Council hires consultant to review Weintraub hotel proposal Play

The city council approved hiring a consultant last night to analyze the proposed hotel that developer Richard Weintraub wants to build at PCH and Malibu Canyon Road.

Weintraub proposed a gigantic 500-plus room hotel at the same site 15 years ago. It went down in flames. He is back with plans for a smaller hotel, but he has to pay for a consultant to examine his plans — a consultant who will be paid for by the developers but work for the city.

Last night, councilman Steve Uhring objected to the consultant chosen by the city to do the analysis: the same consultant who did a traffic study more than a decade ago for the Whole Foods Supermarket.

That study was filled with errors, not the least of which was that they forgot to analyze the impact of new shopping centers on traffic on Pacific Coast Highway.

Uhring last night asked why the city would hire the same guy twice.

"They are the same ones who did the study for the Whole Foods Market, I believe," Uhring said. "And they are the ones who said that traffic in Malibu hasn't increased in 25 years."

Both of those traffic studies were held up to ridicule in the community, and point of fact, the consultants blew it in several areas. For example, the traffic study for the Whole Foods market simply forgot to consider the shopping center's impact on Pacific Coast Highway. The EIR had to be sent back out to be completed.

Council member Marianne Riggins remembers it differently.

"My recollection of it is that it wasn't that the engineers were saying it hasn't changed in 25 years," Riggins said. "They said it was at capacity of the signals and that they couldn't get any worse because it already had the worst that it could possibly be."

Don't worry, said city manager Joe Irwin. He reassured the council that he as city manager will keep the consultants in line.

"Any time we hire a consultant, it is our duty as appointed city staff to make sure that we are managing our consultants," Irwin said. "We manage the contracts. We make sure that they're on track and they achieve the deliverables that are set out in the scope of work."

The city council last night also approved covering the $1.25 million cost blowout for the radar speed cameras being constructed along PCH.

We'll have that story, and more city council news, tomorrow.