Mediterranean character. (Developers refer to the Bel-Air Hotel in Stone Canyon as an example of the feel they want to achieve.) The buildings will be a mix of one and two stories (maximum of 28 feet), with large rooms and suites (approximately 600 to 1,000 square feet), many with bay views, all in villas with outdoor space and clustered around courtyards.
The developers estimate the city can anticipate about $2 million to $3 million in revenue per year from the resort hotel complex. The majority will come from an 11 percent occupancy tax and from the city’s share of real estate and other taxes. It is calculated that in 2003, when the hotel might come online, the average room rate for a hotel of this type would be about $440 per room, per night. A 75 percent occupancy rate is anticipated (which is a consistent if not conservative estimate, compared with hotels like Shutters in Santa Monica). Additionally, based upon hospitality industry norms, developers anticipate that hotel guests could be expected to spend $50 million to $65 million annually in the community. One reason that many cities want hotels is that the transient occupancy tax (TOT) is one of the few taxes not shared with other jurisdictions — it goes directly into city coffers. The city can also get immediate cash from the TOT if it issues bonds, using the transient tax as security for the bonds.
The city’s approval process for the project has been particularly long and arduous. The original development began in the 1970s under the county, with a proposal for a 300-room hotel.
The project received county and California Coastal Commission approval, but when Malibu became a city, everything came to a halt. After many meetings and votes, the project was finally passed in its present scaled-down form of 146 rooms, in two phases.
The initial city Conditional Use Permit (CUP) was filed for review in August 1994, and thereafter went through a city planning and state environmental review process. Hearings then took place before the Malibu Planning Commission and the Malibu City Council, and the project received its final approval on March 23, 1998, when developers received both a CUP and a certification of the project environmental impact report (EIR).
It is estimated that when completed, the 146-room resort hotel will house approximately 300 guests and have 70 to 110 employees split into three shifts — 9 p.m. to 6 a.m., 6 a.m. to 2 p.m., and 2 p.m. to 9 p.m.
Conditions imposed by the General Plan and the city include: that it be a small hotel; that traffic occur during off-peak hours; that guests tend to stay on site (typically that means a high-end hotel); that it be a destination resort; that there be a hotel shuttle to beaches and golf (to minimize traffic); that there will be no outside amplified sound; and that the gardens have a mature landscape.
No exact date is yet set for breaking ground, but estimates are for this fall.
Paranoia drives fiction, satire, also the IRS and FBI
I think I’ve figured out what makes films like “Erin Brockovich” so successful, beyond the underdog fighting the system and winning. I think it feeds into our national paranoia. We are cowed by the bigness of corporations, their control — through lobbying and soft money — over politicians, the food supply, medical care, just about everything.
We are powerless, literally, to control our electric, gas, even water supplies, which will dwindle to a trickle this summer, they say, because the snow pack is only whatever percent of normal. Do we believe that? Or could it be tied to the gigawatts of electricity needed to pump water over the mountains to slake our thirst and keep our desert gardens green.
I’m not even talking about water quality — chromium 6, arsenic, pesticides from agricultural runoff. Things we would like to blame on bureaucratic bungling, we secretly believe to be sinister plots. Is our governor turning gray with fright because he’s losing votes, or because his campaign was fed as much by utility companies as agribusiness? Is he for real, paralyzed by fright? Or could he be an automaton, unable to move without continuing infusions of power?
And does paranoia have to be imagined or can it be based on fact? Every year as the ides of April approach, humorist Dave Barry lampoons the IRS. This year he takes it all back in a paean to the tax gods because, guess what, he has been chosen for an audit. Coincidence, maybe. Paranoia, for sure. “The IRS wants me to produce every document that has ever existed, including the original Magna Carta,” he writes.
So instead of poking fun at the IRS, he says what fine folks they are: “They’re regular people just like you, except that they can destroy your life.”
This is funny only if you are on a fixed income, never itemized deductions, and never won anything on a game show or in Las Vegas. And speaking of Las Vegas, “60 Minutes” producer Don Hewitt tells Bryan Lamb on “Booknotes” this week about Frank Sinatra’s paranoia, agreeing to an interview only if he was not asked about Las Vegas and the Mafia. Hewitt’s book will probably be as successful as “60 Minutes” because we’re all paranoid about big-time crime from “The Godfather” to “The Sopranos.”
PBS just aired Bill Moyers’ documentary, two years in the making, which chronicles abuses by chemical manufacturers and industry regulators. This feeds my personal paranoia about pesticide residue killing us softly. Organophosphates live longer than we do. They’ll still be around, even the banned or regulated ones, to plague our great-great-grandchildren. Moyers had his blood tested and discovered it contained 52 chemicals. Malathion — sprayed on his home as the government promised it was safe (and who could stop them anyway?) — dioxins, PCBs, a veritable toxic soup coursing through his veins. Better living through chemistry? He thinks not.
David Willman’s recent articles documenting cozy relationships between the pharmaceutical industry and the FDA feed our paranoia about the safety of drugs touted by our doctors and advertised on national TV. Many have side effects worse than the condition for which they’re prescribed. And those are just the ones we know about. I wonder if Willman will be chosen for an audit by the friendly folks at the IRS.
It’s my guess nobody understands the pervasiveness of paranoia better than Tom Sawyer, whose novel “The Sixteenth Man” has attracted as much attention from the government as from book sellers. His fictionalized account of how the assassination of JFK might have involved everyone from the Mafia to the military, prompted a call from the FBI. The special agent said he was curious about Sawyer’s sources for the book and wondered how he spelled out some of the Mafia figures in detail. “I couldn’t believe they were asking. I told him I just tried to imagine them as real people. It came to me by osmosis over 38 years, and by making a living making stuff up [TV scripts for ‘Murder She Wrote’ and others]. It was all fictionalized, the senators, the military. I probably know less than Oliver Stone.”
He didn’t share with the special agent that the story (also an opera and an episode of “Murder She Wrote”) came from his own paranoia. He says he really believes the assassination was a coup, a huge cabal, and that both Kennedys were done in because “they just stepped on too many toes.” After he hung up the phone, he was suspicious the call was a phony. “So I pressed star 69 [to redial the last incoming call], and it really was the FBI.”
Sawyer says he learned in Hollywood that people rarely say what they mean. So fictional characters should never say exactly what they’re thinking. And does this apply to characters from the FBI? The IRS? How paranoid is this? He shrugs. “I consider it protective paranoia.”
Tom Sawyer tells more about “The Sixteenth Man” on “Connie Martinson Talks Books” airing in April on local Channel 3.
Veg side are you on?
Veg heads, please keep your hooks off of our pier! It’s one of the very few places we can take our kids fishing in Malibu. Are these people who say they can’t stand the sight of “poor creatures flopping around in buckets” the same ones who pay big bucks for sushi? Or are they oh-so-politically correct veg heads trying to force their radical views on the rest of us? How about a small hose on the pier so people fishing can clean up the slop? The State Parks Department has the obligation to keep our pier open for the enjoyment of the taxpayers. And before we get too sanctimonious, I happen to know that living, breathing plants were actually KILLED to make way for the houses of Malibu!
Hans Laetz
The cost of building a luxury hotel: It’s in the details
Arnold G. York/Publisher
When the Malibu City Council approved the Adamson Company’s Rancho Malibu Hotel in 1998 to be built on a lot on Pacific Coast Highway at Malibu Canyon Road, they imposed certain conditions on the developers.
One condition was that if in five years the owners showed they met the benchmarks the council had set, they would automatically receive approval for an additional 40 rooms. Or, if prior to the five years, they could demonstrate the hotel has been running at a 72 percent occupancy rate for any two years, the company could also apply for the extra 40 rooms.
According to industry sources, the cost of building a hotel room is figured on the basis of the projected room rate, which is based on the room size and how it’s outfitted. If a hotel owner plans to charge $100 per room, for example, it will cost $100,000 to build and decorate. Most luxury hotels, such as the Ritz-Carlton or the Peninsula Hotel chain, figured, in 1998, about $300,000 per room. Given Malibu’s strict protectionist ordinances, and the requirements that have been placed on the Rancho Malibu Hotel, including a $3 million to $5 million wastewater system, it was thought in 1998 that the $300,000 per room estimate was low for Malibu and might require room rates of $400 to $500 per night to make the numbers work. Presently, based upon estimates that room rates will be in that range when the hotel is finished in a couple of years, the project apparently is once again viable.
Just decorating a luxury hotel room could, in 1998, cost as much as $10,000 per room. As one specialist in luxury hotel design put it, “It’s the little things that count.”
“In a luxury hotel you put dust skirts on a bed,” the specialist continued. “A lot of mid-range hotels don’t bother; you see the box springs when you pull the spread back. It’s the details that make the difference.”
Originally written by P.G. O’Malley in 1998 after the City Council approved the hotel.
People have gone to the dogs
The Kerstin Eggers letter, which I regard as a letter (a humorous letter) “on the side of the dogs,” prompted me to write this now. When all the letters were being written about dog/owner behavior, I was going through the illness and eventual death of my wonderful great Dane. She always had good health so it was an unexpected shock — within four to six weeks she was gone from this material realm. I could not believe some of those letters back then. I thought of myself and all the responsible dog owners that I know and remembered all the times that we got up extra early to run our dogs (to avoid as many people as possible), carried plastic bags for poop collecting (also used many times to pick up other trash!), and were constantly on patrol to avoid the trouble-making dogs. I wanted to respond then but nursing my dog until her death was my first priority. Incidentally, I was fortunate that my dog’s black lab “boyfriend” had Dr. Graulich as his veterinarian, since Dr. Graulich makes house calls. After a busy work day, Dr. Graulich and his assistant came to our home and were able to help this lovely dog make the transition from life to death. The joy and love this magnificent animal gave to us and all who encountered her can never be told in words! It is this joy that I would like to address.
There are so many ways that pets improve the lives of humans. As a doctor of psychology, I have seen depressed individuals “come alive” when visited by specially trained “therapist” dogs, witnessed AIDS and cancer patients prolong their life through interactions with pets, and enjoyed watching a 9-year-old epileptic change from an unsure, paranoid child to a child who can play without fear because her pet dog can sense when she will have a seizure allowing her time to prepare. Unfortunately, I also have seen animals abused — used for “ego building,” and making money. These horrible episodes can be researched but usually the animal activists are the only ones brave enough to react. A dog, for instance, just wants to be your buddy and can sense your mood — think, for one example, of the unfortunate dog who has an alcoholic for an owner — lots of mood swings there! The real issue, as always, is the behavior of humans! As L.P. Lerner’s letter said, “Talk to your neighbor” — talk to the visitor — show tolerance! I am one who also feels that dogs should be allowed to run on the beach. I am fortunate to have a private-entrance beach but don’t abuse that privilege. Before going to the beach I always walked my dog first, so she would do her poop before getting on the beach. I carried a plastic bag for any poop “accidents” but the bag usually ended up filled with plastic cups, bottles, and other trash instead — there are more toxic things on that beach than dog poop! I also tried to walk my dog on the beach during the quieter times and never on weekends. The joy of walking my dog is greatly missed — I know that the time will come when I will be ready to get another dog/companion and hope that by then human behavior will have improved and the dog letters will be a thing of the past.
Alessandra DeClario
Common ground in town
A funny thing happened at the last Bond Measure Coalition meeting. Thirty people were discussing a November bond measure designed to purchase land for community parks, open space, wetlands and recreation. Parents yearning for tot lots and ballparks and wetlands restorationists, striving for nature preserves, listening to each other, sometimes with effort and tension.
We’ve found common ground: we all want very little commercial development. Increased PCH traffic and the wastewater that commercial development brings are concerns. We all want places for children to play organized sports. We all want “open spaces”: not parking lots but wildflower meadows. We all want playgrounds, picnic areas and a clean ocean.
We all recognize that a $15 million bond will not make our every dream come true. One delicate issue has been: since the bond is too small to realize all of our dreams, what portion of whose dream do we pursue? We’ve tiptoed around this tough question, because we want to keep our coalition together.
Ozzie Silna, a man who doesn’t tiptoe, suggested reducing the bond from $15 million to $7.5 million and using all the funds to acquire land for a community center and other types of parks and recreation. The Malibu Coastal Land Conservancy would pursue its goal of cleansing the Malibu Creek and the ocean by looking to our city to immediately start applying for federal and state grants to purchase land in the Civic Center for reconstructed wetlands. So revolutionary was his message, the entire room experienced a rolling blackout of puzzlement.
Gil Segel strongly supports Ozzie’s gesture. “We all live in the same community. We want most of the same things,” he said. It is time we join together and leave our differences aside. We may some-times have varying approaches and priorities. However, we must accomplish something together, because something we all want is better than nothing — and nothing is what we will get if we continue the old ways of interaction.
PARCs (People Achieving Recreation and Community Services) founder Laureen Sills reached out to the Conservancy leaders. She asked what her group could do to help the Conservancy achieve some of its goals for wetlands preservation and open space. “These things belong in Malibu, too,” she said, and “cleaning the Malibu Creek and the oceans is of the utmost importance to all of us.” John Mills and Laura Rosenthal, active recreation activists, echoed Laureen’s remarks.
How will this gesture of conciliation and collaboration play out? Leaders are already exploring joint plans to improve and preserve Malibu’s quality of life in a spirit of careful optimism. We’re watching compromise, cooperation, consid-eration and community grow before our very eyes. Stay tuned. This bond measure is shaping up to be about more than an effort to secure park lands … it is starting to look like an effort to build community trust and a community vision for our shared future.
We invite our whole community to the next meeting on Thursday, April 26, at 7 p.m. at the Malibu High School auditorium. We will discuss and vote on bond measure language to present to the City Council. We must decide on the size of the bond measure and whether it should be for land only or a combination of land and a capped amount for improvements and/or matching grants to complete them. We encourage a large group of citizens to participate on April 26, so our council sees our Coalition as truly representing our community.
Mona Loo, Georgianna McBurney, Steve Uhring, Laureen Sills, Debbie Kester, Deirdre Roney, Laura Rosenthal, Gil Segel, Ozzie Silna, Patt Healey, Nidra Winger
