Malibu Mansions and Zoning Laws

From the photograph in The Times’ Westside section July 5, the nine-bedroom, 14-bath Malibu “mansion” could just as easily be titled motel. It looks like one. It functions as a motel or hotel. Although it is private, it has six or more guest rooms. The uniform building code defines a motel or hotel as a building “having six or more guest rooms intended or designed to be used or which are used, rented or hired out to be occupied or are occupied for sleeping purposes by guests.”

From the environmental viewpoint, the traffic in the neighborhood, with its air pollution and noise exacerbated just like a motel, and the residential nature of the neighborhood visually destroyed, I suggest “mansions” of that size be zoned properly as hotels.

JOSEF VAN DER KAR

Malibu