Restrictive Growth Plan OKd for Malibu : Land use: City finally adopts guidelines, but they anger many and may spawn legal challenges.

The Malibu of the 21st Century will continue to be an exclusive enclave of semirural homes and country roads that will expand amenities for the outside world sparingly, under a development plan approved this week.

Nearly five years after one of the world’s most celebrated and desirable cities was created, its City Council agreed late Monday to end a record-setting series of hearings and adopt a plan that seems to have a lot of people mad.

Half of Malibu’s activists worry that the bulldozers of dread suburbia are lurking just beyond the next vote. The other half worries that it won’t be able to build anything. Both sides complain, despite a county record of nearly 60 public hearings, that nobody listened to their complaints about the city’s first General Plan.

Outside observers--from the California Coastal Commission and the Santa Monica City Council to affordable housing advocates--protest that restrictive zoning and other policies create a city that is, at best, unaccommodating to outsiders and, at worst, downright elitist.

“Having finally gotten here, the result is what we had all predicted--something that no one is very happy with,” said Councilman Jeffrey W. Kramer. Nonetheless, he called the plan “an important step forward in protecting the quality of life in Malibu and the environment.”

Kramer and three other council members who voted for the 20-year General Plan, against the dissent of Councilman John Harlow, agreed that it was less than perfect. But they said they assented to the plan to meet a state-prescribed Thanksgiving Day deadline.

The state requires cities to adopt general plans governing development. Failure to do so could have exposed Malibu to litigation and court supervision that might have eroded the city’s slow-growth philosophy. Councilman Jeff Jennings decided it was better to opt for “a plan you don’t like versus no plan at all.”

Such statements were the routine as 17 months of hearings and workshops stumbled toward a conclusion. The council’s three-member majority--Kramer, Councilwoman Carolyn Van Horn and Mayor Joan House--worried repeatedly that the plan was not restrictive enough. Jennings and Harlow said it went too far--diminishing the rights of even current residents to remodel their homes.

Some members of the city’s small staff and other observers said privately that the council’s distrust of its own plan reflected the difficulty council members have had in evolving from agitators determined to throw off the authority of Los Angeles County into leaders in their own right.

“There is a real distrust of government and always has been,” said a former city employee, who asked not to be named. “But now they are the government and they distrust themselves.

“They can’t blame the county anymore. And they are finding it a lot harder than they thought it would be.”

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Even as the plan was being returned to the council in recent weeks for a final polish, some members were expressing suspicion about their own staff. In several hearings, slow-growth leader Van Horn looked balefully over her black reading glasses and accused Planning Director Joyce Parker of undermining the council’s wishes by watering down building restrictions.

Even when the City Council voted to hire an outside attorney to ensure that its directions were being followed, Van Horn and Kramer worried that the lawyer’s opinions could be tainted by dealing with the city staff.

While the council majority repeatedly worried that policies were being left out of the plan, City Atty. Christi Hogin assured them that the plan was highly restrictive and supported a “vision statement” of a “residential community whose citizens have historically evidenced a commitment to sacrifice urban and suburban conveniences in order to protect that environment and lifestyle.”

The plan will:

* Require lots of at least one acre, and often more, on 95% of the undeveloped residential properties. On almost all of the remaining residential property, a maximum of four units will be allowed per acre. With a handful of acres, six units will be allowed on each.

* Allow a system for rationing building permits if development exceeds historic levels. The council majority directed that the growth rate should be pegged to the years before the cityhood drive began in late 1987.

* Permit only one hotel to be built--on Pacific Coast Highway near Pepperdine University--with further restrictions designed to prevent the facility from attracting conventions or other large gatherings. The city manager says tax revenue from the hotel will be enough to keep the city’s finances “clearly in the black.”

* Prohibit construction in the 9% of the city deemed “environmentally sensitive habitat areas,” unless there is no feasible alternative. The city may attempt to purchase some of the properties through a trust, or give developers credit to build on properties elsewhere.

* Discourage sidewalks, street lights and other suburban amenities.

The tourists and locals who have for years cruised Malibu’s 26-mile coastline in a vain search for the town’s center will not find their answer in the General Plan. The city has just launched a separate set of hearings to draw a plan for the Civic Center, the swath of mostly fallow ground that lies between City Hall and the Colony, an exclusive beachside enclave.

While many other cities are clamoring for development and the property and sales taxes it brings, Malibu residents are content with both less tax revenue and a lower level of services. At a recent appearance before a community group, City Manager David Carmany announced plans to sweep parts of Pacific Coast Highway once a month. “A guy came up to me and said, ‘It would be great if you could do it even once a year,’ ” recalled Carmany.

A challenge to the General Plan is considered a virtual certainty by the city’s staff and council members, probably aimed at the document’s housing element. The state Housing and Community Development Department has said that Malibu’s fair share of the low-income housing for the region is about 52 units, but that the city’s high land costs make that impossible without higher density.

“Even affluent, slow-growth cities are required to construct housing that is affordable to all segments of the community,” said John Frith, assistant director of the state agency. “That includes Malibu and Beverly Hills.”

If Malibu’s housing proposal does not meet state standards, it will not be alone. More than two-fifths of the state’s cities do not have certified housing plans. Observers say Malibu’s housing element is unlikely to be certified by the state, and that will make the city more susceptible to legal challenges--perhaps from an unlikely alliance of wealthy developers and nonprofit groups representing the poor.

“Malibu’s housing element is one of the most elitist documents I have ever seen,” said the lawyer for one property owner who might sue.

Malibu’s leaders respond that their plan does offer incentives for affordable-housing construction--including granting developers expanded building rights on properties adjoining the low-income units. Councilman Kramer described as “cynical” attempts by some developers to align themselves with low-income housing advocates in what he said was a thinly veiled attempt to increase development.

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Down the coast, the General Plan is not playing well in Santa Monica, which has been designated in the document as the likely location for Malibu’s homeless to find shelter and other services. “There have been rumors for years that other cities have been sending their homeless people to Santa Monica,” fumes Santa Monica Mayor Paul Rosenstein. “This is the first time I have seen a city admit it. I think it’s outrageous. They are essentially dumping their problems on a neighbor.”

It’s a far cry from the days when Malibu’s honorary mayor, actor Martin Sheen, welcomed the homeless to the community, but officials are unrepentant, saying that, with as few as 25 people living outdoors, the city doesn’t have enough demand for new programs and facilities.

The state Coastal Commission is also looking for the city to adopt a more outsider-friendly policy regarding the opening of pathways to Malibu’s beaches. Many stretches of shore are walled off by homes, but the city stops short of a commitment to change the situation, saying it must balance accessibility with privacy, safety and other concerns.

The access question was one of the few, though, that united the council, with members agreeing the concerns of property owners had to be attended to before new paths to the beach should be opened.

Just about every other point in the plan was hotly contested. Harlow, a retired engineer, complained repeatedly that the plan had exploded to more than 700 policies and implementation measures, from fewer than 300 under the county’s plan.

Jennings, an attorney, said the myriad regulations were meant to disguise the “drawbridge mentality” behind the plan. “The answer [in the plan] was simply to draw up the drawbridge and declare an end to development in Malibu,” he said.

Van Horn, the most outspoken of the slow-growth leaders, said the complaints reminded her of the pressures Malibu has repeatedly faced from developers and other outside interests. “This community is not green to that kind of pressure,” she said, accusing others of meddling in the city’s affairs.

Late Monday, after the plan was approved, Van Horn was already making a motion to hire an attorney to continue tightening land use regulations in the community.