County to Consider Outlet Center, Malibou Lake Building Restriction

Two controversial development proposals--a 90-store factory outlet center near Gorman and building restrictions for the Malibou Lake community west of Calabasas--will be considered for final approval today by the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors.

In both cases, the supervisors are expected to hear strong testimony from opponents.

The Sierra Club and other environmental groups vigorously oppose the proposed Quail Lake Associates factory outlet center north of the junction of the Golden State Freeway and California 138. The center would include a shopping mall with 90 stores, an 80-room motel, five restaurants, two gas stations and a small convenience market.

The Sierra Club’s Angeles Chapter contends that the project would bring excessive traffic and air pollution to an area known for its wildflowers and a California condor recovery program.

“This project would totally deface a spectacular viewshed and destroy what has been its rural, pastoral character for more than 100 years,” said Dick Hingson, the chapter’s conservation coordinator. “What I can’t understand is why this area, on the one hand, has been designated significant ecologically and then, on the other, would be placed at the risk of destruction.”

A partner of Quail Lake Associates, Jeff Birdwell, countered that building the project “at a freeway-to-freeway interchange will have no impact on the environment. It’s not in a natural, pristine wilderness.”

Birdwell said the Los Angeles Regional Planning Commission approved the 325,000-square-foot project in October on the condition that developers plant wildflowers on a 250-foot-high hillside behind the center.

“This kind of design concept will enhance that hillside,” he said.

In the Malibou Lake community, building restrictions in a proposed community standards district are aimed at alleviating what Los Angeles County Fire Department officials say is extreme fire danger during the summer and fall. The proposal calls for indoor sprinklers in new houses and those that change ownership.

Owners of vacant land contend that the proposed district would make further construction costs exorbitant. Homeowners fear that the decreased fire risk would encourage construction of new homes, increasing traffic and lowering property values. The remote area is surrounded on three sides by grassland and has only one access road.

“I don’t want to burn to death--we’re already overbuilt,” said one resident, who asked not to be identified. “We’ve got to think about another question: What are we going to leave our kids?”

She predicted that the board will “come up with a political solution that will please everyone and no one at the same time.”