A cliff-top cemetery could be coming to downtown Malibu
A plan to turn 27.8 acres of prime real estate atop the Malibu bluffs into a sprawling cemetery caused consternation when it came to light in 2015, after developers abandoned their longstanding goal to build a hotel on the site near the intersection of Malibu Canyon Road and Pacific Coast Highway in downtown Malibu.
Now, seven years later, the development team has secured a second two-year permit extension, citing COVID-19 funding difficulties and the unusual nature of the proposed project.
The project was originally called the Rancho Malibu Mesa Development, or Adamson Hotel. In plans submitted in 1984, developers envisioned a 300-room hotel, including private villas, a separate 10,000-square-foot restaurant and a community center. At the time, the entire Malibu site was unincorporated county land.
Malibu's adoption of city status in 1991 resulted in a moratorium on new construction, which halted the Rancho Malibu Mesa project.
In the years that followed, the property owners reworked the plans again and again in an attempt to win approval from city leaders determined to grow slowly, but the plans stalled.
Even the smallest version of the proposed hotel, with 147 rooms, would more than double the number of rooms available in the 21-mile-long city, which currently offers 130 hotel rooms to visitors hoping to spend a night at the shore.
It's not as easy to find a hotel room in Malibu as it is to find a place to be buried: there are no cemeteries or memorial parks in the city. But that may soon change.
After more than 30 years of efforts to build a hotel on the site - next to Pepperdine University and up the hill from Malibu Bluffs Park - developers have stepped forward and submitted a proposal for a cemetery project to be called Malibu Memorial Park.
The proposal included 28,265 in-ground burial spaces, 47 freestanding mausoleums, 3,644 in-ground crypt spaces and a 28-foot-tall chapel, as well as 176 parking spaces. In addition, 21 of the 28-acre site included walking trails.
Last week's permit renewal hearing before the Malibu Planning Commission was accompanied by humor.
As the request for an extension was due to funding becoming increasingly difficult during COVID-19, Planning Commission member Kraig Hill asked why the deadly pandemic was not generating interest in memorial parks.
"I'm not sure I can phrase it delicately enough. But Don can you explain how it applies to extraordinary circumstances? How does a pandemic cause mass death? How it might make it harder to get funding for the cemetery?" asked Hill.
Don Schmitz, a consultant speaking on behalf of applicant Green Acres, LLC, said that "there were a lot of people dying to get in there," but while he wasn't in the room during the negotiations, he doesn't think the nature of the pandemic matters; rather, many industries were affected.
"It's a long-term investment to do a project like this, to get off the ground - I was going to say, 'Put people in the ground,' but that's too ridiculous," Schmitz said. "The financing agreement they had in early 2020 fell apart."
Assistant Planning Chairman John Mazza, who said he worked for a retail firm in the past and had experience with commercial debt, added that he believes most large firms divide debt into different groups - shopping centers, for example - but none of them likely have a cemetery or memorial park group. That means developers seeking financing will have to look outside established channels. Coupled with the state of the economy, Mazza called this market "very, very difficult for this kind of borrowing."
But in the meantime, Malibu city officials are working on various road and sewer projects that will make the memorial park feasible if it finally gets the necessary funds to break ground.
All five members of the planning commission approved a two-year extension of the memorial park project.
