Park Visitors Can’t Fight This City Hall

Construction is underway in a visitors parking lot at Malibu Creek State Park to get a small, 1950s-era town ready to begin filming a movie called “Pleasantville” there this spring.

The elaborate set is a town with a drugstore, a malt shop and a gas station along its main street.

Until filming wraps in June, visitors to the state park will walk by the town’s municipal center on their way to the hiking trails.

Although park officials said they have heard few complaints but much curiosity about the construction, some visitors said they are not pleased about sets being built on public open space, and in an area that environmentalists had hoped would be restricted from such uses.

“The park has been turned over to the movie business to the detriment of the public,” said David Holmes, a Woodland Hills resident and regular visitor to the park.

Kevin Brady, a park employee who is on site daily to ensure that the production is within the regulations of its California Coastal Commission permit, said filming is scheduled to work around the enjoyment of the park by visitors.

“Historically this park has been used for filming and the state wants to continue within those guidelines,” he said. “We don’t want this to impact the public or the land.”

Location scouts for Juno Pix Inc., the film’s production company, said they chose the site for its picturesque setting and its existing parking area.

“We didn’t want to go into an unspoiled place and blacktop it,” said location scout Ken Lavet. “It’s a temporary setting built on a site that is already on a parking lot. I feel badly that it may have some people upset, but it will be returned to its original setting.”

And as part of the agreement Juno Pix has with the commission, the parking lot--one of two lots on the property--would be left with improvements that include parking safety islands, trees and an irrigation system.

Park officials hope to conduct public tours of the set when it is completed in March.