Developers in Malibu Work to Beat the Ban : Construction: As the new city celebrates, builders defy its moratorium. Some see a field day for lawyers.

Saturday, while members of Malibu’s new City Council rode in a 1917 Pierce Arrow and waved to a crowd celebrating cityhood, workers across town rode bulldozers, in what angry officials call a flagrant violation of the city’s new moratorium on development.

And while bands, surfers and horses tromped around and around the block behind council members in the Freedom Parade, a steady stream of cement mixers rumbled down Pacific Coast Highway.

“There was a last minute rush to run out and pour concrete,” said City Manager Bruce Spragg on Monday morning. “The developers apparently thought we were too young and confused to enforce our law.”

Forget hopes for a honeymoon between members of the development community and city officials, many of whom rode to power on the little city’s determination for slow growth.

Instead, said Councilwoman Missy Zeitsoff, there has been “a show of muscles.”

By Monday, the city had stopped three construction projects. Twice city officials were accompanied by sheriff’s deputies.

“This is not grading,” said Stephen Widmayer, a city official who went to one of the sites. “This is open pit mining.”

Dozens of complaints about illegal building have been jotted down in legal pads kept by volunteers manning City Hall’s three phone lines.

“It’s absolute lawlessness west of Topanga Canyon,” said Peter Dixon, who lives near a project stopped Saturday. “It’s the Wild West.”

The moratorium passed on March 28, Malibu’s first day of cityhood, temporarily bans most grading and new commercial and multifamily development, and severely restricts construction of single-family homes. Projects that already have foundations, or that received building permits before January 1, 1991, are exempt.

For the past year there has been a frenzy of building activity as developers raced with cityhood. “We were frankly hoping that (the building) would stop while we got our act together,” said Mayor Walt Keller.

Instead, Keller spent his first official weekend as mayor watching cement trucks roar past his home overlooking Pacific Coast Highway. “It seemed there was one every two minutes,” he said.

In the mad scramble, one cement truck overturned Friday on Pacific Coast Highway and Malibu Canyon Road, according to the Sheriff’s Department.

“Most people aren’t going to stop until the city stops them,” said Ron Moss, a developer who did stop. “They don’t see how the city can enforce this moratorium. Does it really have any teeth?”

Violators of the law face fines of up to $1,000 a day and six months in jail.

“Maybe we’ll need to make an example of somebody and throw them in jail,” Keller warned.

Jim Guerra, chief of the Building and Safety Department, told the City Council on Tuesday that he had a busy weekend but that the problem is under control. “Our priority is enforcement,” he said.

Inspectors are still working out of cardboard boxes in a temporary office while the city manager tries to figure out where to put them. They already have a “huge backlog” of work, Spragg said.

The city manager said that in the last month alone the county processed $500 million in construction projects for Malibu, earning more than $2 million in permit fees. Spragg estimated that up to 75% of those projects may be affected by the moratorium.

“Everybody was trying to get concrete in the ground because they are scared to death of what the city will do,” said Grant Lawseth, a building and safety official. By law, the city has the authority to halt development for up to 2 1/2 years while creating a general plan to serve as a blueprint for development.

Keller said developers were not reckoning on concerned citizens.

Developer Moses Lerner’s project on Sea Level Drive was stopped last weekend after neighbors complained that crews had been working up to midnight under floodlights and in heavy rain trying to get concrete poured.

The state unsuccessfully attempted to halt work there last week after workers using a backhoe dug up the remains of six American Indians from an apparent Chumash burial ground.

The city issued a stop-work order Friday. Bulldozers dug away anyway, according to neighbors. On Saturday afternoon, city inspectors returned with a second stop-work order, accompanied by sheriff’s deputies. Century City attorney Alan Robert Block, who represents Lerner, said his client did not violate the city’s moratorium because the first stop-work order listed only two of the three lots at the site.

City officials stopped a commercial project at 33125-45 Pacific Coast Highway, just north of Decker Road, after neighbors complained that workers were ignoring the moratorium. Bill Womach, who lives nearby, said one of his neighbors had even turned the security camera on his gate toward the project.

Block, who represents the two families who own the project, said his clients thought they had done enough work to be exempted. Few expect the battle over the moratorium to end soon. Developers say they will fight it in the courts. “(The moratorium) seems like a two-year employment contract for lawyers,” said developer Norm Haynie.