Malibu : Workshop on Building Ban

The City Council will hold a workshop tonight on its new moratorium on construction, which has provoked mounting opposition.

More than 100 homeowners and developers attended Monday’s organizational meeting of an anti-moratorium group called the Malibu Coalition for Single Family Homes, according to organizer and real estate broker Brady Westwater, and more than a dozen homeowners and developers took to the podium at Tuesday’s City Council meeting to blast city officials for enacting the ban.

Most of the critics want the city to exempt single-family homeowners from the moratorium. Christian Conrad, an actor who lives in Encino, told the council that he and his fiancee will be unable to move into a trailer, as planned, on a lot he bought two years ago at Point Dume. “This is America. I’ve purchased the land to build a home on, and now I don’t have any place to live. I’m so frustrated, I’m going to cry!” he said. The audience clapped.

Sherman Stacey, an attorney for developer Norman Haynie, warned the council that he will sue the city if Haynie is not allowed to proceed. Haynie’s project was among the 20 stopped by city inspectors since the ban was enacted March 28. The moratorium is an arbitrary and unconstitutional law, Stacey said after the meeting. “This is a grown-up ballgame, and the city has to be prepared to take some lumps,” he said.

The workshop on the moratorium will be held at 7 p.m. at the Hughes Research Laboratories.