Calabasas : Council to Discuss a Date for Mall Ballot

Amid pressure from critics who charge the city with stalling, the Calabasas City Council on Wednesday will discuss setting a date for a referendum election on a controversial commercial center.

The council approved the 1.3-million-square-foot Calabasas Park Centre last year after months of debate that divided the community. Then, in July, opponents of the project turned in the 1,152 signatures required to force a referendum.

“I don’t know what there is to talk about,” said Steve Sklar, a project foe, referring to Wednesday’s meeting. “These people were elected by the people, and they should listen to the people who put them in there.”

Sklar’s group is pressing for a March ballot referendum asking voters to uphold the city’s original development agreement. Council members say they don’t want to move forward until they have resolved a key legal question.

City Atty. Casey Vose said the problem is that the referendum would not address conditional-use permits the city granted for a 200,000-square-foot retail center at Calabasas Road and Parkway Calabasas. It’s not clear, he said, whether those permits would be valid if voters rejected the development agreement.

Vose said Thursday that he planned to file a motion asking a Los Angeles Superior Court judge to render an opinion on the legal question.