U2's "Edge" Wants To Live on The Edge...of Malibu That Is - Page 3
"This raises environmental awareness because two homes would be more reasonable for the community, but five are a bit much. A wealthy individual can afford to hold on to homes on this type of financial feat,” Wagner adds. “European actors and actresses often move to America because the tax rules are more favorable and rewarding than they are in Europe.”
Wagner also told Eonline:
"The downside of this is a permanently scarred mountainside for the benefit of a very few that for many years all will view," AND "For somebody so revered even to be orchestrating this type of development in such a sensitive area is hypocritical."
Welcome to the world of the rich and famous, where it's "do as I say, not as I do."
The California Coastal Commission is expected to review the environmental impact of the project in June.
Here are some more LA Times snippets:
The properties he hopes to develop perch above Malibu's city limits in Serra Canyon, on 156 acres in an unincorporated area of Los Angeles County. The California Coastal Commission has "significant concerns" about the project, said Jack Ainsworth, deputy director of the panel's South Central Coast District. Among them, he said, are damage to habitats, the high number of truck trips, landslide issues, the potential for hillside eyesores and the "growth-inducing impacts of pulling down a water line through other properties" that might then be developed.Plans for extending the road call for sinking deep caissons through the slide plane, "a pretty significant undertaking from an engineering standpoint," Ainsworth said.
The commission intends to take up the matter in June. When it does, the Edge will have an edge: his rights as a property owner. "Even if it's considered an environmentally sensitive habitat," Ainsworth said, "we've got to allow for some residential use to avoid a constitutional taking of property."
Jim Vanden Berg, a representative for Evans and his partner in the venture, Irish real estate investor Derek Quinlan, countered that the rock musician is taking pains to ensure that the development will "create a sense of place that respects the environment [and] architecture that will stand the test of time."
Each home, Vanden Berg said, has been tailored to the contours of its site and will be "notched into the hillside," with boulder outcroppings and other natural elements incorporated into the designs."
Needless to say, "Malibuites" aren't happy campers these days about Evans chipping away more of their hillside. Apparently, this isn't the first time that Edge hasn't been chummy with his neighbors.
Continued on the next page
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