King of the Hill : Development: Many residents say a proliferation of huge homes is destroying the area’s ‘rural character.’ A task force has proposed limits on the size, scope and setting of single-family dwellings.
If not here, where?
If you can’t lop off a hilltop, plunk down a 35-room mansion and watch the sun slide into the Pacific from your rooftop swimming pool, then just what is the point of being rich in Malibu?
The question is taking on a fair degree of urgency as Malibu digs into the politically treacherous terrain of stopping the spread of mansions, those recession-be-damned castles of consumption that just keep cropping up--and up and up.
Since achieving cityhood on March 28, 1991, Malibu has granted building permits for three single-family homes in excess of 10,000 square feet and has received plans for Cher’s proposed 14,435-square-foot ocean-view domicile along the Pacific Coast Highway. “We’re talking about a place as big as a hotel,” sniffs John Wall of the City Council-appointed task force on Single Family Criteria.
But the debate extends well beyond the architectural aspirations of a handful of super-rich celebrities. During the three months prior to Malibu’s incorporation, Los Angeles County issued 78 building permits for single-family homes here. The average size of each home was an impressive 7,312 feet--about five times larger than a standard three-bedroom, two-bathroom tract house.
“They’re showpieces,” Wall says of Malibu’s more ostentatious dwellings. “They’re intended to make a statement.”
Increasingly, though, such statements are being viewed as an attack on Malibu’s “rural character.”
As slow-growth forces have tightened their control over the new city, dozens of so-called mansions have been criticized for dominating landscapes, dwarfing neighborhoods, blocking views and altering the natural contours of hills and ridges--not to mention using excessive amounts of water, electricity and raw materials in an ostensibly environmentally conscious community.
The result has been the creation of the 12-member task force, whose mission is to develop criteria to limit the size, scope and setting of single-family dwellings, replacing the relatively lax county guidelines now in effect.
City Councilwoman Joan House says it’s time to end what she describes as the “cut-and-fill attitude” of many builders.
“I think we’re getting our backs to the wall,” she says. “We have finite resources. We have limits.”
Attorney Patt Healy, another task force member, interprets last April’s City Council election, dominated by slow-growth forces, as a mandate to protect an environment that draws people to Malibu in the first place.
“If you build that up, we’re just like everyone else in L.A. County,” she says.
The task force’s proposals--the focus of a City Council study session scheduled for Tuesday--include:
* Limiting the square footage of new homes (including garages, sheds and other outbuildings) to 10% of the flat portion of the lot plus 1,500 square feet.
* Banning construction of any home larger than 8,712 square feet, regardless of lot size.
* Requiring any home higher than 18 feet to obtain special city approvals.
If the measures are approved, Malibu would join a growing list of communities in Southern California, including Los Angeles, Beverly Hills, Pasadena and San Marino, that have taken steps against “mansionization.”
The new rules could take effect as early as later this month and would remain in place at least until the issue is addressed in a citywide General Plan, not expected to be adopted until well over a year from now.
But attempting to numerically define when a mansion is really a mansion is tricky business, especially in a city where one man’s mansion is another man’s summer cottage. As Wall half-jokingly told the City Council last month, “A mansion is twice as big as the house you live in.”
Ed Niles, an architect who serves on the task force, predicts the measures will create an “absolute managerial nightmare,” and he says slow-growth advocates are out of touch with reality.
“These people don’t understand what a building is,” he said. “They just want a low number so it sounds good politically.”
Many are worried that the restrictions would unfairly impinge on the lifestyles of residents and stifle the architectural creativity that has given Malibu a distinctive look and feel.
“Nobody wants Malibu to become a Brentwood-by-the-Sea,” says Ron Goldman, another architect serving on the task force. “To standardize Malibu is as big a mistake as mansionization.”
Even proponents of toughened regulations acknowledge that square footage alone doesn’t make a mansion. Other aesthetic factors are often far more important. Does the mansion hug the contours of the hillside, or does it thrust forth in an environmentally indifferent display of edificial ego? Is it wrapped in greenery in the manner of the discrete estate of Michael Landon’s family, or does it glower mercilessly down on its neighbors like an alien saucer?
City officials consistently refer to 30553 Morningview Drive on the north end of town as an example of mansionization at its worst.
Toluca Lake architecG. Firestone designed the striking nine-bedroom, 14-bath Colonial-style mansion for A. H. Yaghtin, a Kuwaiti-American businessman.
Firestone estimated that the home--which includes an underground bowling alley and “larger-than-Olympic-sized” swimming pool, is worth $15 million. It took shape after Yaghtin presented Firestone with an assortment of photographs of large homes, including the White House, as examples of homes he admired.
Neighbors, however, seem generally unimpressed as they gaze up from their markedly more humble digs.
Looking out at the hillside now dominated by Yaghtin’s mansion and a second massive home on the same site, neighbor Mavis Davies stood in her yard on a recent afternoon shaking her head. “It’s just so tacky,” she said.
“I don’t have anything against (the owners),” added actor and artist Leigh McCloskey, who has watched his view of the ocean turn into a view of a fortress-like stone wall. “It’s just the absolute magnitude of the house.”
Although Yaghtin could not be reached for comment, Firestone dismissed the complaints, noting that his client’s 320,000-square-foot parcel is more than large enough to accommodate the 22,000-square-foot home.
He also suggested that officials in Malibu and elsewhere have overreacted to the mansionization threat.
“I don’t think they have anything to worry about,” he said. “There just aren’t that many Yaghtins to go around.”
Task Force on Single-Family Homes Dozens of so-called mansions in Malibu have been criticized for dominating landscapes and using excessive amounts of water, electricity and raw materials in an ostensibly environmentally conscious community.
The result has been the creation of a 12-member task force, whose mission is to develop criteria to limit the size, scope and setting of single-family dwellings, replacing the relatively lax county guidelines now in effect.
The task force’s proposals--the focus of a City Council study session scheduled for Tuesday--include: * LIMITS: Limiting the square footage of new homes (including garages, sheds and other outbuildings) to 10% of the flat portion of the lot plus 1,500 square feet.
* BAN: Banning construction of any home larger than 8,712 square feet, regardless of lot size.
* HEIGHT APPROVALS: Requiring any home higher than 18 feet to obtain special city approvals.
