Vote Set Today on Encinal Project : Development: The Coastal Commission will rule on a scaled-down but still controversial proposal to build 69 homes in canyon in Malibu.

After months of delay, the California Coastal Commission decides today whether to approve a developer’s proposal to grade 3.1 million cubic yards of earth and build 69 luxury homes in Malibu’s Encinal Canyon.

The developer, VMS Realty Partners of Chicago, and its subsidiary, the Anden Group, has scaled back its original proposal, which included a championship golf course and 8 million cubic yards of grading, but still faces considerable opposition from environmentalists and local residents.

“We’re talking about an amount of grading that would be vastly larger than anything ever allowed for a project of this type in the Malibu area,” said Paul Russell, a spokesman for a homeowner group opposed to the project.

The Coastal Commission staff, citing the amount of grading involved, has recommended that the state panel, which is meeting in Marina del Rey, reject the project.

However, a spokesman for the developer expressed optimism this week about the project’s chances.

“We believe we have an environmentally sound project,” spokesman Michael Rosenfeld said. “The staff’s report may be more inclined toward seeking the direction of the commission as opposed to necessarily opposing the substance of the project.”

The coastal panel was to have considered the matter last November, but after the commission staff recommended that the project be rejected, the developer asked that the matter be postponed. The matter was again postponed in January after the developer was granted more time to prepare its revised plans.

Since then, VMS-Anden has reduced the grading it is proposing for its 270-acre property by more than 700,000 cubic yards and taken other measures aimed at making the project more acceptable to residents, Rosenfeld said.

“The people who oppose the project are the very same people who, when we were proposing the golf course and the (8 million cubic yards of) grading, said that a strictly residential project wouldn’t be objectionable,” he said.

Residents complained that the original plan for the golf course and the attendant grading would be an environmental disaster. The county Regional Planning Commission rejected that proposal in May, 1989.

Los Angeles County supervisors approved the plan to build the 69 homes in the canyon last June after VMS-Anden dropped plans for the golf course.

To the dismay of Malibu cityhood backers, the Local Agency Formation Commission in 1989 approved a request by VMS-Anden to exclude the rugged hillside property from the future city of Malibu.

“There are a lot of people in the community who still carry resentment over their maneuvering with LAFCO,” Councilwoman-elect Missy Zeitsoff said. “It’s been a dastardly project from day one.”

Malibu’s slow-growth-oriented City Council, which takes office when Malibu becomes a city March 28, has asked the Coastal Commission to reject the project.

Critics contend that the developer should build fewer homes on smaller lots to match the density of the surrounding area and sharply reduce the amount of grading needed.

The opponents say that if the subdivision is built, the new homeowners in an area frequently beset by brush fires could be in danger because only one access road is proposed for the development. Some nearby homeowners have also expressed concern that fumes from a waste treatment plant the developer wants to build at the site might decrease the property value of neighboring houses.

VMS-Anden has dismissed the fire concern as unwarranted, saying the county Fire Department and the Department of Public Works have scrutinized and approved the plans. The developer insists that by giving up the golf course and making other compromises, it has already gone to great lengths to please critics of the project.