Malibu unveils parks plan — and a surprise hotel land swap Play

Two soccer fields can be squeezed into the large city-owned vacant lot known as the chili cookoff site on Civic Center Way, according to a city parks consultant.

But a proposal has come out of nowhere for a land swap at the Civic Center — more on that in a moment.

A city panel recommends that ballfields go in at Ioki Park at the Civic Center. And they say that if the city builds a parking garage next to Pacific Coast Highway, there is room for a community recreation center on PCH at the old Christmas tree lot on Point Dume.

The city late Friday released conceptual locations for the three vacant lots owned by the city, destined to become badly-needed parks.

But in what may be the worst case of timing ever, the city has at the same time released a trial balloon for a major land swap of the vacant lots at the Civic Center to allow for the construction of a hotel next to City Hall.

The city consultant recommends relocating the senior center and city parks office out of City Hall and building a new complex on PCH just east of Heathercliff.

A 25-yard lap pool is envisioned, either 4 or 8 lanes. A full sized soccer field. An indoor basketball court. All of this would be at a multigenerational community center, served by a two-level parking garage right next to PCH, with an entrance off PCH and room for 200 cars.

All of that on Point Dume would cost about $64 million.

Down at the Civic Center, two regulation-sized soccer fields are envisioned at Ioki Park — the area informally known as the chili cookoff site. Those would be the first regulation-sized fields in the city of Malibu, bigger than the field at Malibu High. It could be broken up into 4 smaller youth fields with restriping.

67 parking spaces are proposed inside the park, plus 33 on the street next to it. Also proposed for the north end of that big vacant lot: an impound lot for up to 65 towed-away cars and a city maintenance yard to store city vehicles.

At the triangle lot on PCH at Webb Way, the consultant recommends a parking lot and some sort of trolley station for some sort of trolley in the downtown Malibu area.

The timing of the consultant report release has come under fire. The city quietly released its major parks blueprint last Friday. The city's news release went out late yesterday afternoon, just one day before the parks commission meeting. Much of the city is on vacation and out of town.

The sudden release and lack of notice has already rankled some people. The city's website did not have the plans posted anywhere yesterday except buried in the parks commission agenda, which had been updated without notice on Friday. The city's Malibu Community Lands web page still doesn't have the latest parks plan posted today.

Early reaction was predictable. John Mazza at the Planning Commission last night:

"Friday we came out, the city came out, with a proposal for a new parks plan for vacant lots, and it's being heard Tuesday, so there hasn't been a lot of public notice. And this is a big deal. This is our vacant land. I hope that the general public knows about it and reviews it and comes and makes comments on the parking structures and the hotels and the everything else that is in the plan."

Sorry, Mr. Mazza, but that is not correct. The city is NOT planning hotels. A hotel is the request from a private developer — a proposal that has yet to be even talked about, much less approved, by any city panel.

But Mazza, and the general public, can be excused for this confusion. And that's not only because of the last-minute release of the plan for public comment.

There was not just one plan released by the city over the weekend — there were two plans released, in one package.

One proposal — ballfields and community centers — are general concepts already tentatively approved by the city council.

Independent from that is a new request from a private developer to build a hotel next to Ioki Park — a hotel that would be part of a major land swap at the Civic Center. That one came out of the blue and has not been discussed at city council.

Under the land swap option, a developer would build a small luxury hotel just to the north of the Ioki Park site, next to City Hall. But apparently they don't want the soccer fields next to their hotel.

So the developers propose a land swap. The city would give the hotel ownership of the Ioki Park site — about 10 acres. The city would take ownership of about 14 acres of land to the west, across Stewart Ranch Road and along Civic Center Way. But much of that 14 acres is an unbuildable wet-weather swamp.

It appears that the city managed to muddle and conflate the parks plan with the land swap.

The city's special web page set up to communicate with the public is at malibucommunitylands.org. It does not have one word about the city's plan or about the developer's land trade. That information is hidden in the city's Parks and Recreation agenda.

The city's newsflash about this went out at 4:10 p.m. Monday. And it has zero details about the proposal or the land trade either.

The first public hearing on all this is tonight at the Parks and Recreation Commission meeting at 6:30 at City Hall. The Public Works Commission will chew over the two issues at 3:30 tomorrow, also at City Hall.

The city promises that more opportunities to share feedback will be available in August and September.