By Rick Wallace
A vastly new Malibu is fast approaching. Malibu will look and feel drastically different within the next five years. Already completed are a new theater, Cross Creek Road, Malibu Beach Inn, and Point Dume Plaza.
Under major reconstruction are the Malibu Lagoon Park, Las Flores Park, Solstice Park, the Point Dume Pavilion market, and the lumberyard site. Before long, much more: Legacy Park, the Windsail/Pierview sites, Whole Foods Market at Cross Creek, the Trancas Park, the new hotel across from Bluffs Park, beautified medians and eateries at both ends of the pier. Malibu in 2012 will be awesome, better than ever!
We are almost there. The two restaurants are nearing completion, the new library plan was added and nearly completed, and the new shopping center at Trancas is in the works.
(Lets hope the real estate market picks up, also.)
There are more than 200 officially recognized National Historic Sites in Los Angeles County, four of which are located in Malibu:
– Adamson House: This site is located at the Malibu Lagoon State Park. It was once the home of Rhoda Rindge Adamson, daughter of Frederick and May. K. Rindge. It is the best surviving work and only intact example of architecture from Stiles O. Clements and represents the Moorish-Spanish Colonial Revival Style popular in the late 1920s.
– Historic Village of Humaliwo: Once in the Malibu Creek/Lagoon area.
– Saddle Rock Ranch Pictograph site: Also known as the “Cave of the Four Horsemen,” has nearly 100 pictographs that could date as far back as 500 A.D., near Kanan/Mulholland.
– The Stevens House: In Malibu Colony, also known as No. 78, designed by John Lautner in 1968, has a roof design that looks like a wave.
Many streets in Malibu have terrific views, but these streets have it in the name: Coast View, Colony View, Skyline View, Ocean View, Hillview, Latigo Bay View, Birdview, Morning View, Sea View Lane, Anacapa View, Beach View Estates, Fox View, Pacific View.
View ordinance: good. Long period necessary to install it: bad.
The original publisher of The Malibu Times was Reeves Templeman, a graduate of USC, who was in the publishing and film business. He was also a co-founder of the Malibu Township Council and a charter member of the Malibu Chamber of Commerce, Lions Club and Optimists Club. Before running his regular column, “Along the Malibu,” for decades in The Malibu Times, he ran the same column in the Topanga Journal for two years. He and his first wife, Eileen, then started up their own paper in 1946, which never missed an issue, despite numerous challenges such as frequent malfunctions in their one typesetting machine. Eileen died in 1965 and Reeves later married Reta.
The Point Dume school was opened in 1968 and only lasted 12 years. It was closed in 1980. It re-opened in 1996, and will soon celebrate its longest period either closed or open.
At one time, Malibu Realty Company alone had seven offices in Malibu, during the early sixties. Its successor, Prudential Malibu Realty, is in the PCH/Cross Creek office that Malibu Realty was best known for.
According to public records, the first house ever in Malibu was just east of Duke’s, on the beach, built in 1913, but is no longer standing.
The mobile home park on Point Dume was originally designed to have an adjacent nine-hole golf course in the nearby ravines.
Pepperdine University sports teams have won nine national championships in Division I sports.
The Malibu Times, the Malibu Association of Realtors, the Malibu Township Council and the Malibu Chamber of Commerce were all established in 1947.
If you think PCH and our local roads are dangerous now, you should look back on the old days of Malibu when the newspaper almost weekly described a death on PCH, or in the canyons, or a home burning down, or a boating accident.
Budget Rent-a-Car was not always at its current location along the PCH, in a little building that once housed a restaurant. It originated in August, 1981 in the Colony Market parking lot, back when the lot had only the market, the Colony coffee shop and the Bank of America building, which was then Security Pacific National Bank.
Remember when Malibu Nite ‘N Day was Malibu’s answering service to the wealthy, in the days before answering machines?
SuperCare drugs has filled a great deal of prescriptions in its building. And there have also been many real estate deals that have run through the place (when Coldwell Banker was housed there for years). But the building was built to house money. It was originally Union Federal Bank. Doesn’t it just look like a bank?
I’ve always thought one of the most underrated views in Malibu is on Heathercliff, at the intersection of Dume Drive, looking over the Point Dume Plaza, at the fabulous mountains and Zuma Canyon.
I see Malibu Presbyterian Church is about to start construction to rebuild from the 2007 fire. The church first opened in October 1986 with its large Tudor-style facility.
The Malibu City Council has moved around a bit since its inception 20 years ago, but the first meetings took place in the large meeting chamber at HRL, which stands for Hughes Research Laboratories. The large white expansion building of 90,000 square feet was completed in 1988 after the original building stood for 28 years alone.
At about the same time that the Hughes extension was breaking ground, so were the two large white buildings of the originally-named Malibu Medical Park on Stuart Road, where the city council meetings occur now. They were the brainchild of Dr. Tom Hodges who had his office in that location, in a trailer. Hodges had greater fame as the builder and original owner of the Malibu Castle.
Written by Rick Wallace.
Russell Grether of Coldwell banker Previews International is a real estate agent based out of Malibu, CA. He specializes in Malibu real estate, Malibu homes for sale, Malibu properties, Malibu land for sale, Malibu rentals and surrounding area real estate from Montecito to the Pacific Palisades.
