Locally-Owned Lumber Company Hasn’t Given Up Efforts to Open Hardware and Lumber Business

• City Turned Down Bid for Civic Center Building

BY BILL KOENEKER

Although Malibu city officials did not want to talk about turning back a hardware and lumber store’s proposal during a request for bids to replace the tenant in a city-owned building, Dave Anawalt, a Malibu resident whose family has been in the business for years, was willing to discuss what he had proposed to the city.
The municipality had put out what is called a Request for Proposal for the building located on the corner of Pacific Coast Highway and Webb Way that was leased by a real estate firm in an arrangement that dated back to when the site was owned by the Malibu Bay Company.
“I have been trying to put a lumber yard into Malibu for a long time,” said Anawalt, whose family-run business includes three stores. “It is a good use for the city. It is a real need we could all use.”
Anawalt said he was not comfortable talking about the actual numbers in his bid proposal—he acknowledged that his bid was lower than the city’s minimum—but stressed that his concept was to offer the city monthly rent plus a percentage of the sales.
“We envisioned a hardware store in about 4000 square feet of the building,” he said. The city indicates the stand-alone building on nearly a half-acre consists of 4848 square feet. “It would be a full service hardware store,” he added.
Much like the wording in the city’s request, Anawalt said he is looking for a long-term business partnership.
Anawalt said the key to any kind of success was for the city to allow outdoor temporary structures to store lumber and other lumber products. “We need covered storage,” he added.
Anawalt said he has put together a similar set-up as the one now being proposed in his West Hollywood store, where the hardware outlet was also about 4000 square feet; although this is small by comparison to his West Los Angeles hardware store, which is 16,000 square feet, he says. “We have done it before. It is workable.”
Even with the smaller square-footage, he noted that “we would use the racking system we use at all the other stores.”
If the city could meet those requirements, Anawalt said, “We could do pretty close to what the Malibu Lumber was doing revenue wise. That is why we offered a percentage of the sales.”
The Coldwell Banker real estate firm was leasing the site for $5.83 a square foot which is about $337,000 per year. The city requested a minimum rental amount of $428,000, which is $7.37 a square foot.
“They phoned me and told me I was low and that they were going to extend the RFP deadline,” said Anawalt, who added. “The ball is in their court.”
Malibu city officials continue to maintain that they must get the higher rents to pay off the high debt incurred when they purchased the Chili Cook-Off site and other commercial buildings.
Critics of the $25,000,000 cook-off land purchase price have maintained that the city paid too much for land that might never have been developed to capacity and now has its hands tied.
Evidence of that position is a letter to the editor the mayor sent to the Malibu Surfside News this week, maintaining the city had negotiated with others for a lumber yard to take over the old lumber yard site, but no one could promise to pay enough rent for the heavy debt the city has incurred on the property.