CALABASAS : Senior-Child Center Plan Put on Hold

Arnold Bresky’s dream of building an unusual center where senior citizens and preschoolers could mingle is still several months off.

The Calabasas Planning Commission rejected the physician’s plan last Thursday, saying that the design of two driveways leading to the center would not allow speedy enough exit in case of emergency.

“Everybody likes the project itself,” city planner Steve Harris said. “But you have to have a second access that is safe. You’re dealing with the very old and the very young and, in case of a brush fire or a landslide, these are two groups of people who can’t just hop in their cars and drive away.”

The project would include a 5,475-square-foot complex on 12 acres, with outdoor picnic and game areas and indoor arts and crafts space.

It would be located in a box canyon at Dry Canyon Cold Creek and Old Topanga Canyon roads.

The idea, according to Bresky, would be to provide day care for children while giving seniors a place to spend time or volunteer.

The proposed second entrance to the 12-acre property was rejected because it is too close to the intersection, Harris said.

The Planning Commission ordered a study of possible alternate driveways, to be reviewed after about two months.

Bresky, who has brought revised plans for the center to the Planning Commission six times since last November, decried what he called a “bureaucratic, dysfunctional logjam” that he said has thwarted his efforts to build.

His project, he said, ought to be constructed quickly.

“People at both ends of the life spectrum learn from each other in a way people in the middle, who are too caught up in their careers, can’t,” Bresky said.

“Throughout history, it’s been the grandparents who have been models for children,” Bresky said. “Somehow, in modern society, we have lost that.”