The Write Stuff

It looks peaceful, but that is not an ordinary Malibu sunrise, it was the morning of the 2007 Corral Fire, and a reminder that Malibu can switch from paradise to inferno in a heartbeat. Malibu's elected officials may be called on to deal with fire, flood, earthquake or storm, in addition to every day issues. The Malibu City Council election isn't a popularity contest or a game show contest. The newly formed City of Malibu was nearly bankrupted in its infancy by the catastrophic 1993 Old Topanga Fire, which raced through Malibu leaving devastation in its wake. The Corral Fire was our most recent city disaster Many newer Malibu residents have never experienced the rougher side of life on this coast. Our elected officials always have to be prepared for the worst. Photo © 2016 S. Guldimann

Malibu certainly must never become a locality for the get-rich-schemes of honkey-tonk promoters who have nothing more than a yawning interest in civic pride—or the scavenger who sees a chance to trade off the name for the sake of a few dollars.

There is no better time than right now to face the fact that we must organize to achieve unity of purpose in all our civic endeavors. If we wait too long, we may well be too late.

—Malibu Times editorial, October 11, 1946

Dear Reader,

If you had to go by the letters to the editor sections of the local newspapers you would never guess Malibu’s election season has shifted into high gear and that the battle for votes in the six person race for three seats on the Malibu City Council is raging in the aisles of the grocery stores and at the farmers market. 

Former Malibu Surfside News editor Anne Soble often received so many election season letters that they would spill over from page 4 to fill every empty space, sometimes ending up jostling with the classifieds for space on the last page.

The war of words has been waged in every Malibu city council election. Why is it so quiet out there this time? With the exception of curmudgeonly grumbles from a couple of octogenarian town elders and a polite epistle praising the candidates for their decorum, the silence on campaign issues is deafening. 

Malibu's night skies attract stargazers from all over Los Angeles, like this group of amateur astronomers at Malibu Bluffs Park, but light pollution is beginning to impact the view. A dark skies ordinance is one of several environmental campaign issues this year. Activists would also like to see Malibu tighten loopholes in its Local Coastal Program to better protect all natural resources. Which candidates are most likely to support this endeavor? Photo © 2016 S. Guldimann

Perhaps the rise of social media is to blame for the silence in the letters column, although even the online comment section of the one local paper with that feature is surprisingly empty. There are the usual anonymous developers sparing half-heartedly with a handful of local fire eaters, but that's about it. 

Readers of the current Surfside News can perhaps be excused for not knowing who the newest editor is or how to reach her. The paper restructured recently and has brought in many new faces. But everyone knows where to find the Malibu Times’ editor, Arnold York.

One of the candidates forums included a discussion of sea level rise that focused primarily on artificial reefs as a potential solution for sand loss, but what about other sea level issues like salt water intrusion, tidal surge, and wave damage? And how about issues like coastal armoring, view corridors and public access? Photo @ 2016 S. Guldimann

Before Malibu became a city the opinion sections were a key forum for local issues—sometimes the only opportunity for residents to have their concerns heard. And while politicians often waffle on about "progress," some of the earliest Malibu letters to the editor could be dusted off and recycled today. 

“We all want Malibu to be the most beautiful community possible, yet how can it be with sudden death racing down our highway?” asked Nella Archer in a letter to the editor of the Malibu Times dated January 27, 1947.

Safety on Pacific Coast Highway has been a major concern dating back to the era when the road was Roosevelt Highway. Some of the earliest issue-based letters to the editor of the original Malibu Times, which began covering local news in 1946, pertain to highway safety. It's not surprising that it's a major campaign issue once again. Photo: Malibu Library

“My eyes are opened now to needs which are greater than just hotels,” a letter written by developer Esther Sterkin states. “We must have a complete resort community where those who will, may, escape from cities, and raise their families close to nature. For these permanent, solid citizens we must have schools, churches, theatre, shops, recreation centers for our children (small and adolescent), and all the other necessities for a high-level community...Then, of course, the resort buildings and facilities, gorgeous landscaping, exclusive sumptuous hotels, modern beach cottages, and apartment houses, also housing divisions for the men who would be employed in the area...I am impatient to see a beginning."

Shopping malls, hotels, recreation facilities, low-incoming housing? Sound familiar? Except this letter was written in 1950.

Development and highway safety remain two of Malibu's top issues, but there are more recent concerns—things that early residents could never have imagined: escalating issues with homeless and drug use; the impact of short-term home rentals and the one-night-only party crowd they attract; drug rehab facilities that transform neighborhoods into hospital zones; global warming and sea level rise; and the estimated 15 million visitors who flocked to Malibu's beaches and mountains in the past year.

The proposed "Whole Foods in the Park" shopping mall planned for this quiet field provided the flashpoint for the grassroots Measure R movement. All of the candidates are running on a slow growth platform. However, there are major differences: three candidates actively participated in and helped lead the grassroots Preserve Malibu movement, a fourth wasn't involved in the campaign but supported Measure R,  the fifth appears not to have publicly stated their views on the ballot initiative, and the sixth vehemently opposed the measure. Photo © 2016 S. Guldimann

When Malibu was fighting for cityhood, the letters column in both papers was a major battleground that sometimes spilled over into the Los Angeles Times’ letters section. It was also sometimes a literary experience. You might find a pithy response from mystery writer Ross Thomas, a politely devastating retort by legendary screenwriter Philip Dunne, or a dryly humorous opinion penned by actor turned journalist Paul Mantee.

Rodenticide and pesticide use in Malibu remain a major issue, with activists pushing hard for a citywide ban. While all of the candidates have stated that they oppose pesticide use, which candidates have a history of supporting the ban? Which are most likely to support the ordinance if elected? Photo © 2016 S. Guldimann

Ross Thomas was so quiet in person that you had to listen hard to hear him. It was worth the effort. Before settling down to the mystery novelist’s life he had traveled the world: Africa, Asia, Europe. He’d lived in London and Manhattan, rubbed elbows with the entire literary scene of the 1960s. His first novel Cold War Swap, won the Edgar Allen Poe award for best first mystery novel in 1966. As an activist and letter writer he was fierce and deadly.

Malibu is nearly 23 miles long and includes more coastline than any other municipality in Southern California, but it's this tiny section of land that is ground zero for local controversy. Critics have warned that more than one million square feet of development could eventually be squeezed into the Civic Center area. The fate of many of the red parcels, zoned Commercial, could be decided by the city council members elected in November. With the Civic Center sewer under construction, some development interests are already pushing for mixed use development, which would increase density. The triangular section at the center—Legacy Park—is the only undeveloped parcel that is not in play. 

Philip Dunne, also a quiet man, was a ferocious fighter for social justice on a national level—he co-founded the Committee for the First Amendment with William Wyler and John Huston, and fought for the rights of the entertainment industry professionals who found themselves on the Hollywood Blacklist. He also fought for small local issues, including Malibu cityhood, which he passionately supported. 

Paul Mantee was another energetic Malibu activist. Beneath the tough guy exterior lived a keen intelligence and a wry wit. He wrote a column in the Malibu Times for years and could always be counted on for a witty response on local issues in the letters section. 

Yard signs and mailers are all useful in an election, but letters go much further, offering a forum for questions and observations. In a year when everyone is being snowed under in a blizzard of local, state, and national election mailers, letters offer a forum that may actually reach that rare and elusive being, the undecided voter.  

Malibu Bluffs Park Open Space, top, and the newly acquired Trancas Fields, are both hot topics. The candidates elected next month will help determine the future for both parks.

The 19th century French novelist and social activist Emile Zola changed history with a letter. He was threatened with a year in prison and a 3000-Franc fine for a letter he wrote in support of Captain Alfred Dreyfus, a French war hero who was charged with treason. Zola was forced to flee to England to escape the fallout, but the letter, famously beginning with the accusation "j’accuse," generated a groundswell of support for the wrongly imprisoned Dreyfus, and ultimately changed history.

Malibu is a small town at heart, one that comes together when faced with adversity, like the 1979 Big Rock landslide that closed PCH for months. It's helpful to remember that during campaign season. Image: Evening Outlook

If you, dear reader, feel strongly about this election, if you have questions for the candidates, or comments to make on their campaign promises, or a response to a letter someone else wrote, take a minute to act on that thought. Let’s keep the letter writing tradition alive in Malibu. Who knows, it could even change the course of history. Malibu election outcomes are sometimes decided by just a few votes. Your letter could be the catalyst that decides an undecided voter.

Why not write a letter to an editor today? 

Malibu Times: agyork@malibutimes.com or emily@malibutimes.com

Malibu Surfside News: Lauren Finkler: lauren@malibusurfsidenews.com

And, as always, feel free to leave us your thoughts in the comments section. But be nice. The spirit of May Knight Rindge is keeping a watchful eye on all of us. 

Escher's Garden

An earlier Malibu Post blog about development was titled the Escher Paradox. With the city council's approval of "vertical" open space at the Park at Cross Creek, LLC, shopping center development to meet the Malibu Local Coastal Program's landscaping percentage requirements, we appear to have the Escher solution to open space. Why stop with walls? With a folded space model of the universe, parking as well as open space could be accommodated on the ceiling. The irony of a shopping center that calls itself "The Park," while trying to get out of meeting the landscaping requirements by arguing that the walls are really a garden is logic worthy of Mr Escher's literary counterpart, Lewis Carroll. Image: M.C. Escher, Relativity

The Park LLC project? It was approved by the Malibu City Council four to five, with Councilmember Skylar Peak dissenting. Peak asked for a new traffic study, one that isn't based on the dubious contention that traffic on PCH has decreased over the past 20 years. He also rejected the project's plan to accommodate its landscaping requirement by putting a large portion of its landscaping on the walls.

That second request appears to be something the Coastal Commission is also concerned about. The city received a letter from commission staff stating that the project:

 "...includes several development standards that would apply only to the subject project site, including building height, setbacks, fence/wall height, landscaping percentage, and grading. These development standards are not consistent with the standards required by the certified Malibu Local Coastal Program..."

Malibu's unique political climate is enough to drive anyone to drink, and here's the perfect establishment to go with that vertical landscaping design.

The letter states that if the project is approved, "the modification of LCP development standards included in the CCNESP would require an amendment to the LCP."

However, the majority of the City Council, after receiving clarification from the city attorney, agreed that the landscaping changes were an acceptable alteration of the Local Coastal Program that is covered by the provisions of the project’s specific plan, and gave the project their approval. 

The project is the first to trigger the Measure R ballot requirement. It will be placed on the November 5 ballot for the community to weigh in on. 

This office building represents the spread of commercial real estate development west of Malibu Canyon, although most of the commercially zoned property in the city is located in the Civic Center area, which is why that area has always been ground zero in the fight between developers and residents. In the 1980s, when the county controlled Malibu's future, 2.5 million square feet of development was planned for Malibu. Critics of the current building boom estimate that the total buildout of the Civic Center area combined with Pepperdine University's expansion plan could top 1.7 million square feet, almost half the original estimate but still far too much for many Malibu residents.

The opportunity to actively participate in the public hearing process with our own elected officials in our own community was one of the key victories of the fight for cityhood. It's better for everyone when that discussion remains cordial, but that discussion is ultimately a civil right and not a social event, and everyone has the right to speak.

However, sometimes other tools are necessary. Traditionally litigation has been by all sides in every debate. Measure R is a different kind of defense, one that adds what one proponent has described as a failsafe to the process: a chance for voters to address development issues directly. That's something the community has sought to achieve for decades.

Development has a very real impact on the quality of life in Malibu for residents and visitors. And cumulative impact cannot be underestimated. West of the Civic Center, anyone who feels like it is still free to park their car and dip their toes in the surf at Zuma or Corral. For much of the drive through east Malibu there isn't even a glimpse of the sea. Although, thanks to pressure from activists and the Coastal Commission, there are at least a few lateral easements like the one that just opened at Carbon Beach West. Photo © 2015 S. Guldimann

Access ways like this are great, but in a perfect world, we wouldn't need them because we would have preserved beaches and open space instead of building a wall of solid development. One of the public speakers at the Park LLC hearing stated essentially that there is so little open space left in Malibu that it doesn't mater what we build on it. That's the kind of thinking that got us where we are, not where we should be. Photo © 2015 S. Guldimann

We may not all agree with each other but we all know we have the right to share our views and concerns, wherever they fall on the spectrum of any given issue. The fact that developers know going in that they’re going to face tough opposition helps weed out some of the least sustainable and less desirable projects. The knowledge that the voters now have the power to weigh in adds another layer of protection to the community: all new projects need to offer sufficient public and community benefit if their promoters wish them to succeed.

The hill at Malibu Bluffs Park offers eastbound drivers the last view of Malibu's wide open spaces before descending into the Civic Center area and east Malibu...

...Where things start to look like this. 

Malibu has been badly burned—literally and figuratively—in the era immediately preceding incorporation, when development-mad officials at the county ran the show. We’re still living with the product of the feeding frenzy of poorly planned projects that filled the vacuum between cityhood being approved by the voters and incorporation being finalized. 

PCH east of the Malibu Pier is a showcase of late 20th century ugliness. How could anyone approve any of this? And yet, somebody must have thought it was a good idea. One could argue that the KFC is visitor serving and family owned, which is more than the office buildings can say. This is one place where some vertical landscaping might be a great idea.

Between the failed 1972 incorporation effort and the successful 1990 campaign, the newly formed California Coastal Commission, which was created by the Coastal Act of 1976, and the citizen watchdog organization the Malibu Township Council, founded in the 1940s in an effort to give the community a voice, were on the front line in the fight against the county and massive development interests.

The historic Rindge Railroad train shed, used after the railroad era ended as  retail space for an antique shop, Malibu's first bookshop, and a health food store, was torn down in the 1980s to make way for this Miami Vice-era building. It's now the backdrop for the Malibu Pier instead of this:

The Ridge Ranch train shed is the only building visible on Pacific Coast Highway—Roosevelt Highway—in this wonderful 1937 photo of a fisherman and his companion on the Malibu Pier, taken by Herman J. Schultheis, and preserved in the collection of the Los Angeles Public Library.

A January 17, 1985, Los Angeles Times article describes a county plan for 12,095 new housing units in Malibu—a plan that would have more than doubled Malibu’s current population. 

Some long forgotten county or city officials approved every single one of the buildings that make the drive through eastern Malibu generic and uninspired.   This is not the part of Malibu that they're talking about on the sign that says "27 miles of scenic beauty." 

“In rejecting the plan, the Coastal Commission said the amount of new development the county wanted to allow was excessive and labeled it an embarrassment,” the article states. The author describes Malibu as “a community racked by development pressures.”

This is 1985, and the article states “several of the [Coastal] Commissioners were troubled by several issues, most notably the capacity of Pacific Coast Highway, the intensity of commercial development, sewers and the role of Pepperdine University in Malibu’s overall growth.”

Sound familiar?

“[Chair Melvin] Nutter said that Malibu ‘probably has already exceeded’ the capacity of its infrastructure of roads and waste-disposal systems,” the article states.

A 1962 ad for the "Malibu Imperial" apartment complex at Carbon Beach. It was one of the first segments in the "Great Wall of Malibu," blocking the view of the ocean from the highway. 

The "Imperial" today, via Google Earth, still blocking the view of the sea and the sky, although not nearly as much as some of its more recent neighbors. 

Pushback is important. It forces developers to spend at least a little time thinking about what the community may actually find acceptable. No one owes anyone an apology for that. 

The county’s plan for the Civic Center area of Malibu in 1985 called for 2.5 million square feet of commercial space.

“It’s crazy to think of a buildout in the Civic Center equal to Century City,” Commissioner Marshall Grossman said. “We are dealing here with a treasure, a state treasure akin to Big Sur and the Carmel coast."

This is Cliff May's design for the Quarterdeck Club, a yacht harbor and marina that was planned for the Malibu Lagoon. The Malibu Post took an in depth look at this ambitious but ultimately unsuccessful project here. May was a legendary architect and this design is classic mid-century modern California style, but it would have been an ecological disaster for Malibu if this project was built. The debate isn't about the merits of the people involved, it is about whether a project is sustainable and right for the community. This one wasn't. 

Malibu is still a treasure. Thanks to the continued protection of the Coastal Act and the authority to weigh in to some extent at least on our own fate that was conferred by incorporation, we’ve been able to slow if not stem the tide. However, the current exponential explosion of projects in the Civic Center appears to many to have overwhelmed the system. That’s why Measure R passed by a landslide. It will be put to its  first test in November. If the proposed Park, LLC shopping center offers what Malibu residents want, it will be approved. If a majority of Malibu voters still have concerns over issues like size and traffic, it won't.

The endless cycle of legal battles in Malibu can seem Escher-eque in its own right, but the courts and the electoral process have provided the final defense for beleaguered conservationists. Proponents of Measure R hope that it, too, will prove to be a valuable tool to ensure that the projects that the voters pass are ones that are right for the community and balance environmental impact and community good with commercial gain. Image: M.C. Escher, Waterfall

Critics of the new building boom that could ultimately add more than a million square feet of development to the Civic Center area point out that once something is built, it can’t be unbuilt, and that every ill-conceived, awkward, inconvenient, ugly and oversized development in Malibu was approved by someone. 

The most egregious projects were constructed before Malibu became a city and adopted an LCP, but the sort of self-determination that can adequately moderate the sometimes overenthusiastic ambitions of developers is something Malibu residents have never entirely managed to achieve, despite the prolonged, fierce and eventually successful battle for cityhood. And that fight was brutal.

It's said that Malibu averages out to about 15 miles of beauty and 12 miles of over-developement. Photo © 2015 S. Guldimann

In 1987, with what would be the final Malibu incorporation bid looming, County Supervisor Michael D. Antonovich, who represented the San Fernando Valley communities within the coastal zone, convinced the county Board of Supervisors to join a lawsuit to strip 6,000 properties in the Malibu area from the protections of the Coastal Zone.

Antonovich also opposed cityhood, actively worked to delay it, and "expressed concern that unless the incorporation is delayed, Pepperdine University's expansion plans might be "held hostage" by a new local government determined to block the sewer system," according to a March 30, 1990 Los Angeles Times article.

The delay provided an opening for all kinds of plans. One of these was Developer Sun Pacific Properties bid to build an 18-hole golf course, 52,000-square-foot clubhouse, 60 luxury homes, six tennis courts, and two restaurants on 339 acres owned by comedian and real estate speculator Bob Hope in Corral Canyon. The county approved the project. It was stopped after four years of litigation filed filed by Corral homeowners and conservation organizations, including the Sierra Club. 

"The county just liked to approve everything that came through," said Malibu City Councilmember  Missy Zeitsoff about the environmental victory in an October 3, 1991 interview in the L.A. Times. "Now they will have to undergo much more scrutiny."

Other projects, including the Ralph's shopping center, which included the demolition of the much loved and architecturally significant Colony Coffee Shop in 1988, were built during this time period despite public outcry.

A July sunset at Westward Beach, one stretch of the Malibu coast that belongs entirely to the people of California, and not to the highest bidder. Photo © 2015 S. Guldimann

A lawsuit was ultimately required to stop the county from stalling on the Malibu incorporation election. It took a final ruling from a judge to force the county to permit that election. 

"It is, some say, a referendum on whether the community long famous for its celebrities and surf will remain a semi-rural enclave, or, as some fear, become a resort on the order of Miami Beach," an April 6, 1990 L.A. Times article by Ron Russell stated. "The outcome is of critical importance to developers who own land in the area and environmentalists who want to preserve the slender stretch of Malibu coastline."

Those developers, their investors, and even the people who approved the projects—good, bad, and ugly—are gone and forgotten, but their legacy can’t be forgotten. Every person who drives through Malibu sees each building instead of seeing the sky, the mountains or the ocean that they replace, and experiences the cumulative impact of commercialization instead of the opportunity to fully enjoy what the City of Malibu's mission statement describes as  "a unique land marine environment."

That's why it's so important to get it right.

Unaware of the human strife just a mile away on land, dolphins play off the coast of central Malibu. It's a reminder that there's more at stake then traffic or the opportunity to make jokes about vertical landscaping. According to the City of Malibu's mission statement, "Malibu was founded on the principal that the people of Malibu are a responsible custodian of the area’s natural resources for present and future generations." Photo © 2015 S. Guldimann

Put It to the Vote

A young surfer contemplates the surf at Big Dume Cove. For most people who love this 23-mile-long stretch of mountains and shoreline, this is the "real" Malibu, the one worth fighting for and protecting. © 2014 S. Guldimann

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.

—General Plan Vision Statement for the City of Malibu

Malibu was buzzing this week with the news that Malibu residents and political activists Rob and Michelle Reiner, working with the Preserve Malibu Coalition, have formed an organization called Save Malibu and submitted a ballot initiative to curb commercial development and expansion in Malibu. 

 “We filed the ‘Your Malibu, Your Decision Act’ because that [small-town] character stands to be destroyed by massive new commercial developments – developments that we think the voters of Malibu should have the power to approve or reject,” Michele Reiner said in a statement to the media.

The “Your Malibu, Your Decision Act” includes a 30-percent limit on the maximum number of chain stores in each Malibu-area shopping center and would require a citywide referendum on any development in excess of 20,000 square feet. Current chain stores would be grandfathered, but would require a conditional use permit if they seek to expand or relocate. Save Malibu is seeking to place the initiative on the November ballot.

An early real estate brochure boasts: "The entire beach property has been carefully, but moderately restricted. Necessary business units will be conveniently, but not conspicuously located." Many Malibuites would still like to keep it that way.

“Previously, the proposed ordinance (which the city council had stalled around on, practically studying it to death) was overwhelmingly opposed by most of the commercial landowners, who threatened all sorts of litigation if the ordinance was enacted,” Arnold York, publisher of the Malibu Times, wrote in an editorial this week.

“Well, the commercial landowners and developers may have overplayed their hand a bit because there is a new group who have just presented to the city a very thorough ordinance, obviously drafted by professionals and seemingly legally vetted, which means there is some significant money and expertise behind the push,” York wrote.

“It’s clear this is going to be a battle for the heart and soul of Malibu, and it’s going to be played out at the polls this November," he concluded.

More than one million square feet of development are reportedly planned for the Civic Center area of Malibu. So are the sewers early Malibu activists fought so hard to prevent. Contemporary activists, tired of delays and prevarication, say it's time Malibu residents to take an active hand in their own fate, instead of letting developers preach the gospel of   postmodern manifest destiny. © 2014 S. Guldimann

The “Your Malibu, Your Decision Act” contains two components. Under the first, all major shopping center development and commercial or mixed use construction over 20,000 square feet would require a citywide vote. This would include all future projects that do not already have permits. The second component would place a 30 percent limit on the number of chain stores permitted to operate in Malibu shopping centers.

It’s not the first time Malibu residents have been driven to the polls to enact change. Mostly, Malibuites like to be left alone. That’s why most people live here, the real, 4000-5000 year-round residents, not the other 8000 who have second (or third or fourth) homes here for weekends, or property for investment. For the “real” residents, it’s simply worth the inconvenience of bad roads and periodic natural disasters for the pleasure of living near mountains, ocean, wildlife, quiet.

"Your front yard is the Pacific Ocean." This ad from the early 1930s still sums up the real appeal of Malibu.

It takes something major to shake most residents out of their self-imposed isolation. Measure M, which involved development on what is now Legacy Park, was one occasion. Cityhood was another. In fact, it’s ironic that the announcement of the formula retail ordinance initiative came just weeks before the city’s 23rd birthday on March 28.

It took three tries to pass the Malibu cityhood initiative: in 1964, 895 yes votes were defeated by 1,161 noes. In 1976, there were 3498 yeas, and 3,681 no votes. Finally, in 1990, Measure Y passed with 4,682 yeas, 892 nays. A judge had to order the county to permit the third election to take place.

My parents moved here in 1969. They joined the fight to pass the Coastal Act and create the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area, worked to save the Point Dume Headlands, and my dad was active in the battles to prevent sewers, get truck traffic off PCH, and stop plans for off-shore oil drilling platforms and a six-lane freeway in Malibu Canyon. They just missed the fight over the nuclear power plant in Corral Canyon.

Some of my earliest memories are of packed living room meetings, thick with cigarette smoke—local activist Faye Hove was a chain smoker. So was Dotty Linke, who used to take notes using shorthand, all loops and hooks and completely indecipherable now. My mom, who wasn't a public speaker, would help my dad with speeches or letters on weekends and in the evening, the table in the dining room covered with papers.

An artist's rendering of the six-lane freeway proposed for Malibu Canyon that helped convince many Malibu residents that it was time to part company with the county. 

For my dad and many other activists, cityhood was the ultimate goal, the best way for the beach and the mountains to be protected from the massive development desired by the county. Everyone worked together. People piled into buses to protest at downtown meetings. They didn't give up during months and years of endless, repetitive, frustrating, boring bureaucracy and sometimes deliberate obfuscation. My dad used to call "wheel spinning." 

It was a brutal, uphill struggle against a Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors determined to bend Malibu to their will, backed by a powerful lobby of developers armed with seemingly unlimited financial resources and influence, but despite the odds, the fight was finally won in 1990.

Supervisor Deane Dana is on record in 1989 recommending that the board continue to attempt to "bury and delay the process." More than half of Malibu was astonished to find that Dana and Supervisor Pete Schabarum didn't actually have horns and a forked tails, not that anyone could see, at least.

"There is no other city that was ever formed that had such a burden," Supervisor Kenneth Hahn said in December of 1989. "I've never heard of or seen such confusion."

An editorial on KNX Radio in March 1990 recommend that the county, "Stop trying to foil the Malibu cityhood effort. You've had your day in court. It's time Malibu had its day at the polls."

Suporters of the Malibu Cityhood Initiative gather on the corner of Webb Way and PCH to urge passers-by to vote yes on Measure Y in this Malibu Times photo reproduced in the City of Malibu's Independence Day Commemorative Journal, March 28,1991.

"Hooray for Malibu, Mayor Walt and all of the people who have worked so hard to make cityhood happen," wrote Ann Cornelia Andes-Dixon in the 1991 Malibu Cityhood commemorative program. "My children and I have been involved in this fight for 23 years, I'm so glad to be here to see the dream come true. Happy Birthday, Malibu!" 

Another 23 years later, Ann Cornelia's daughter Dru Ann signed the "Your Malibu, Your Decision Act," along with the Reiners and longtime Malibu activist Carol Moss.

The "Your Malibu, Your Decision Act" is currently being reviewed by the city. It will then need to garner enough signatures to place it on the November ballot. Whether it passes will be up to the people of Malibu. It doesn't require divination skills to foresee the developers attempting to blitz the initiative with negative advertising or trying to put together a poison pill initiative to neutralize it.

Fortunately for Malibu, protections were built into the first development plans when the ranch went on the block in 1940 and no amount of greed and grandiose plans have ever been able to entirely undermine them.

Here's an excerpt from an Evening Outlook article, dated December 7, 1940:

Plans for converting the historic Malibu Ranch into a private empire for business leaders of Southern California were being mapped out today by Louis T. Busch, past president of the Santa Monica Bay District Realty Board, following his appointment this week as general sales agent for the Marblehead Land Co. With 17,000 acres of land to sell, and 23 miles of ocean frontage thrown in for good measure, Busch confirmed reports that he is building up a sales organization that will strive to develop the rolling hills of the Rindge property to their best and highest use.

“This is going to be one of the greatest real estate developments ever launched in the Western United States,” Bush [sic] declared. “We have some of the finest real estate in Southern California, and our contract with the Marblehead Land Co. permits us to liquidate the entire property, offering everything from ocean front lots with sandy beach to golf courses, hotel sites and 640 acre ranches.”

“The announcement is of particular interest to the business men of Santa Monica because our sales program provides that the residential character of the entire ranch is to be maintained strictly with the exception of two small neighborhood service centers…”

Two small neighborhood service centers, not destination shopping centers, or high density chain store mega malls, but something in keeping with residential character. Is that something the majority of Malibuites still think is worth fighting for? We'll find out.

Suzanne Guldimann
14 March 2014

This is the Malibu Civic Center seen from a half-mile off shore. The mountains help put everything in perspective and serve as a reminder that Malibu is a key part of the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area—a National Park that, in its own way, is just as valid and worthy of preservation as Yosemite, or Acadia, and that we are stewards of unique and irreplaceable natural resources. © 2014 S. Guldimann