Replacing Several Homes with Single Larger House May Be Growing Trend

• Demolition Permit Requests Appear to Be Increasing

BY BILL KOENEKER

It may be a trend that started several years ago on Billionaires’ Beach, also known as Carbon Beach, where two, three or four lots with older beachfront homes were purchased by one landowner, who demolished the houses in order to merge the lots and build one large beachfront mansion.
At the least, many new purchasers nowadays are tearing down the existing homes and replacing the older structures with usually larger residences.
The trend seems on the upswing in the last six months and has spread to other beaches.
A Broad Beach property owner last week received approval from the planning commission to demolish three adjacent houses totaling 10,356 square feet, merging the three contiguous properties in order to build an 11,210- square-foot single-family home with attached garage and greenhouse, 249 square feet of covered porches, paddle tennis court, swimming pool and spa.
Also last week, another property owner, whose one of many homes, is located near Paradise Cove, successfully sought permission to demolish an existing single-family residence and detached garage and build a new 2472-square-foot, one-story, single-family residence with a 545-square-foot attached garage and a 590- square-foot art studio located above the new garage on a two-acre parcel on a bluff top above the beach.
The planning commission is expected to approve several more requests at its meeting next week involving teardowns.
Another Broad Beach homeowner wants to demolish a single-family home that is built across three individual lots, merge two of the three lots and construct a new, two-story, 28-foot tall, 11,315-square-foot residence including an attached three car garage, 2284 square feet of covered porches and decks.
Down coast at the 27000 block of Pacific Coast Highway another homeowner wants to receive approval for a demolition permit and construct a new, two-story, 28-foot-tall, 8704-square-foot single-family home with attached garage and 898-square-foot basement, a swimming pool and a sports court.
Part of the trend is because of the aging stock of housing in Malibu, much of it built 50 or 60 years ago.
Another factor is the socio-economic status of the newest homeowners, who can rely on huge piles of cash because of their earning power or accumulated wealth and can easily purchase a multi-million dollar home, tear it down and start anew.
Planners say there are also benefits to the environment by replacing or eliminating aging or possibly failing septic systems with state-of-the-art, mini-wastewater packages.
The number of houses eliminated also can usually be counted on to lessen everyday impacts—fewer households thereby possibly reducing other impacts such as less car trips per day, newer and more sophisticated landscape irrigation systems in some cases resulting in water conservation.
There is no argument that the newer, larger homes change the neighborhood character and critics contend the loss of ocean views because of the larger bulkier, two-story buildings even with view corridor mitigations are no match for the small single-story buildings that were replaced.