Coastal Staff Calls for Rejection of GM Design Center in Malibu

The staff of the California Coastal Commission has recommended that a request by General Motors to build an $11-million advanced design center on Pacific Coast Highway across from Pepperdine University in Malibu be denied.

The proposed General Motors Advanced Concept Center would be a three-story, 85,000-square-foot building housing 70 employees whose “primary goal is the development of advanced designs to be incorporated into auto production in the year 2010 and later,” said Judy Anderson, a spokeswoman for the auto maker.

Anderson said General Motors is planning to close its design center in Newbury Park in Ventura County and transfer those employees to the Malibu site. She said that the Newbury Park plant is leased and that General Motors would prefer to build its own facility.

Access to Talent

General Motors wants the center in Southern California because trends are set here, Anderson said, and because of the “access to the design talent on the West Coast.” The proposed center, with laboratories, conference rooms, library and paint, metal and wood shops, as well as an enclosed courtyard, would be “aesthetically appealing, good for creativity,” she said.

The center is designed to blend in with a bluff on the 24-acre site, with only 17 feet protruding above the top of the bluff.

The site is on the southeast corner of Pacific Coast Highway and Malibu Canyon Road, south of a 220,000-square-foot hotel project and west of Malibu Bluff State Park.

The Coastal Commission staff said that General Motors’ plan conflicts with the commission’s land-use plan for Malibu, which reserves the site for recreational use, said planner Gary Timm.

Timm also said construction of the center would conflict with a commission policy against building in the civic center area of Malibu until a community sewer system can be installed.

“But the main objection is over the use of the land,” Timm said. The Coastal Act reserves priority for recreation and coastal-dependent land uses, he said, “and it is not necessary that this project be located there.”

Public Hearing Set

The commission is scheduled to hold a public hearing on the proposal Nov. 13 in San Francisco.

Tony Gagliardi, manager of public relations for General Motors’ Technical Center in Detroit, refused to comment on the recommendation. “We can’t comment on this until it happens,” he said referring to the November hearing.

Leon Cooper, president of the Malibu Township Council, a civic organization that claims to represent 1,300 families, said that, although the council’s board has not taken a position yet, he objects to the county’s approval of the plan.

“My principal objection to this sort of thing is that, like everything else in the civic center area, it is done without any planning and detail as to what other facilities will eventually go in there,” he said.

‘Can’t Have It Both Ways’

“And, in the face of the county’s claim that there is no adequate provision for treatment of effluent in Malibu, they are issuing permits for development. You can’t have it both ways.”

Cooper also said he objects to the Coastal Commission holding its hearing in San Francisco.

“Since it is a Malibu matter, why is it not being scheduled for down here? I don’t understand the commission’s logic requiring us to travel that distance to speak at the meeting,” he said.

But Timm said the scheduling of the hearing in San Francisco is just the “draw of the cards. The first hearing it could be scheduled for was in San Francisco,” he said. The only way to shift the hearing to December’s meeting in Los Angeles, Timm said, “is on the applicant’s request or if the commission decides to reschedule it.”