Residents Battle Development Plan at Malibou Lake

Along the narrow roads that overlook glistening Malibou Lake, neighbors on horseback stop under the pine trees to argue about their community’s future.

Laid-back devotees of stained glass, hummingbird feeders and life far from mini-malls, the residents of this retreat in the Santa Monica Mountains, 20 minutes south of the Ventura Freeway near Agoura Hills, are also spending their evenings poring over dull planning documents.

And last week, about 50 residents, many of whom are nonconformist writers, artists and behind-the-scenes movie people who are throwbacks to the hippie era of the 1960s, met to plan strategy for blocking a proposed 15-house development that they fear would eventually lead to the destruction of their haven from urban sprawl.

The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors is scheduled to decide the fate of the project Thursday, and the people who live in the cabins and fixer-uppers lining the narrow canyon roads agreed to sport ties instead of tie-dyes when they attend the meeting to fight back.

The houses would be built on Crags Drive, the single road leading into the rugged neighborhood that is surrounded by canyons filled with dry, stubby brush. To win approval, the developer would be required to build a sewer that residents say would spur further growth.

The residents say the area is already prone to fires and, because Crags Drive narrows to as little as 10 feet in places, it could not accommodate firetrucks and the cars of residents who would need to flee a major blaze. The residents, most of whose houses are served by septic tanks, also say the sewer system would add to the problem by encouraging growth on the 460 mapped lots that are vacant.

“If they get sewers, it will make a bad situation worse,” said homeowner Karen Grosswendt, who remembers the last time she was awakened by the sound of someone alerting residents to a fire.

“As a community, we’re very concerned about the small roads,” Grosswendt said. “If a firetruck was trying to get up and people were trying to get out in their cars, there would be pandemonium.”

The residents got a major boost in April when the county Fire Department concluded that the single access road in the fire-prone area created “extremely dangerous conditions.”

The department also recommended that “no further development” be allowed “until proper roadway width and surfaces” are “installed and maintained throughout the area.”

Former Los Angeles City Councilman Art Snyder, who represents developers Jack Slome and Donald Haskin, maintains that the small, “Western-theme” housing development being proposed for Malibou Lake would actually improve access for firetrucks because the single road would be widened substantially.

“They’re probably the only people in the area who will ever have the financial capability to improve the road so that people could evacuate in case of fire or another disaster,” Snyder said of the developers.

But the road, because it abuts steep slopes in places and is bordered closely by houses in others, could not be uniformly widened enough to meet county standards, said G. Greg Aftergood, a lawyer for the homeowners. Even the 188 existing residences exceed the maximum allowed for a narrow single access road in a wildfire area.

The property where the houses would be built was once occupied by a community center that fell into disrepair. The site is still zoned for commercial development. “All sorts of things could be put there that would be a lot less desirable than 15 very nice homes,” Snyder said.

The real reason behind homeowners’ opposition, Snyder said, is that “some folks just don’t want to have more neighbors.”

Few in the neighborhood would dispute Snyder on that point.

The area, from its founding in the 1920s as a retreat for film stars, has attracted people of independent mentality, said Susan Laronge, president of the Malibu Lakeside Homeowners Assn., and they cringe at the idea of tract houses.

“The area continues to draw the creative, the innovative and the stubbornly independent,” she said.

The residents cannot even agree on spelling. The owners of houses on Malibou Lake disagree with their neighbors up the hill, who refer to their neighborhood as “Malibu Lakeside.”

An early hangout of W. C. Fields, the Malibou Lake community became home in the 1960s to rock musicians such as the Grateful Dead and the Byrds, hippie communes and motorcycle gangs. Charles Manson is rumored to have camped with his followers in the nearby hills.

“The area in the ‘60s was very colorful, communal,” Laronge said with a chuckle. And while it has toned down considerably, it still welcomes people such as the 60-year-old retiree who lives in a ramshackle three-room house, rides a motorcycle and wears leathers.

Randy Bendel, a brash, 28-year-old lawyer who moved to the hillside three years ago, has helped lead the grass-roots fight against the project, but not without frustration.

“It’s a very eccentric, private place,” Bendel said while driving 11-foot-wide stretches of dusty road in his Alfa Romeo. “Here I am, a Type A personality working with these Type B personality neighbors.”

When Bendel’s neighbors wax eloquent about wanting to preserve the mellow ambience of their retreat, he has to remind them that such arguments carry little weight with government officials who will ultimately decide the community’s fate. The issue over whether additional development along the narrow roads will create more fire danger is much more persuasive, he reminds them.

He tells his neighbors that when they address the Board of Supervisors, they have to stick to practical rather than poetic descriptions of their magnificent canyon views.

“This isn’t beautiful,” he said of the area’s dry hillsides. “It’s fuel.”