Calabasas landslides becoming a messy business

Does anyone care that the city is about to loose more beautiful hills on Las Virgenes to new home development? That Standard Pacific Homes is proposing 40 new homes to be built on a confirmed landslide zone?

This past winter it already started to slide.

Of course the hillside can be stabilized, but only with extensive grading that will essentially remove the hills. According to the Calabasas General Plan, new development should conform to the exiting topography instead of the topography being changed to suit the development.

The Calabasas Planning Commission has tentatively scheduled the Standard Pacific development for review at either its July 14 or 28 meeting, depending on when the documents are ready.

The property, currently zoned for light commercial use, is located between the Shea Homes development currently under construction on the hillside next to the sheep farm and the Las Virgenes Municipal Water District. The development plan includes changing the zoning from light commercial to residential, which will require a general plan amendment.

The builder has argued that the proposed project conforms to existing home densities along Las Virgenes Road. True, but that is exactly the problem, which means this project cannot be as dense.

Las Virgenes Road is already heavily impacted by residential areas on the west side of the road (to which will be added the traffic from Shea Homes), as well as two schools, a church, four gas stations, four shopping centers, beach traffic, industrial park traffic and the Las Virgenes Municipal Water District operations. The road is already operating over its rated capacity. The creek is at its dirtiest.

Add the Shea homes traffic, the 40 homes proposed for the land behind Shea, the shopping center proposed for the land north of the Mobil station and the massive Malibu Valley Inn convention center proposed to the south on Mulholland and it is all too easy to predict what the “Gateway to the Santa Monica Mountains” will look like…and what it will be like to attempt to drive through it.

The majority of homeowners around the project and the Municipal Water District are opposed to the Standard Pacific project.

We still have a chance to prevent it from ever being built. We still have a chance to preserve the hills that distinguish our community and create our property values. I urge every Calabasan to show up at the July planning commission meetings to oppose this project and to help preserve what we all fell in love with when we chose to live in semi-rural Calabasas. Jeanet Moltke Calabasas