Malibu residents debate parks plan for three vacant city lots Play

About 40 Malibu residents last night gave their opinions at City Hall about what they want to see built at three vacant lots owned by the city.

One point of agreement: this is an important point of inflection. Malibu is making a master plan for parks, in a city that has not added one sports field in its 35 years of existence.

Wade Major, one resident, pointed to New York City and its Central Park.

“The people who planned Central Park are long gone. The people who are enjoying what they planned are there today,” Major said. “I would like for all of these projects to be similarly celebrated 150 years from now when the families that are here, the kids who were going to our schools can look back and they thank us for having had the vision to give them something that wasn't just for people who are here now.”

The city has been here before. There have been numerous attempts to make plans for Malibu’s vacant lots.

Former city councilman Paul Grisanti last night testified the problem was planning for too much stuff.

“I hate to see what I’m seeing happen before, which is we get so many things on the table that we accomplish nothing,” Grisanti said. “I think it’s important that we find something that is accomplishable, like the Ioki field and putting two soccer fields on the front of it and leaving the back portion of it until people can fight over what’s gonna be on the back portion. But those two fields could go in pretty quickly.”

City officials say putting in those two soccer fields at the Civic Center would take $3 million, whether they are temporary fields or not. The same cost.

Disagreement is brewing over what to put at the Heathercliff lot, the vacant land on Pacific Coast Highway east of Heathercliff Drive.

Many members of the community want a gym — Malibu’s first indoor sports facility — to be placed there. Others want a swimming pool. They point out that the Malibu High pool is closed from 7 a.m. to 6 p.m. most school days, and that the population center of Malibu is out west.

But the Malibu Coalition for Slow Growth wants the gym cancelled. And they want the pool at the Civic Center, at the Ioki site.

At Heathercliff, they voiced support for native gardens and open space — what sounds very much like a duplicate of what the city built at Legacy Park 15 years ago. That park was constructed without any athletic facilities at all. Simply a series of winding walkways and natural plants.

When Legacy Park went in, families with kids and people with athletic interests were a bit disappointed. City leaders said just wait, we will build fields next.

That was 15 years ago. And now the city is being urged to remove the gym, the athletic field and the swimming pool for the location closest to the population center of Malibu, at the Point Dume lot.

The discussions have been had before, said Las Flores beach resident Carl Randall.

“The first thing I want to say is congratulations on getting this far — it’s amazing,” Randall said. “We’ve gone through this for 35 years. I did it back in 2012 to 2017 and we accomplished nothing. A bunch of people tried it in ’97 and they didn’t get anywhere. And if you look back to the master plan in 1991, when we became a city, there were all these things requested for recreation. Other than the skate park, which is amazing, we have accomplished none of them.”

The decision won’t be made until the city council gets this hot potato on September 28th. Two city council members will be right in the middle of their reelection campaigns. No final decision will be made, likely, until after November.

And even then, the city does not have any funding to build anything. Malibu’s money is tied up in federal disaster reimbursements that the White House is sitting on.

The city is accepting public comments on its website. You can go there and leave a message until the end of this month.