The Ghost in the Machine

Every Malibu election season the ominous rumblings and clankings of the Malibu Political Machine can reportedly be heard, a sort of small town Deus ex machina that seeks, critics say, to arrange the future of Malibu. Assuming you managed to get an audience with Malibu's version of the Great and Powerful Oz, what would you find behind the curtain? Let's see if we can find out. Image from The Wizard of Oz @ 1939, Universal Studios

Before we begin looking for ghosts, we need to read the Malibu Vision and Mission Statements:

The General Plan Vision and Mission statements were prepared by the General Plan Task Force and subsequently adopted by the City Council prior to the development of the goals, objectives, policies and implementation programs by the General Plan Task Force and the City’s planning consulting team. The statements guide the formation of programs and policies that are included in the General Plan.

Vision Statement—Malibu is a unique land and marine environment and residential community whose citizens have historically evidenced a commitment to sacrifice urban and suburban conveniences in order to protect that environment and lifestyle, and to preserve unaltered natural resources and rural characteristics. The people of Malibu are a responsible custodian of the area’s natural resources for present and future generations.

Mission Statement—Malibu is committed to ensure the physical and biological integrity of its environment through the development of land use programs and decisions, to protect the public and private health, safety and general welfare.

Malibu will plan to preserve its natural and cultural resources, which include the ocean, marine life, tide pools, beaches, creeks, canyons, hills, mountains, ridges, views, wildlife and plant life, open spaces, archaeological, paleontological and historic sites, as well as other resources that contribute to Malibu’s special natural and rural setting.

Malibu will maintain its rural character by establishing programs and policies that avoid suburbanization and commercialization of its natural and cultural resources.

Malibu will gradually recycle areas of deteriorated commercial development that detract from the public benefits or deteriorate the public values of its natural, cultural and rural resources.

Malibu will provide passive, coastal-dependent and resource-dependent visitor-serving recreational opportunities (at proper times, places and manners) that remain subordinate to their natural, cultural and rural setting, and which are consistent with the fragility of the natural resources of the area, the proximity of the access to residential uses, the need to protect the privacy of property owners, the aesthetic values of the area, and the capacity of the area to sustain particular levels of use.

On June 5, 1990, the City of Malibu became a reality. After three decades of fighting Los Angeles County, and three failed attempts at incorporation, residents overwhelmingly passed Measure Y, the ballot initiative that gave Malibu its independence. 

It was a brutal marathon of a battle (you can read the details here), but optimism was in the air in the months following the landslide vote. A mission statement was drafted and the future never looked brighter. 

The first Malibu City Council, in a 1991 photo by Tom Dobyns for the Malibu Surfside News, blissfully unaware of the Pandora's box of troubles before them.

Things fell apart almost at once. Instead of uniting to make the mission statement a reality, the first city council—men and women who fought ferociously for cityhood—fell out. A bitter rift developed, one swiftly exploited by development interests.

"Malibu's warring political factions, whose disagreements are rooted in petty rivalries, each have pitched the election as a plebiscite on development," wrote Los Angeles Times reporter Ron Russell on April 2, 1992.

"The minority and their supporters insist that the majority has sold out to development interests, something the majority vigorously denies. Meanwhile, the majority accuses the other side of wanting to turn back the clock completely on development, which the minority disputes.

"The result has been a sharply divided City Council that critics from each side say has been ineffectual, leaving Malibu severely polarized barely a year after it officially became a city," Russell stated.

"We're finally going to have a city government that is responsive to this community,"  Councilmember Carolyn Van Horn told Russell when the dust settled. She, with challengers Jeff Kramer and Joan House "trounced 17 other candidates Tuesday—including two incumbents—to win four-year terms on the City Council," Russell wrote.

If you disregarded the date and replaced "frustrated by the county" with "frustrated by the city council," and "Cityhood June 5" with "city council election November 8," this 1991 Malibu Surfside News cover could be reused this week. A quarter of a century after incorporation, Malibu is still fighting many of the same battles.

The Malibu Mission Statement and what it stands for is really at the center of the rift that developed. The side that favors a looser interpretation of the mission statement is unofficially known as The Malibu Machine. It isn’t really a machine so much as a well-organized group of like-minded people who share a common vision. Unfortunately for those on the other side of the divide, achieving that vision all too often seems to involve inverting the Malibu Mission Statement by agreeing to trade some of the area’s “unaltered natural resources and rural characteristics” for some of the “urban and suburban conveniences” we are not supposed to want. 

Opposing the so-called Machine is a group of community activists comprised of Malibu residents with occasional help from non profit environmental organizations like the Sierra Club and the National Resource Defense Council.

Every time there's a council election the machine wheezes and clatters into action. In 2002, council candidate Beverly Taki told the Malibu Times that "Most Malibu voters don't want a political machine running our city government, therefore, they are voting for me, an independent candidate." 

She didn't win.

In a March 13, 2002 letter to the editor of the Malibu Times,during the same election battle, longtime Malibu resident Carole Bush wrote:

At the two recent candidates' forums, Sharon Barovsky was asked about her political machine and alliance with Andy Stern. Both times she adamantly denied being a part of any such team. This weekend, campaign yard signs have cropped up all over town. I noticed that every house that featured a Barovsky sign also featured a Stern sign. Looks like a political alliance to my neighbors and me. We have now caught Barovsky in a lie. What more will she lie about if elected? Or what lies is she telling us now in order to get herself elected?

Are both of these candidates so devoid of character that they are sending their machine workers Deirdre Roney, Pat Lang, Laureen Sills, Anne Hoffman and Lloyd Ahern out to smear the other candidate's daring to challenge their hold on City Hall? 

Barovsky supporter Mona Loo responded to critics, stating:

[ They] seem to believe that Sharon Barovsky has created a deep, dark, and dangerous political machine. I and many other Malibuites have volunteered repeatedly to work on numerous local campaigns. If working together in the past qualifies a group as a "machine," then I plead guilty as charged. However, I would insist that there is nothing malevolent, dark or dangerous about campaign volunteerism. More people ought to do it. This city deserves a political process that includes all of us."

In 2014 the shadow of that "deep dark machine" was still apparently felt: Council candidate Hamish Patterson ran on the platform of being an “outsider to the political machine." 

He didn't win.

 This isn’t Soviet Era Berlin. Malibu residents drift from one side of the debate to the other depending on current issues. People on both sides remain neighbors who come together during emergencies, no matter how much they oppose each other’s politics or how nasty the rhetoric becomes at times. Both sides are in favor of public safety and good schools, clean water, and mom and apple pie. When the energy lobby pushed for a massive liquefied natural gas facility off the coast Malibu both sides worked together to defeat it. However, while the so-called Machine side and their opponents may agree on many things and work together to achieve common goals, development remains an unreconcilable divide.

Here's another headline from Malibu's Measure Y election in 1990 that could just as easily be a news story in the 2016 city council election. 

The Malibu preservationists have always been a loose-knit alliance rather than an organized force. Perhaps the closest the preservation side has ever come to being a well-oiled machine was during the fight for Measure R, when everyone banded together to take on powerful developers proposing a  38,425-square-foot shopping center on the corner of Civic Center Way and Cross Creek Road.

Development pressure was the reason Malibu residents sought independence from a county government that was actively promoting a population of 120,000 by 1980. Local activists have fought an unending series of battles against freeways, marinas, high rises, sewers, subdivisions, shopping centers and that infamous nuclear power plant.

Malibu residents battled dozens of ill-conceived and poorly thought out development projects like this freeway, which would have flattened Malibu Canyon and wrapped the Civic Center area in a serpentine tangle of concrete.

It’s unlikely that even the most ambitious developer retains any delusions about the level of development once envisioned, but Malibu has some of the most valuable real estate on the planet and development pressure is a constant. 

The pro-development faction still views undeveloped land as raw material that should be shaped into a new vision, but instead of the high rise hotels and yacht marines that were promoted in the 20th century, they envision a sort of Beverly Hills by the Sea, where high end shopping and bijou apartments and hotels are a destination. 

The spectre of nearly two million square feet of new development in and around the Civic Center area was a rallying cry during the Measure R fight and is expected to be a major campaign issue this November.

The theory put forward by the pro-develpment side is that taxes from these developments are needed to fund community improvements like ball fields, public art, and landscaping along Pacific Coast Highway. The majority on the city council has often embraced this approach. 

Things fall apart when the developers, flexible invertebrates that they are, manage to wiggle out through loopholes, like that time in 2009 when the city council approved a 16-year, $1.5 million, interest-free rent deferral for the developers of the Lumber Yard Shopping Center.

When they can't exploit existing loopholes, developers invariable attempt to create their own by bending the rules set out in the Malibu General Plan. They do this by seeking variances in exchange for elements they hope the city will find appealing, even when the proposal conflicts directly with Malibu’s general plan and mission statement. 

The infamous 22,000 square feet (slightly more than half an acre, and double the amount of actual "Park") of  "vertical landscaping” a.k.a. walls covered with potted plants, approved in lieu of open space requirements for the “Whole Foods in the Park” shopping center development is a recent example. 

A ten-year-old agreement with the owners of the La Paz property next door to the Whole Foods mall that would permit a 30 percent increase in development density in exchange for setting aside an inconveniently out of the way and partially unusable two-acre portion of the property for a city hall or wastewater treatment facility that Malibu no longer needs is another example.

The preservation side of the spectrum embraces the city’s mission statement as Malibu’s Declaration of Independence. Activists on this side of the divide are not interested in shopping destinations, do not care if PCH is landscaped as long as traffic is moving, and would prefer that all development fall within the existing guidelines. They counter what they view as over-the-top projects with appeals to the Coastal Commission, litigation, and when all else fails, ballot initiatives.

When the current city council approved five mega mansions on the blufftop next to Malibu Bluffs Park in exchange for the donation of a 1.75-acre parcel to expand the city’s active recreation facilities and parking, activists protested in front of the Coastal Commission and succeeded in getting changes to the height and orientation of the buildings to reduce the visual impact, things the city could and should have done to ensure maximum mitigation for the environmental impacts of the project.

When the city approved a plan to bulldoze the heritage sycamore on the corner of Pacific Coast Highway and Cross Creek Road to facilitate the La Paz shopping center development mentioned above, preservationists rallied, unwilling to accept the project planner's assertion that chopping down the tree would provide views of “the clear blue sky.” The tree was saved. It turned out that nobody—not even the developer—really thought removing the tree was a good idea, except for that city planner. One criticism repeatedly leveled at Malibu's government is a lack of adequate communication and transparency. If there is in fact a machine it sometimes appears to operate on autopilot.

In 2003, the city council negotiated and endorsed Measure M, a ballot initiative that would have authorized 600,000 square feet of new development on 12 Malibu Bay Company properties scattered throughout Malibu, including a 40-unit housing development next to Malibu Lagoon State Park. 

The development agreement allowed the Bay Company a 20-year approval period and the projects would have been exempt from many key aspects of Malibu’s zoning code, allowing for non-conforming development projects all the way through 2022.

In exchange for all those entitlements, the Bay Company agreed to build a 5000-square-foot community center at Point Dume and offered the city a limited option to buy what is now Legacy Park for $25 million. If the city didn’t raise the funds within two years, the Bay Company would have been entitled to build 155,000 square feet of development on the property.

When Measure M was proposed in 2003, it was presented as the only way for the city to ever acquire the land that is now Legacy Park. Because the issue went to a referendum, the voters had an opportunity to call the developer's bluff. In 2006, the owner agreed to sell the property to the city without Measure M's smörgåsbord of development bonuses attached. A different city council cut the ribbon at the grand opening of the park in 2010, just seven years after the Malibu Bay Company issued the ultimatum that Malibu would never get the property unless the community agreed to Measure M. 

Malibu architect Lester Tobias in a July 27, 2013 blog post, recalled that:

 “A large-scale model was constructed and put on public display. During one presentation an environmental activist ran up and dumped a bucket of mud on the model. It proved, at the time, that Malibu was not ready to entertain such a large project... And it probably still isn’t.” 

The city council unanimously approved the Measure M initiative. Their planning commission opposed it. One of the planning commission’s main concerns was “the inadequacy of the traffic planning,” according to a November 3, 2003 Los Angeles Times article by Martha Groves.

“The commissioners objected to that plan as allowing more development than Malibu could support,” Groves wrote. “Opponents say the conditions and alternatives make Measure M too iffy a proposition.”

Voters overwhelmingly rejected the measure. A few years later, the City of Malibu was able to purchase the entire property that is now Legacy Park without the development agreement.  The 40-unit subdivision site next to the lagoon that would have been facilitated by the Measure M deal has also been retired from development. It will be transferred to State Parks after the owner's death. 

More than a decade after the Measure M debate, traffic issues continue to be a major concern in the Civic Center area. The city addressed this concern during the Measure R debate with a traffic study that found “no increase in traffic in the past 20 years.” A finding that elicits incredulity, in light of the fact that an estimated 15 million people visited Malibu last year.

The current council continues the tradition of variances for big developers. Four of the five council members opposed Measure R, the grassroots voter initiative that limits chain stores and empowers Malibu voters to weigh in on development projects over 2o,000 square feet.  The only council voice in support of the measure was Skylar Peak. 

This ad for the vacant 4500-square-foot space previously occupied by the now defunct Banana Republic store boasts "this affluent community attracts over 15 million visitors annually for its spectacular natural beauty."

Malibu residents passed Measure R by nearly 60 percent. When development interests challenged the law in court, the city council reluctantly agreed to enter into the appeal process only after Malibu residents raised $50,000 to fund their own appeal.

A quick look at the eight Malibu mayors who opposed Measure R and the four who supported it offers a primer on who falls where in the Malibu political spectrum:

Sharon Barovsky, Joan House, Jeff Jennings, Andy Stern, John Sibert, Lou LaMonte, Laura Rosenthal and Ken Kearsley actively opposed Measure R. Most of these names were also at the top of the Yes on M list a decade earlier. 

These five former mayors are regarded by conspiracy theorists as the core of the Malibu Machine with Sharon Barovsky as a kind of queen bee. Accusations of a shadowy machine were already being made during the second city council election, just two years after Malibu incorporation, long before Barovsky stepped in to finish her late husband Harry Barovsky's term in office in 2000.  This group, however, was the driving force behind the Measure M development agreement, defeated by a landslide in 2003, and among the most outspoken opponents of Measure R. 

Measure R's supporters included Malibu’s first mayor Walt Keller, as well as former Mayor Jefferson Wagner and current councilmember Skylar Peak. Wagner and Peak are running for second terms on the city council on a slate with first-time candidate and Measure R activist Rick Mullen.

There was just one debate on Measure R. Bowing to pressure from the developer, the city agreed to limit tickets to the city hall event and to segregate the audience: blue tickets were assigned to Measure R's opponents, green tickets to R's supporters. Each side was expected to enter and exit through their own side of the door. There was no middle ground for agnostics. The organizers tried to corral the media into a special corner in back, which didn't go over well. They might have done better putting the elected officials in the corner reserved for media, because four of the five city council members and a number of their friends and supporters sat in the front row on the No on R side, a seating arrangement that may have been based on voting preference but was something of a public relations fiasco.

2016 city council candidates Rick Mullen and Jefferson Wagner were sitting in the Yes on R side right in front of the photographer. Denise Peak, Skylar Peak’s mother and a longtime conservation activist in her own right, is in the photo, too. The Yes on R side of the room was made up entirely of friends and neighbors. The No on R side? Mostly politicians, developers and consultants.

On Oct. 1, 2014, Arnold York, the publisher of the Malibu Times, had this response to the letter from eight mayors urging a no vote on R: 

There is a letter in this week’s Malibu Times from eight past mayors urging a “no” vote on Measure R. The hard reality is that there is a significant segment of the Malibu population that doesn’t trust the council to fix things. To a degree, this development problem — both actual and potential — got away from all eight of them and the current council is going to have to show they can improve the situation, assuming of course the proposition fails. The eight ex-mayors are all sensible, competent people, but they grossly underestimated the impacts of the Civic Center development. I must confess, so did I. It sort of crept up on all of us and if they get the opportunity again to fix it, they need to act, and act with more urgency than they have in the past. 

No matter what the results of the Measure R election, if the present council doesn’t deal with the Civic Center development problems in a way that satisfies more of Malibu, I suspect in 2016 a much more radical council could get voted into office. 

Perhaps it is not surprising that the candidate who has deep ties to those eight anti-R mayors was also an outspoken Measure R opponent. Laureen Sills stated in a 2014 letter to the editor of the Malibu Times that:

 “Our voices will never be heard if Measure R passes.” 

She also called the measure’s supporters the “Always Angry Rouge [sic] Group,”  who “have never won an election.”

Well, avast ye mateys, Malibu’s rogue group (we’ll assume she meant “Rogue,” as in Captain Jack Sparrow, or Han Solo, as opposed to rouge as in red) won a stunning victory, with 59 percent of Malibu voters approving the measure. Malibu voters also united to defeat Measure W, Steve Soboroff, the "Whole Foods in the Park" developer who is also the mastermind behind the massive multi-billion dollar Playa Vista development once described by the L.A. Times as "one of the most rancorous development deals in modern Los Angeles history," sought voter approval for his mall as required by Measure R.   

If Malibu residents are shouting, perhaps it is because they feel they that their voices are not being heard. Nearly 60 percent of Malibu voters supported Measure R and opposed Measure W.

The "Whole Foods in the Park" developer, with the help of the Malibu Bay Company—perhaps still smarting from Measure M—promptly sued. The case is working its way through the appeals process, but Measure R is currently in effect.  If the new council supports the ideals of voter-approved Measure R they will be, in the words of preservation activist Peter Jones, an insurance policy should the higher court reject the Measure R appeal. That's because the council has always had the authority to implement the core principles of Measure R. 

Sometimes the whole machine vs preservationist battle deteriorates into a kind of slapstick farce, like that time city employees were ordered to remove 70 Yes on R signs from in front of houses all over Malibu.

“Last week I did order city crews to pick up signs within the public right-of-way, as we have done in prior elections,” former City Manager Jim Thorsen said, after the disappearance was traced to the city.  “Historically our road crews have not picked up signs in front of homes, even where they are on public land or right-of-way, generally because those parkways are often treated just like private property. However, an honest mistake occurred with the signs, and for that I do apologize to our citizens.”

When the curtain is pulled aside in The Wizard of Oz, the Great and Powerful Wizard is revealed to be a humbug rather than a mage but he's also an essentially decent human being, even if he hasn't used the power he has wisely. Image from The Wizard of Oz @ 1939, Universal Studios

With two old guard council members termed out leaving two empty seats, and a dedicated preservation incumbent running for re-election, the preservation side of the power struggle is hoping that the balance will change this November. However, for a change to take place, the preservationists needs to elect three candidates, otherwise the status quo remains the same. And anyone doubting the pro-development slant of Malibu City Hall has only to look at the speakers panel at the recent Malibu Times-sponsored forum for potential city council candidates.  K-Bu journalist Sam Hall Kaplan described it as: "weighted with pro development panelists." 

Critics of the current Malibu political climate point to what they describe as the endless cycle of council members appointing commissioners, commissioners running for council with the former council members' blessing, and newly elected council members appointing former council members to commissions and committees, a Malibu version of the self-satisfied medieval Worm Ouroborus, above. Image: Wikipedia

The council elected in November will decide the fate of Bluffs Park Open Space and the newly acquired Trancas Fields Park. They will have the power to pass or deny the rodenticide ban and Malibu’s long delayed dark skies ordinance, and they will determine the ultimate fate of the Civic Center area, where the new sewage treatment plant is under construction and development interests are already pushing for new zoning that will permit higher density projects. In the words of late Coastal Commission executive director and eco warrior Peter Douglas: “The coast is never saved. It’s always being saved.” 

It may look peaceful, but the Malibu Civic Center area, once the flood plain for Malibu Creek, is ground zero in a development fight that has spanned more than 50 years and will continue to be the main battleground as the sewer  project opens the flood gates for a new wave of development. Photo @ 2016 S. Guldimann

A study was released this week that finds developers have destroyed one tenth of the Earth’s wilderness in the past 20 years. That’s a catastrophic loss for everyone and everything. And in its own small way, Malibu is on the front line of that battleground. This 27-mile-long stretch of coast and mountains is a recognized area of special biological significance—a biodiversity holy grail that is one of just five Mediterranean ecosystems on earth.  

This is what people dream of seeing when they come to Malibu, not this:

Every developer who lies and cheats and wheedles their way around Malibu’s environmental protections, and every Malibu city planner and city council member who is complacent or who voluntarily trades away open space in variances for things like "vertical landscaping" is complicit in a crime against the earth and against the future.

Bad development deals, alas, appear to be part of human nature going all the way back to poor old Esau who sold his birthright for a mess of pottage and ended up with nothing but an empty bowl. That doesn't mean they are inevitable. The November 8 election offers Malibu residents an opportunity to change the future. We just need to choose wisely.

Malibu is worth fighting for, no matter what the odds are or how many battles are lost or won. Photo @ 2016 S. Guldimann

The Battle for Malibu

Compared to the fight for Malibu cityhood, battling the Learnean hydra would be a piece of cake. Image: John Singer Sargent, Hercules, 1921, via Wikipedia Commons

The City of Malibu turned 25 on Monday. Technically, it turned 25 on June 5, 2015, the day that Measure Y passed by a landslide. But March 28, 1991, was the day Malibu officially became a city, and what a strange, long, hard journey it was to get to that day.

The battle to make Malibu an incorporated city has often been compared to the task of Sisyphus, condemned to push the same rock up hill forever. It certainly felt that way to many of the activists involved in the seemingly unending multi-year cityhood fight. Image: Titan, The Punishment of Sisyphus, 1548-9, via Wikipedia Commons

 It’s been said the fight to save Malibu from the county’s plans for a major metropolis was like poor old Sysyphus, pushing that stone uphill, but to me it was more like a mashup between the Mad Hatter’s Tea Party and Hercules battling the hydra—every time residents succeeded in defeating a project, ten more sprang up, and the rules changed all the time, leaving everyone scrambling for a chair at the table. 

This cartoon from the Malibu Surfside News highlights the Alice-in-Wonderland-like lunacy of the incorporation battle and casts the county as the Red Queen. 

It’s hard to convey just how crazy the whole process was to those who weren’t involved in it. I summarized the three previous unsuccessful attempts at incorporation, as well as some of the other challenges leading up to the final cityhood vote in the March 23, 2016 issue of the Malibu Surfside News. You can read the story here. But somehow the article doesn't entirely convey the sense of urgency and anxiety.

I was a small child during the 1975 incorporation effort and an undergraduate in college during the 1991 battle. For almost as long as I can remember, my parents were involved in the fight to save Malibu. They held meetings in the living room, spent weekends and evenings gathering signatures and meeting with officials. My dad traveled to Los Angeles for Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors meetings and to Sacramento to meet with state officials. I grew up stuffing envelopes and walking voting precincts, and I definitely wasn't alone: a whole generate of Malibu kids participated in the Malibu revolution.

The county had plans for a golf course and housing at what is now Charmlee Wilderness Park. They also had plans for 2.2 million square feet of development in the Malibu Civic Center, vast blocks of high rise apartment buildings along PCH; a shopping mall at Trancas; a high intensity development with 700-800 housing units, plus shops and restaurants at Topanga Creek; a giant marina between Paradise Cove and Point Dume and even a multilane freeway through the Santa Monica Mountains. It's not surprising Malibu residents felt besieged and disenfranchised.

While many battles were being fought on all fronts, the sewer became the major focus for the simple reason that a central plant was essential for the high density development envisioned by the county. Without the sewer, the 2.2 million square feet of development planned for the Malibu Civic Center—a 1988 L.A. Times article described it as "equal to roughly one-quarter the office space in Century City," and the high-rise apartment complexes, shopping centers, golf courses, county clubs, and marinas could not be built. 

If things had gone the way the county planners intended, Corral Canyon Park would be a golf course, county club, and housing tract. A dozen years earlier, planners wanted a nuclear power plant in the same location. Today, the canyon and its spectacular views are safe from power plants and golf courses as part of the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area.

In the Surfside article, I wrote: "A 1966 report by the Los Angeles Regional Planning Commission predicted that with sewers to accommodate growth, the population of Malibu would expand to 117,000 by 1980. Malibu voters fought back, overwhelmingly defeating county-sponsored sewer bond measures in 1966, 1968 and 1971."

The Corral Canyon nuclear power plant is a favorite example of out-of-control Malibu development plans, but the marinas were a much bigger threat. The power plant never got past the initial planning phase once the geology of Corral Canyon was examined, the yacht harbor plot endured for decades. The first plan, for a small craft harbor at the Malibu Lagoon, was proposed immediately after WW II. The Malibu Post took a look at that particular battle in a blog post titled "Sailing onto the Rocks."

The Malibu Lagoon marina plan rematerialized in the 1960s and involved using vast amounts of fill from the proposed Malibu Canyon Freeway to channelize Malibu Creek, build a massive breakwater and create a full service yacht harbor. What is now Malibu Lagoon State Park was purchased with a marina, not a wetland, in mind, but Paradise Cove was the county's pick for a marina that would have been essentially a small city.

An artist's representation of the Quarterdeck Club, the first Malibu Lagoon yacht harbor proposal from the 1940s. The project refused to die and had to be fought off multiple times by Malibu conservationists over three decades. By the time this plan was finally dead, the county had set its sights on a marina at Paradise Cove. There were even plans for small craft harbors at Topanga Creek and Sequit Cove, at what is now Leo Carrillo State Park.

The plan to transform Paradise Cove into a harbor first surfaced in the 1950s, when the  Army Corp of Engineers announced it was was on board with a plan to build a breakwater and small boat harbor with a 1500-1800-foot-long breakwater. A November 20, 1960 Los Angeles Times article states, "A committee of the Malibu Chamber of Commerce expects to meet shortly with Rex Thomson [county director of small craft harbors] and L.A. County Supervisor [Burton] Chace to push the project."

Burton Chace seems to have had a bee in his bonnet over the boat harbor idea. By 1964, he had plans for four Malibu boat harbors. He was egged on by Realtor Bill Reid, the president of the Malibu Chamber of Commerce, who apparently shared the view of Kenneth Graham's character the Water Rat, that "nothing is half so much worth doing as simply messing about in boats."

Instead of tide pools, sandy coves, and a legendary surf break, county planners envisioned this stretch of coast from Little Dume to Paradise Cove looking more like this:

Image: Marina Del Rey, photographed by Howcheng, via Wikipedia Commons

By 1969, the ever-expanding Paradise Cove/Point Dume harbor plan ran afoul of the surfing community. Suddenly, the planners had to deal with a whole new level of ocean advocacy. 

"Good beaches for surf riding are diminishing everywhere," Western Surfing Association representative Robert Scott told the L.A. Times. But the county continued to push for the project, seemingly oblivious to a rising tide of opposition. An $11-million budget for the Paradise Cove marina was proposed in 1971. A 1972 article states that the county continued to prefer the Point Dume location despite "opposition running two to one there."

I have a copy of a petition my dad circulated, signed by more than 500 people opposing the marina. It states:  

"We, the undersigned, request that no further funds be appropriated for, or expended by, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the State of California, or the County of Los Angeles for the study, design, or construction of a marina, boat harbor, or related facilities along the fragile Malibu seashore.

"The narrow coastal Malibu bluffs and beaches are a priceless resource, the last unspoiled coastline and of major importance to the entire Los Angeles Metropolitan region.

Dad's first Malibu fight was over that marina, his second was to save the Point Dume Headlands.  A hotel was originally planned for the bluff, later the county wanted to flatten what is now the wildlife preserve and make it into a parking lot. 

Malibu activists, including my dad, battled county plans to bulldoze and develop the Point Dume Headlands. 

Throughout the 1970s and ’80s, my parents gathered signatures for the Coastal Act initiative, the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area, and Malibu Incorporation. They wrote letters, attended and held meetings opposing plans for hotels, golf courses, apartment complexes, housing tracts, marinas, and parking lots, in addition to the infamous sewers. My dad served on the board of the local homeowners association and on the Malibu Township Council, the community organization that served as the main voice for Malibu's residents and was the driving force for the incorporation effort. Juggling all that activism with a full time job didn't always leave much time for anything else.

It's only a flesh wound! Malibu activists refused to admit defeat despite major setbacks in early 1989. This cartoon appeared in the January 19, 1989 Malibu Surfside News.

Activists up and down the state passed the Coastal Act in 1972. Local conservationists successfully lobbied congress to create the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area in 1978. These were two key elements in the fight to save the local coastal zone from being paved under.

It was the power of the coastal act that finally ended the marina proposals. The Coastal Commission also partially reigned in the county’s other development plans in 1986,  halving the proposed maximum build-out along the Malibu Coast from 12,095 to 6,582, with a 2,111-unit cap on residential development until PCH could be “improved.” (we’re still waiting for that one).

Developers seized the opportunity during the rabidly pro-development 1980s  to push through many of the ugliest commercial buildings on Pacific Coast Highway. The one on the left added insult to injury by replacing the historic train shed from the old Rindge Railroad.

The Coastal Commission's 1986 land use decision met fierce opposition from L.A. County Supervisor Deane Dana, who presumably just couldn’t bear to see all of that revenue—and potential voter base—slip away. He threatened the commission with legal action, and when the Malibu Committee for Incorporation succeeded in jumping through all of the hoops necessary to put Malibu incorporation back on the ballot, he famously vowed to "bury the process or delay the process," so Malibu residents would be unable to move forward with the election. 

I was convinced as a child that the Los Angeles County Supervisors was something like this, with Deane Dana in the starring role as the Lord of the Sith. Walt Keller, who worked tirelessly on incorporation and went on to become Malibu's first mayor, described Dana as the "Sewer King." In a December 17, 1989 L.A. Times interview he stated that Dana's "whole attitude has been insulting." Dana's response was that the opposition he encountered in Malibu was "of no consequence, really," and that "if they spell my name right, it doesn't make any difference." The county was redistricted towards the end of the Malibu cityhood battle, placing Malibu under the care of Supervisor Paul Edelman, the only supervisor who had supported the local independence movement. Fortunately, Malibu has had a much better relationship with the county in the decades following the departure of Dana.

1986 was an important year for Malibu, not just because of the land-use debate. It was the year the county revealed plans for a 17-mile-long sewer running down the middle of PCH to a central treatment facility that would dump effluent straight out to sea at world-famous Surfrider Beach. Assessments of $13,500-$26,000 were made for every property owner in the community. The controversy over this mega-sewer ignited the final push for independence from the county.

The sewer would facilitate not only the buildout of the Malibu Civic Center, including that five-story, 500-room hotel, but also a new “urban center” at the bottom of Topanga Canyon. This city of 700-800 apartment units and condos, and “upscale shops and restaurants and a new multimillion-dollar channel to safely and permanently route Topanga Creek to the ocean,” according to the Los Angeles Times. It was to be an entire new city, and for many Malibuites, it offered the final proof that there was no end to the greed and tone-deafness of developers.

Malibu could and did, and is celebrating its 25th year as an independent city. The February 8, 1990, Malibu Surfside News reported that “Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Dzintra Janavs has issued the order for the cityhood vote in the form of a mandamus writ.” After three years of open warfare with the county, Malibu incorporation appeared to be finally headed for the ballot. However, in order to get it there, the judge had to threaten the supervisors with contempt of court and order them to set the date, a sort of municipal shotgun wedding, or perhaps a shotgun divorce.

The fourth and final campaign for an independent Malibu began in 1987. It was an uphill battle all the way, but after three years of protests, lawsuits, countersuits, and appeals, Measure Y  finally made it to the ballot. 

Malibuites protested.

And rallied.

Malibu Incorporation passed by a landslide on June 5, 1990. Anne Soble, the original publisher and editor of the Malibu Surfside News, was committed throughout the entire multi-year battle to ensuring that the Malibu incorporation process receive due process from the county. Looking back at that coverage was a reminder to me of how journalism can help a cause by providing facts, demanding accountability from the players and keeping the story alive over time so that those not involved in the front line can know what's happening in the trenches. 

The City of Malibu is not perfect. Some of the major issues that fueled the incorporation effort continue to be contentious, including development in the Civic Center, which was delayed for a full generation but is once again an issue of critical importance and one that is no less divisive than it was a quarter of a century ago. However, despite the discord and continuing challenges, much has been accomplished. 

Malibu has changed in 25 years, and not all of that change has been for the better, but there are still a lot of all the things that make Malibu special and worth fighting for. It's still the unique land and marine environment that has inspired generations of activists to make an extraordinary effort to preserve it.

A quarter of a century after incorporation, we have a Marine Protected Area instead of marinas; open space parks in place of golf courses and county clubs; a national park in our backyard instead of wall-to-wall housing developments and freeways; and a City of Malibu that has a population of 12,861, not 117,000. And no matter what ultimately is built in the Civic Center, it won't be the 2.2 million square feet of development once sought. All of that is because, in the words of Walt Keller, "hundreds of volunteers worked thousands of hours to make it so." 

Here at the Malibu Post, we like to look at this full-page ad opposing Measure Y when we're discouraged, because it’s a sterling reminder that while the City of Malibu is a long way from perfect, it’s a huge improvement on what the county was planning for us, and none of the doom and gloom prophesied by that handful of incorporation naysayers has come to pass. Taxes, taxes, taxes! Parking meters! Lousy quality of life! Dogs and cats living together! 

At the 25th anniversary celebration, current Malibu Mayor Laura Rosenthal presented Malibu's first Mayor, Walt Keller and his wife and partner Lucile Keller with the first annual Walt and Lucile Keller Award for service to the City of Malibu.

The Kellers, with customary modesty, accepted the award in the name of all the unnamed volunteers who made cityhood a reality. 

I can testify to how hard those volunteers worked. I saw it  first hand. So thank you, Dad, for all you did for Malibu. And heartfelt thanks to all of the unsung local heroes who have cared so passionately for the place that Frederick Hastings Rindge called "very near terrestrial paradise" and  who have worked so hard to save it.

Dad and me in the early 1970s, under a rare summer rainbow on the beach he was working so hard to save.