Malibu Beach Inn Crosswalk Derided By Critics, Goes To Planning Commission Today
Written by 991KBU on March 4, 2019
The very nature of downtown Malibu may be at stake … as the Malibu Beach Inn proposal to move its parking lot across PCH goes to the Planning Commission tonight.
The city planning department concludes that the proposal is legal … that the hotel has the legal right to move its parking across the street.
But critics of the move say they city planning department has bent its interpretation of the law to suit the needs of the hotel.
They say that a requirement that offsite parking be within 300 feet of th ebusiness has been bent … in a suspect interpretation.
And they call that a highly suspect loophole.
s for the Malibu Beach Inn to move its parking lot across P C H … linked by a traffic light.
Under the plan … the hotel will get to build a traffic light on PCH … within a few hundred feet of the existing traffic light at Malibu Pier.
Then … it can build its coveted swimming pool in its parking lot.
A valet service will ferry cars back and forth between between the two parcels … with the valets stopping traffic on PCH at the new traffic light in front of the hotel.
Drivers be ordered by painted “keep clear” signs to stay out of the way for the valets. … to provide the necessary breaks in traffic to allow the valet a safe opportunity to enter and exit the parking lot down the street.
City planner Bonnie Blue tells the Planning Commission that the hotel plan complies with the Coastal Commission-approved Local Coastal Program and the Malibu Municipal Code.
And … she says the Planning Department made this recommendation based on substantial evidence in the record.
The city planner thus recommends approval.
But the decision on whether that evidence has been interpreted correctly is not the city staff’s to make.
It is the Planning Commission… and ultimately the city council who will make the call.
And attorneys for the hotel have already asserted in public that they have a property right to install the signal on PCH and move their hotel parking lot across the road … and pan to go to court if the city says no.
