Panel Agrees to Revise Building Restrictions : Malibou Lake: Homeowners say the proposal to ensure fire safety would be too costly and ineffective.

Acknowledging that the building restrictions proposed for Malibou Lake please no one, the Los Angeles County Regional Planning Commission on Thursday asked its planning staff to go back to the drawing board.

“Is there one single resident of the area who is in favor of this ordinance?” asked Commissioner Sadie Clark, after listening to more than an hour of protest.

No one responded.

“That’s what I thought,” Clark said.

The restrictions contained in a proposed community standards district--including a requirement that indoor sprinklers be installed in all new houses and in any houses that change ownership--were designed to alleviate an extreme fire danger in the remote canyon community between Agoura Hills and Malibu.

Homeowners and the owners of vacant lots in the area object to the restrictions because they believe they would cost property owners too much money and accomplish little. Some homeowners said they had received estimates of up to $8,000 for retrofitting their houses with sprinklers.

“This really doesn’t solve a problem and . . . it’s punitive to everyone,” resident Tom Bates said.

Owners of vacant land believe the proposed district would make building prohibitively expensive. Homeowners believe it would encourage construction of new homes, increasing traffic congestion, while making the sale or remodeling of existing homes nearly impossible.

County planners defended the proposal and warned that no plan will please everyone. Other controversial recommendations include limiting the size of new houses and requiring roads to be widened to 20 feet before additional building or expansion could occur.

“Everybody’s ox gets gored here, so nobody supports it,” said John Huttinger, a planning administrator.

Huttinger added that the 190-house subdivision, with more than 100 vacant lots, “would never be approved today.” The proposed restrictions are “woefully inadequate, but it’s the best we can do,” he said.

A temporary urgency ordinance limiting construction in the area expires at the end of February, leaving the commission little time to develop a new proposal to forward to the Board of Supervisors.

Commission Chairman J. Paul Robinson asked that the re-crafted plan be brought back to the commission Nov. 19.

It was Malibou Lake homeowners who drew public attention to the danger of a wildfire consuming their community, as part of their effort to halt a proposed 15-house subdivision. Among other things, they pointed out that the enclave is surrounded on three sides by grassy parkland and that it has only one access road.

While the tactic succeeded in delaying the development, it also backfired by increasing scrutiny of the residents’ past building practices and by raising the probability that they would have to share the costs of improving fire access routes.