Don’t Blame Coastal Commission : It had to blow the whistle on Hope deal; the law made it do it

For a time, the Santa Monica Mountains stood to get 5,700 new acres of parkland through a complicated property swap among developers, a state agency and Bob Hope. It still could happen, but the California Coastal Commission has rightly ruled that the law would have to be broken, not just bent, to accommodate the deal in its original form.

The commission rejected a proposal in mid-December to build 26 luxury houses in Malibu’s Corral Canyon. That would have been the triggering deal for a plan under which Hope could have developed his Jordan Ranch property in Ventura County and then deeded the new park property to the Santa Mountain Mountains Conservancy.

Its decision has led to some grumbling over the practice of coastal parochialism, protecting the beach at the expense of the forest. In fact, the commission had no choice.

The development would have required remodeling the canyon itself. To make way for the houses, bulldozers would have graded 2.2 million cubic yards of earth, covering over what an advisory group agreed was an “environmentally sensitive habitat.” The 1976 law under which the commission operates specifically shields such areas from any disturbance, let alone being buried alive, except when it cannot be avoided.

Another part of the law directs the commission to minimize the alteration of “land form” when it issues permits for development in the coastal zone. There was nothing minimal about the Corral Canyon proposal.

Finally, it seemed clear, at least to its staff, that even if the commission approved the canyon development, the rest of the swap could fall apart. Malibu would be stuck with a precedent that allowed 84,000 cubic yards of dirt to be moved per house instead of the existing average 5,000 yards, and there would not be a single new acre of parkland.

The lawyers will get together after the holidays to try to patch the swap back together. The deal surely can work without anyone’s losing a bundle. The lawyers should focus on how, not whether.