To Take Back Malibu

While the city is sponsoring a series of open workshops disingenuously dangling five vacant parcels before a smattering of sincere if questioning residents championing varied public uses, it appears prepared to quietly deal away a sixth site it owns, the Lumberyard.

And while developing those five parcels for such uses as a public swimming pool, athletic fields, a performing arts center and affordable housing, if even feasible, would be a long and timely process; the public recycling of the Lumberyard is opportune.

With a little imaginative planning, the now mostly vacant Lumberyard indeed could be reasonably, and quickly, repurposed as a modest community arts center combined with resident serving local businesses, as has been proposed in the social media.

That is, if the city, which owns the land, buy backs a suspect lease that a conniving past city manager and a co-opted City Council several years ago awarded to local real estate interests, who after recycling the property, advantageously flipped it.

In the murky exchanges that followed, in the fog of the pandemic hovering over Malibu’s high stakes real estate, local businesses were shafted in favor of a tourist retail chain, leases bastardized, and the original conditions of approval corrupted.

Now monied special interests want to recast the lease, once again in a City Hall backroom, pitting, no doubt, the pro-private development majority of Grisanti, Stewart and Riggins, against the slow-growth, resident oriented Uhring and Silverstein.

It is long past time to take Malibu’s governance out of the back rooms of City Hall, a few realtor offices and select pricey eateries; a time for transparency and accountability; a time for us to take back our Malibu.